While many schools jumped at the chance to upgrade from their legacy products to our new web conferencing capabilities, some have remained reluctant for a variety of reasons. Some schools had other technology initiatives that took priority while others were simply happy with their existing products.  So, while there’s no pressure to upgrade to Blackboard Collaborate web conferencing immediately, we think that this summer would be a perfect time for schools to start the upgrade process.

After all, this summer we’ll unveil our planned Blackboard Collaborate 12 web conferencing, with audio echo reduction, mobility, and more!  And although Elluminate Live! V10 customers won’t have to upgrade until the second half of 2013 and Wimba Classrooms don’t need to upgrade until 2015, we encourage them both to consider upgrading to take advantages of our latest release.

Most importantly, it’s easy and smooth to upgrade—or so say our customers. For example, Cheryl Thompson, Instructional Specialist/IVN Scheduler at the North Dakota University System, said in this YouTube video, “I conducted training for a small group of people who are going to use Collaborate 11 for a statewide meeting.  After the training, one of the ladies said, ‘We should have one of those Staples ‘easy’ buttons for this.’”

Upgrading to Blackboard Collaborate 12 is THAT easy!

To learn more, you can do one of two things (or, even better, both).

First, attend an informational webinar to learn about the current highlights of Blackboard Collaborate and to see what’s coming. This presentation discusses the advantages of Blackboard Collaborate, the ease of the upgrading, and what steps you can take to ensure a smooth transition.

Second, attend our annual user conference, the Blackboard Collaborate Connections Summit 2012 in New Orleans this July 9-11, 2012 to earn about our new products and listen to sessions and panels from customers who have already upgraded from Elluminate Live! and Wimba Classroom to Blackboard Collaborate web conferencing.

Happy upgrading!

Matt

Now an annual tradition, the Blackboard Collaborate™ Hall of Fame for Excellence in Collaboration celebrates educators around the world who have shown exemplary innovation and creativity in their use of the Blackboard Collaborate platform.  In fact, last year we inducted six schools from across the globe into our hallowed halls.

While there are no specific categories, inductees will have demonstrated excellence at a college, university, district, or school in using Blackboard Collaborate to accomplish any number of the following:

• Improving student outcomes
• Saving significant money for an institution or program
• Encouraging sustainability/green initiatives
• Attracting and retaining new students, increasing retention rates
• Assessing the quality and impact of collaboration within a course
• Introducing global collaboration
• Enterprise-wide implementation across an entire institution, district, school, or virtual program

This year’s inductees will be announced at a ceremony on Wednesday July 11, 2012 at the Blackboard Collaborate Connections Summit 2012 in New Orleans.  And as always, the ceremony itself will feature fun, food, dancing, and much more, as I don my traditional purple emcee jacket to honor our newest class.

So just how does one become eligible?  Simple.  Nominate yourself!

The Call for Nominations for the Hall of Fame Class of 2012 is now open. Submissions are due on or before May 18, 2012.  Here’s your chance to nominate your university, college, school district, virtual school, or training organization.

Submit your nomination now and maybe you’ll find you and your team on stage in New Orleans this summer!  Though I don’t think Guns ‘N Roses will be on stage with you.

Matt

Last week, I had the unique opportunity to join a large contingent of Blackboard clients and colleagues at the Blackboard Teaching and Learning Forum in Antwerp, Belgium. I arrived on Sunday morning in Antwerp trying to shake off the jet lag (I live 9 time zones away in Portland, Oregon) and enjoyed the sights, sounds and tastes of Antwerp – a beautiful northern European city known for chocolate, strong beer and diamonds.

On Monday I moderated the first ever Blackboard Collaborate Forum and Workshop at this conference. The aim of this session was to provide attendees with a fundamental understanding of the Blackboard Collaborate platform, hear success stories from a couple of clients, have a go at using the software and of course, ask questions of the team. We had a broad range of attendees – representing Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

In the initial overview session we talked about Blackboard Collaborate’s capabilities and use cases, and we spent a good deal of time talking about LMS or VLE integrations. Blackboard Collaborate provides seamless, open integrations across all of our capabilities – web conferencing, enterprise instant messaging and voice authoring to enable greater student engagement and expand access to programs for students who may not otherwise be able to attend class. I felt this message rang true with the audience, as many of our European clients are looking for ways to expand the reach of their academic programs beyond the physical bounds of their classrooms.

