by Lauren Krznaric
Guest Blog Post from Kimberly Seeber. Kimberly lives in Bloomington, Indiana, US. She is a licensed elementary teacher and a graduate student in the Instructional Systems Technology residential master’s program at Indiana University. Her interests include technology integration in the K-12 environment and online learning.
With the introductory week zero of the Designing an Exemplary Course MOOC well under way, communities are forming, old and new friends are networking, and Exemplary Course Directors are preparing for this open online learning experience. All 1,926 of you (and counting) are eager to find out how one identifies, defines, and applies best practices when developing online courses. But this week was all about YOU. Who are you?
by John Dennett
Twitter, Facebook, and Google Hangout – all are new in the last few years. What’s not new, though? Social learning. For centuries, connections have been facilitated through a variety of means, and the aforementioned social tools are nothing more than another way for educators and students to make these connections happen.
Long before hashtags, likes, circles and all the other familiar trappings of social media, there was psychologist Albert Bandura. In the 1970s he established the most widely-recognized theory of social learning, observing three key variables in the social learning context – the learner, the behavior, and the environment – all influencing each other. There have been and continue to be many advantages to social learning. Given the connectedness of today’s learner in a 21st century learning environment, there’s a new direction for social learning. Does Bandura’s definition of social learning still cut it?
We’re myth-busting. Click here to read on.
John Dennett, Director, Product Management, Blackboard Mobile, has spent more than fifteen years as an educational technology professional. Prior to joining the Mobile team in 2011, John worked as a Blackboard Learn Solutions Engineer for more than five years and spent most of those years managing the North American Higher Ed team. Before joining Blackboard in 2005, he worked as a charter team member on MIT’s pivotal OpenCourseWare initiative and previously managed web services and courseware for the University of Colorado at Boulder. Tweet John @jgd3.
by Annie Lewis
Technology in the classroom is quickly becoming the norm in educating students, and there is little question that its role in education will only continue to grow. But what about all of the great technology students have at home? What role can home technology play in encouraging students to become active learners?
Digital natives will be exposed to technology throughout their lives. Just as we might have been encouraged to watch Sesame Street at a young age to stimulate a desire to learn, today’s children have to be engaged with the new digital medium.
by Lauren Krznaric
Hello everyone! My name is Lauren Krznaric and I’m thrilled to be the newest team member on the Program Marketing Team at Blackboard. The Fall is already shaping up to be packed with many great community programs including our Exemplary Course MOOC! I’m excited to also be a part of the Catalyst Awards and Exemplary Course Program. The 2013 program will kick off in early December but over the next few weeks I will be highlighting some of the 2012 winners.
Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with one of the 2012 Blackboard Exemplary Course Award Winners, Elena Pravosudova. Pravosudova wears many hats at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) – a school with roughly 18,000 students and 900 faculty. She is an associate professor, an undergraduate advisor, and a University Curriculum Committee chair. The winning course, Principles of Biological Investigations, is a team effort between herself and instructional designer, Alina Solovyova-Vincent. The course also earned one of the coveted six spots for Directors’ Choice for Courses with Distinction.
by Katie Drossos
The National University of Ireland – Galway (NUI Galway) offers a wide variety of academic disciplines to more than 17,000 students. With each passing semester, the university looks for new ways to incorporate technology in an effort to help students with their careers after graduation.
Four years ago, NUI Galway implemented the Blackboard Learn™ platform campus-wide. Staff members quickly began using Blackboard, increasing the appeal of and demand for technology in the classroom. With this increase in usage came other challenges, the biggest of which was managing video on campus. Staff members wanted to use video in the classroom, but the university didn’t have the proper storage capacity.
