Welcome

Before joining Blackboard, I was a teacher, and it will always be in my blood. That is why I am fascinated with the “flipped classroom.” This model has been around for quite some time, but has people talking. The flipped classroom model has students watch pre-recorded lectures at home in preparation for the next day’s assignments, and then students complete “homework” assignments in-class.  Teachers are incorporating technology into their classrooms by compiling pre-recorded lectures online or on DVD’s that students watch on laptops or other devices with internet/DVD access.

Woodland Park High School in Colorado made an important observation that shifted their thinking when they recognized “the time when students really need educators to be physically present is when they get stuck on homework questions and need individual help.[1]” This realization initiated their switch to the flipped classroom model. Not only did it initiate change, but they also have seen a continual increase in test scores since they switched to the model.

Time and resources are growing scarce in K-12 education. Many successful programs are losing budget money and are not getting it back (see these stories about schools in Chicago, Fort Worth, and Las Vegas). These stories are disappointing for teachers, students and families; however, the commonality that unites each article is adaptability. Educators, students, and parents are adapting to their circumstances, no matter how abysmal. How do we keep teachers in their jobs, cut costs of individualized education, and promote student success? Blackboard has partnered with Learning.com in order to provide free (and fee-based) education resources to make students more successful without breaking the bank for school districts. A great lesson should be focused on the student. The teacher should have time to teach the class and help with individual students’ needs. We want to focus on student success rather than the amount it will cost. With the new Learning.com content portal building block in Blackboard, educators will be able to teach students by using quality lesson plans from premier providers (NASA, Smithsonian, USA Today…) as well as other educators. Learning.com is happy to share their vast catalog of quality resources in K-12 education with Blackboard Learn. These sources are accessible and easily implemented into Blackboard course plans. What is the point of reinventing the wheel if there are already great educational resources out there? But the 200,000+ resources aren’t even the best part of the Learning.com building block. The most helpful aspects of the partnership are easy organization, implementation of Learning.com content into course tools, and catered lesson plans for the active learner. Teachers will be able to easily organize numerous lesson plans and information while accommodating the technological needs of students born in the millennial generation. Some of the features that cater to the active learner include online quizzes, multimedia, and textbook content. Educators will also be able to effortlessly track student progress.  Find out more about how our partnership with Learning.com will help students engage in their coursework and give K-12 teachers quality resources for the classroom.

A colleague recently told me that more students pursuing four year degrees are considering community colleges to earn their core credits first and then transferring to the college of their choice to pursue their major.  In theory this makes sense as pursuing higher education is a major investment of time, energy and money. However, thinking back on my primary decision criteria for the “right” college a while back (reputation and brand), this trend had me wondering if the decision criteria for choosing the right higher education path have changed. This really came down to a question of how today’s active consumers of higher education are determining the value of their investment. Here are a few points worth sharing.

Guest Blog Post by Dan Lim, Ph.D., Vice President for Educational Technology and Distance Learning, Florida Hospital College of Health Sciences (linkedin.com/in/danlim01). Dan will be presenting “De-angelizing Synchronous Distance Teaching: Collaborate To Enhance Online Education Quality” at Blackboard Collaborate Connections Summit 2012 on Thursday, July 12, 2012 from 2:50-3:45PM.

Once upon a time, it was popular to angelize.  Now it’s time to de-angelize.  At Florida Hospital College of Health Sciences (FHCHS), our plan to de-angelize is still on track though the ANGEL learning system has recently been put on indefinite life support.  Although ANGEL has served us well, its unscalable chat tool has been the Achilles’ heel since the beginning when we used it in the synchronous distance delivery of our three distance degree programs.

The transition to Blackboard Collaborate this year is a timely and critical change.  If your institution is experiencing various challenges in the quality of distance delivery, there are ten reasons why you need to attend our session, seven of which are on how Collaborate is a great solution to distance education challenges and three reasons why the transition has been smooth and quite painless.

 

The following post is from Lisa Bennett, Senior Director of Public Relations & Marketing at Kaltura. As a Premier Partner of Blackboard, we are delighted to be part of BbWorld again this year. No doubt that this is the year’s biggest event for “all things Blackboard” and our EDU team will be there in full force. We have all sorts of activities planned, so make sure to stop by our Booth #129 and catch a demo of the new version of our Video Building Block for Blackboard. The Video Building Block will be coming out in a few weeks, in time for the conference. You can also check out a live demo of our ‘Campus YouTube’ application – Kaltura MediaSpace, which provides universities and educational institutions with their own private video portal, and more. In addition to stopping by booth 129 to meet the team, you are invited to participate in our session about how video is becoming a key to learning and engaging students across campus. Below is the description of our session and what we will discuss. We hope to see you there! In the meantime – you can learn more about the Kaltura Video Building Block for Blackboard, start a free trial, or download our recent case study with Indiana University/Purdue University – Fort Wayne.