After the opening session we were delighted to hear from two of our clients – Teresa MacKinnon from the University of Warwick and Josephine Kinsley from the University of Edinburgh. Teresa discussed how the Language Centre at the University of Warwick uses Blackboard Collaborate voice authoring capabilities in the Chinese and Japanese language programs enabling spoken feedback for learning. She also demonstrated how Voice Authoring tools are integrated into e-portfolio development. View Teresa’s presentation here.

Josephine showed us how the University of Edinburgh uses Blackboard Collaborate web conferencing to expand the reach of their university by hosting online virtual open days and weeks to attract students who may not otherwise be able to attend in person. Students who attend the sessions can engage in real-time conversations with staff, students and alumni to learn more about specific programs and services and get deep insight into life at the University. View Josephine’s presentation here.

We then offered a glimpse at Blackboard Collaborate’s product roadmap – with a focus on the planned mobile collaboration capabilities. With Blackboard Collaborate’s mobile collaboration it is planned that you would be able to access and participate in web conferencing sessions from your mobile device.*

We concluded the session with a hands-on workshop from Blackboard Collaborate Solutions Engineer, Sheetal Chudasama. Sheetal lead a lively, interactive session describing different use cases and scenarios commonly employed by Blackboard Collaborate users. He also demonstrated a few not so well known uses. Did you know you can play a video from your iPhone within a Blackboard Collaborate web conference?

The Blackboard Teaching and Learning Forum was a great opportunity to meet and spend time with some of our European clients, understand their pain points and discuss how Blackboard Collaborate can enhance teaching and learning, as well as helping them to achieve their individual strategies. And yes, the beer was fantastic.

*Statements regarding our product development initiatives, including new products and future product upgrades, updates or enhancements represent our current intentions, but may be modified, delayed or abandoned without prior notice and there is no assurance that such offering, upgrades, updates or functionality will become available unless and until they have been made generally available to our customers.

As a former teacher who loved walking in the door each morning to greet my classroom full of energetic second graders and hear their stories from the evening before, I am always curious why teachers like Leslie made the decision to teach online. Leslie strongly believes in the connection between students and teachers as well. She thinks it is important to “watch what they watch, listen to what they listen to, and read what they read.” She also thinks it is important to engage them with the tools and topics that they respond to, which is what led her to using technology in her classroom.

Through activities like collecting polling responses through cell phones and sharing content through prezi, she noticed an increased energy and enthusiasm in her class. Leslie remembers one student acting up in class and another coming to her defense saying, “Don’t mess with the Fetz!” This loyalty enabled her to get her students excited about science. As technology options in high schools progressed, she began teaching part-time in an online school.

Leslie remembers clearly the moment when she decided to switch to teaching online full time. She was teaching a chem lab. Her class size had grown over the years, and in one moment, she looked across the room and noticed ~12 hands in the air. She knew each student had a different question, and she couldn’t get to each of them fast enough. She felt strongly that if she had been teaching online, she would have been able to give each of her students the personalized attention that they needed.

Leslie thinks that personalization is the key benefit of online courses. Teachers can adapt both content and pacing to meet each student’s needs. She often creates short mini-lessons and records them in Blackboard Collaborate just for one student who did not understand a concept that day. She posts course-specific announcements each day to help students pay attention to the 1-2 most important things for that day. She also believes that in some ways she is more connected to her students online, especially the shyer ones who wouldn’t talk as much in a larger setting.

Leslie very clearly goes above and beyond for the benefit of her students and was so proud and thrilled to report that her students “walk proud” in the hallway and are scoring proficient on end-of-year tests.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt22RoOg1wE

Keep an eye out for a blog post in May from Leslie, who is going to share some course design tips with us. And in the meantime, check out this video featuring Leslie on she gets to know her students on a personal level in an online teaching environment.

Web conferencing takes your online meeting capabilities beyond those of the average customer meeting or training. With the ability to show and share presentations and applications on your desktop, you’ll be able to demonstrate the value of your product quickly and easily.

Enterprise Instant Messaging is a collaboration solution designed to promote team building through real-time communication. Our instant messaging system includes advanced features such as audio and video chatting, screen sharing, a robust whiteboard, as well as the ability to see the presence status of your team, allowing everyone in your team to collaborate seamlessly.

