Laura Blankenship September 4th, 2008
While we have our own wiki with plenty of step-by-step instructions, we may not be covering everything you want to know. Here is a list of 100 Blackboard tips, some for students, but most for instructors. They’ve been collected from colleges around the country and cover everything from how to set things up in Blackboard to how to use the wiki tool effectively.
Laura Blankenship February 25th, 2008
Over the weekend (and snow day), I saw the educational blog world aflutter with the news about Blackboard’s win over rival D2L. Inside Higher Ed covers the story quite well. (Also at The Chronicle.) Blackboard’s patent has long been disputed and many in the educational technology community have been critical over Blackboard’s recent business practices. In fact, according to Michael Feldstein, who has been following the case since it began, Blackboard is losing customers and some blame these practices in part. Blackboard’s many patents are still being reviewed after several entities, including the Software Freedom Foundation asked the patent office for the review (which I discussed here). Educause, the leading organization for higher education technology, also criticized Blackboard’s patents. I think it will be a while before we fully know what the fallout (if any) is. D2L is likely to appeal and we’ll be waiting for the patent review as well.
Laura Blankenship October 6th, 2007
bFree is an application that allows you to browse your Blackboard archives offline so you can see what’s in there before you upload it into Bb. I just discovered this app a couple of months ago and now they have a new version out. It’s free and it’s pretty easy to use. Check it out.