Blackboard Blogs

Live from BbWorld ’09: Recap of Day 1

2009-07-15T13:20:35-04:00

Wow, what an incredible start to BbWorld ’09! The Gaylord/National Harbor Conference Center is a-buzz with clients and Blackboarders alike who are excited about the announcements made yesterday, the networking, sessions, sharing and learning that is going on this year. For those of you who couldn’t make the trip to DC, here’s a snapshot of what happened on Day 1:

The conference opened up with keynote speaker Seth Godin, “Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age,” and author of Tribes, who talked about change and how it’s up to us to make it happen. For details on his speech, check out some blogs and notes from people in the room: Laura Gekeler, Eric Kunnen, Scott Kodai, Paty Savage and Peg Collins over on Connections.

Michael Chasen and Ray Henderson delivered the afternoon keynote. A handful of announcements were made, including the acquisition of, Terriblyclever, a student-run company that created the popular iPhone application, MobilEdu. For a summary of the corporate keynote address, visit Ray H Blog (Ray Henderson’s blog).

Here are a few more posts from people on the ground:

Michel Marcheterre, University of Ottawa

Britt Watwood from VCU's Center for Teaching Excellence

Continue to check back for more updates. And, don’t forget to follow the Twitter hashtag #BbWorld09 for up to the minute tweets and Flickr for photos from the Gaylord.

Gaming and Narration: Fact or Fiction?

2009-07-09T13:29:40-04:00

From Chris Bigenho, Director of Educational Technology, Greenhill School and Rhonda Blackburn, PhD, Associate Provost, Educational Enhancement, The University of Texas at Dallas

It is hard to believe that BbWorld ‘09 is next week. Rhonda and I are both excited about what this year will have to offer. We have been attending these conferences for several years now and each year brings new ideas and possibilities. While I am always interested in learning about the direction of the Blackboard platforms, I personally enjoy making connections with other educators who are looking at creative and powerful ways of changing the face of learning and making teaching and learning more relevant.

This year, we have put together a new pre-conference session that is guaranteed to rock your pedagogical, instructional design world- Gaming and Narration: Fact or Fiction? We argue that a good online or blended course should be like a good book- you don’t want to put it down. This session will introduce you to two different ways of designing narrative driven courses for virtually any subject matter. You will explore a course that Rhonda designed while utilizing narrative devices and role play to frame the curricular material. In this example, all material and learning activities are linked through story and the roles that each student assumes.

You will also be introduced to the use of games for framing all learning activities- specifically, Alternate Reality Games or ARG’s. These are not video games but rather games that blend fantasy and reality while placing the student in roles that require them to solve ill-defined problems within the subject of study. This Alternate Reality is then developed using tools such as Blackboard Learn systems, web 2.0 tools and simple design tools to create artifacts supporting this new reality. I have developed a game that participants will play that teaches about learning through ARG’s as they experience their own learning through an ARG.

Finally, all participants will join in a collaborative effort to design a narrative driven instructional unit using principles from each of the models presented at the beginning of the session. We hope that you will consider joining us on this adventure and help write the future of learning. And now…

Let The Games Begin!

Power to the Plugins

2009-07-07T11:39:55-04:00

A lot is changing in the technology industry around us. Every new development that we hear of centers around the ability to develop plugins and extensions to enhance the user experience. From our social presence on the Facebook® platform to our iGoogle™ homepages to our web browsers to our mobile phones, those technologies we use on a daily basis are customizable in ways that increase productivity, usability, and even utility.

For many institutions the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), save perhaps webmail, is arguably the most-used campus system. Over the past decade, we’ve seen the VLE emerge as a toolkit of technologies that instructors can use to enhance the virtual education experience.

Education, too, is filled with an ever-increasing variety of systems and technologies that can be used to teach, learn, collaborate, and connect. It is important that schools and individual instructors have the flexibility to ensure that teaching and learning can be more impactful, more meaningful, and more supportive of new tools, technologies, and approaches.

This is exactly the reason why Blackboard is committed to openness.

If your institution wants to learn more about how to use your existing Blackboard Learn platform to support your faculty’s unique needs, let us speak geek with your developers at DevCon ’09. The DevCon program will talk about the Blackboard Building Blocks plugin and extension framework and address a wide variety of topics, all of which will help you match Blackboard Learn capabilities to your institution. For example:

“If only we had a way to…”

Learn to develop Blackboard Building Blocks as a beginner or advanced developer so you can just build or integrate the tools your faculty want and need.

“I really want to know more about open source educational tools…

Learn how to find open source tools that plug into the Blackboard Learn platform and find your place in a community of open source educational tool developers.

“How can I get my lesson plan content into Blackboard?”

Softchalk will explain how their Lesson Builder integrates with the Blackboard Learn platform via a Blackboard Building Block to allow faculty to publish content straight to their Blackboard Learn system.

“What if I want to run Blackboard Learn software and Sakai to meet my e-Learning needs?”

Learn to use the Learning Environment Connector to integrate the Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment with Blackboard Learn Release 9.

Check out the full program and see how many of the sessions remind you of requests your team has received from your faculty. Then join us at DevCon to share information and best practices. These two days of technical sessions can set your institution down a path for continued success and innovation.