Integrations: Blackboard Collaborate can seamlessly integrate with the Blackboard Learn for Sales Platform. This allows your company to combine and leverage the training and selling tools that are most effective for improving your sales impact.

If you want to learn more about the ways your sales team can leverage Blackboard Collaborate, visit our website or leave us a message in the comments section below!

By attending Connections, you can optimize your technology investment and have a voice in shaping future Blackboard Collaborate products and services. At the same time, what you learn here will enable you to take actionable steps within your organization to add value.

Are you as certain as we are that your participation will make a difference for you AND your organization? The next step is convincing your boss. So, here are some talking points that will help you do just that.

What you will learn …

Invest your time for immediate impact by:

• Building on the innovation of other Blackboard Collaborate clients to make your investment work even harder
• Participating in active demonstrations for first-hand advice and tips you can use right away
• Coming away with new ideas, refined purpose, and better product knowledge to make it all happen
• Getting a global perspective from a diverse group of speakers, cutting-edge topics, and interaction with community members

What you will do …

Designed for you and by you with opportunities to:

• Choose from 50 presentations by Blackboard Collaborate customers, thought leaders, and subject matter experts
• Participate in moderated peer discussions on partnerships, openness, and goals for building a better student experience
• Attend detailed technical sessions devoted to change management, scalability, upgrade paths, and the latest Blackboard Collaborate technology
• Find out where education technology is leading us and understand the road map to your competitive advantage

What you will change …

Share your ideas and impact future releases by:

• Brainstorming with your peers in the academic community
• Meeting with like-minded professionals and tackling challenges as a team
• Interacting with industry leaders and Blackboard Collaborate experts
• Taking part in molding “what’s next” from Blackboard Collaborate

We hope this helps you make your case for attending Connections Summit 2012. It could very well be one of the best decisions you and your boss make this year. We are looking forward to seeing you in July in New Orleans!

The following is a guest post from Mark Radcliffe, Director of Learning Management Technologies at blendedschools.net

Mark Radcliffe is the Director of Learning Management Technologies for the not-for-profit company blendedschools.net. Mark has worked in various K-20 education positions for the last 10 years including working directly with students and teachers on technology integration projects. At blendedschools.net Mark manages the instructional technology program, communicates directly with Blackboard on a daily basis and handles many aspects of the company’s professional development program. Mark is currently located in Norfolk, Virginia, USA but is originally from Manchester UK. He enjoys the city and loves music and the visual arts.

Get an insider’s look….

This year at BbWorld I’ll be presenting “Wimba Classroom to Blackboard Collaborate – Make the Switch,” which is probably one of my simpler session titles in a while. I usually try and cram as many buzz words into my titles as possible. My hope is that it will attract people who look for buzz words and also attract people that get the irony of session titles with buzz words. In the end I went with a simple title this year because I wanted to illustrate that the process of switching from Wimba to Collaborate should not be complicated.

I have been working with K-12 educators for over 10 years now, helping them integrate technology into their classrooms. For the past five years I have been working with blendedschools.net, which has the most active K-12 online learning community in the country. It’s a challenging job as we only have eight people supporting over 75,000 users in four different states.

Working “to the masses” like this gets you familiar with new tools pretty quickly because you have 1,000s of teachers just waiting to tell you what they hate about something new. The challenge is getting them to like it before the hate switch kicks in.

In my session at BbWorld 2012, I am going to detail how we went about switching from Wimba Classroom to Blackboard Collaborate.  We spent a lot of time crafting a very detailed list of differences between the two products and getting solid feedback on what items were showstoppers for teachers. I also spent a lot of time saying, “Really that’s a show stopper? You couldn’t just click that button instead?”

My hope for this session, and for BbWorld 2012 in general, is that we take “misery loves company” and make it “happiness loves company.”

Let’s not pretend that change is easy; at blendedschools.net we still have plenty of teachers that have not switched, but I hope to communicate that embracing change can be much more fun and fulfilling than trying to make the new conform to the old. My first thought when I see anything new is “what is it about this tool that is awesome?” not “What can’t it do?”.

If you are reading this blog before my session, please feel free to throw out your questions and experiences and I’ll be happy to include answers to them through the blog or in the session itself. It wouldn’t be web 2.0 if I couldn’t use someone else’s ideas and pass them off as my own.

