Blackboard Blogs

Blackboard is Buzzing at EDUCAUSE

2009-11-04T11:17:49-05:00

EDUCAUSE officially kicked-off its national conference yesterday in Denver, and we’ve seen some great enthusiasm from clients and the community. The booth (#423) was packed with attendees who wanted to hear more about the newest platform, Blackboard Mobile. Attendees were very excited about the addition of a BlackBerry app for Mobile Central. If you’re around the conference, stop by for a Mobile demo or visit the Blackboard Theater for one of our ongoing theater sessions.

Along with in-booth activities, Blackboard is sponsoring a panel session on Thursday:

Your Campus on a Smartphone, and the Future of Mobile Education– The session name says it all. Hear how institutions like Stanford, MIT and the University of Washington are already harnessing mobile technology and learn ways to bring mobile to your campus.

For all Blackboard clients attending EDUCAUSE, if you haven’t already picked up your bracelet for the Blackboard Client Appreciation Party, stop by our booth (#423) on the exhibit floor for on-site registration.

We hope you’re enjoying the conference so far and look forward to seeing you during the show. Stay up to date on conference goings on Twitter; follow @Blackboard, #educause09, #blackboard.

Students Get a Second Chance at Graduation: Voices from K-12

2009-11-02T15:09:30-05:00

In late September, I blogged about how online credit recovery programs help to increase graduation rates. As I mentioned, online credit recovery addresses different learning styles and paces, and helps students when they need it the most (see Credit Recovery eduviews publication).

At BbWorld ’09, we caught up with some education leaders from North Kansas City Public Schools, Florida Virtual High School, Albuquerque Public Schools, and Calcasieu Parish Public Schools who deliver online credit recovery options and two students who were able to graduate through the help of online courses.

Leaders talk about providing students with flexibility and schools with efficiency.

Students from Ivy Tech Community College and Pike High School talk about how online courses helped them succeed.

Announcing Blackboard Mobile

2009-11-02T13:37:40-05:00

Below is a letter from Michael Chasen to the client community about the recently announced Blackboard Mobile:

Dear client community,

I'm writing to provide an update on our progress in the mobile realm and to highlight the latest addition to our family of platform solutions, Blackboard Mobile^TM.

As some of you may remember, back in July we added MobilEdu, a leading suite of campus life applications for mobile devices, to the family of Blackboard solutions. We were also fortunate to bring onboard the team of mobile development experts who built MobilEdu. Together we've been weaving this new solution into our organization and working to flesh out a vision for bringing more parts of the education experience together on the mobile devices we all increasingly rely on.

The result of that work is our newest platform, Blackboard Mobile which will help institutions bring more information students want to the mobile devices they want to use most, starting with the first module in the platform, Mobile Central (formerly MobilEdu). Available now and already in use at nearly 60 institutions in K-12 and Higher Education, Mobile Central allows your institution to put many of its campus resources directly in the hands of your students including course catalogs, maps, a student directory, and campus news.

As we build out the platform vision and future modules, it won't just be us. Like all our platforms, Blackboard Mobile will feature open APIs. So in addition to what we're developing, an emerging community of mobile application developers will be extending the platform in all sorts of interesting ways.

If you're interested in learning more and having a member of our team contact you, access http://www.blackboard.com/Mobile/Contact-Us.aspx or visit our website. In the meantime, we'll keep you posted as we move forward in this fast-evolving area.

And for any clients in North America who are attending the EDUCAUSE conference in Denver next week, we're hosting what should be a really interesting expert panel discussion on mobile strategies in education. Panelists include leaders in mobile from Stanford, MIT and the University of Washington. We hope to see you there.

Sincerely,

Michael Chasen

CEO