Also follow me on the various social media:

@bsnhomeroom
Blendedschools Facebook
http://share.blendedschools.net

Stay tuned for more coming attractions from Client Presenters and visit the BbWorld program for more information.

Recently the NRWC was invited to showcase its programs at the Commission on the Status of Women conference at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. The primary themes of the 56th annual conference included:

• The empowerment of rural women through their roles in poverty, hunger eradication, development, and current challenges
• Elimination of discrimination against women and girls
• Engagement of young women and men, girls and boys, to advance gender equality

Women from all over the world participated in the NRWS’s presentation via the Collaborate webinar. Present in the room were women from continents including Africa, South America, Asia, and Australia. Speakers included Elisabeth Broderick, Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner; Sandra Stoddart, NRWC Executive Officer; and Darriea Turley, NRWC President.

Blackboard supported NRWC by sending two experienced members of the Blackboard Collaborate team as technical support on site to ensure the webinar was executed seamlessly to participants worldwide. “This event has had positive outcomes for NRWC – national and internal acknowledgement of the important work we are doing, new partners for future programs for rural women in Canada and Zambia currently being discussed, and expressions of interest for new partners to work with NRWC into the future,” said Sandra Stoddart.

Blackboard is proud to partner with an organization that is empowering women around the world with life-changing education and training opportunities! We hope to support the NRWC and its mission far into the future and we thank them for helping to support our mission of improving education to those who have it and bringing it to those who don’t.

First time nominees, like Edline and CourseSites, were recognized as well as newly updated products like Blackboard Learn and Mobile Learn.  The McGraw Hill/Blackboard Building Block also made it to the next round of judging. We are especially excited that educators nominated us after viewing product demonstrations first-hand. Being a finalist in all of the below categories affirms that Blackboard is helping to improve many aspects of education.

Finalist categories include:

Blackboard Learn, Release 9.1, Service Pack 6
• Best Postsecondary Course or Learning Management System
• Best Postsecondary Instructional Solution

Blackboard Mobile Learn
• Best Educational Use of Mobile Device

CourseSites
• Best Cross-Curricular Solution

Edline Learning Community Management System
• Best K-12 Enterprise Solution

McGraw-Hill Blackboard Building Block
• Best Cross Curricular Solution

For a full list of the finalists in the Education Technology categories, vist the SIIA website. If you’re a member of SIIA, don’t forget to vote from now until April 13! Congrats to all the finalists!

The next four months are going to fly by. How do I know?  Because the planning for the second annual Blackboard Collaborate™ Connections Summit is in full-swing, and as we continue to dot a myriad of i’s and cross countless t’s, our entire team cannot wait to see so many of you in New Orleans in mid-July.

The reasons to attend are numerous.  We’ll unveil the latest enhancements to our Blackboard Collaborate™ platform.  Our fearless leader Maurice Heiblum will share the considerable progress our division has made now that we’ve had a full year under our belt as a combined company.  You’ll have full access to all of BbWorld 2012—yes, even its famous parties and keynotes.  You can roll-up your sleeves and get your hands dirty with the current version of Blackboard Collaborate.  And perhaps most importantly, you can attend nearly 50 sessions by Blackboard Collaborate customers from around the globe.

And it’s always the customer-led sessions that are the showstoppers.

This year’s Connections Summit agenda covers a variety of topics ranging from best practices and effective instructional design, to decreasing costs and adoption and implementation.  And perhaps most importantly, several tracks will specifically focus on upgrading from Elluminate or Wimba to Blackboard Collaborate.

For many of our customers, 2012 is the year in which they’ll upgrade from one of our legacy products to our shiny new toy, and we want them to have the smoothest transition possible.  Therefore, in New Orleans, customers can attend an upgrade panel presentation featuring customers at Northern Illinois University, the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, and the Florida Hospital College of Health Sciences, all of whom have already been enjoying the new platform for months.  There will even be a presentation by the team at the University of Missouri system about its upgrade experience as well.

Further, we’ll again have a walk-in feedback room in which our Product Management and Support teams can answer all your upgrade and technical questions, and I’ll likely hold a meeting for anyone who wants to learn more about our cohort upgrade programs.

As we say, collaboration is music to our ears, so we feel that New Orleans is the best place for you to learn from the Collaborate team and your peers about the future of the Blackboard Collaborate™ platform.  Block off your calendars now, and I’ll see you in The Big Easy in July!