Blackboard Blogs

More School Districts Using Social Media for Broader Outreach

Facebook and Twitter attract more users every day. According to the site, Facebook has more than 500 million users, while Quantcast reports that the number of Twitter users reached 190 million by the end of 2010. This growing audience is one reason social media is quickly becoming a mainstream platform for forward-looking educators that want to establish relationships and maintain open conversations with community members.

Additionally, many schools are embracing social media sites as a way to reach out to students and parents within familiar forums in an effort to combat cyber bullying. Schools using social networks effectively and responsibly can serve to demonstrate acceptable ways for students to use such tools to communicate with other students. Being able to speak knowledgeably about social media and acknowledge real instances of bad behavior in education can help in teaching the hidden dangers of irresponsible online conduct.

Blackboard Tops Annual Zeitgeist List

What is the Google zeitgeist?

zeit·geist | Pronunciation: 'tsIt-"gIst, 'zIt | Function: noun | Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit) | Date: 1884 | Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.

"Zeitgeist" means "the spirit of the times", and Google reveals this spirit through the aggregation of millions of search queries they receive every day. Google has several tools that give insight into global, regional, past and present search trends. These tools are available for users to play with, explore, and learn from and use them for everything from business research to trivia answers. (http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist/index.html)

At the end of 2010, iPad, Justin Bieber and Katy Perry topped the list of Google’s top terms of the year (Justin Bieber was also among the most tweeted terms of the year, too). In the spirit of the times, we’ve looked at Google’s regional list to see if it has any relevance to Blackboard, and it does. With lots of faculty, students and parents logging on frequently, some multiple times a day, “Blackboard” or a similar search was a “Top 10 Google Search Term” in 10 of the top 31 major city searches and one of the most popular sites across the United States.

   Atlanta, GA   (#3)

   Austin, TX   (#3)

   Chicago, IL   (#2)

   Miami, FL   (#1)

   Philadelphia, PA   (#1 & #4)

   Pittsburg, PA   (#2)

   Raleigh, NC   (#10)

   St. Louis, MO   (#3)

   Tampla, FL   (#4)

   Washington, DC   (#4)

To see the full list of city-by-city search terms, check it out here: Zeitgeist 2010: How the world searched.  Also worth a look is the Fastest Rising Queries graph – it’s pretty cool to see what was on the minds of people across the United States in 2010. 

 

An Offer From Blackboard Collaborate

The acquisition of DimDim this week has set off lots of talk about the importance of Web conferencing and collaboration tools. Salesforce.com will use DimDim’s technology to enhance their Chatter platform. However, DimDim’s current customers will see their access to the service end starting on March 15, 2011. 

For educational institutions who had built their courses and business workflows around realtime collaboration using DimDim, this might cause some disruption and Blackboard would like to help. We stand ready to help institutions make a switch to the Blackboard Collaborate platform made up of Elluminate and Wimba collaboration solutions. For those who've been using Elluminate and Wimba for a while, you know that we are dedicated to meeting the needs of educators by providing stable solutions that are supported by a clear roadmap and a dedicated team for development.  

Cool Tools: Jambok

We, at Blackboard, pride ourselves on developing solutions that go beyond formal training to embrace “teachable moments” and informal learning. Every so often we discover a really cool tool that complements our solutions, and Jambok is one of them.

Simply put, Jambok lets people in your organization create and share knowledge by recording webcam video using or capturing their desktop, then posting it, along with documents, podcasts, or other media.  Employees anywhere within the organization can find and access it when looking for that information.

The Next Big Thing in Digital Education

Blackboard and McGraw-Hill partnered to deliver an unprecedented, comprehensive course solution – content and tools directly inside Blackboard LearnTM, Release 9.1. The effort makes McGraw-Hill Connect™, the publishing industry’s leading homework management system, and McGraw-Hill Create™, a tool to create custom textbooks and eBooks, accessible from within your Blackboard system.

Waiting for Superman

A few weeks ago, I went with several of my Blackboard colleagues to see Davis Guggenheim’s new documentary, Waiting for Superman.  I think that it is important that I preface this post with an admission: I am an outsider.  Unlike many of my peers at Blackboard, I am new to education – I have never taught a class in my life nor have I ever attended a PTO or school board meeting.  I am, however, a product of the public school system, so I assumed that what I would see on the screen wouldn’t be a huge surprise.  I think that is why I was both shocked and touched by what I saw: children who really wanted to learn, with parents who genuinely took an interest in their futures, desperately fighting to succeed in the public education system. 

Closing the Gap between High School and College

Only 18% of today’s ninth-graders will eventually graduate with a postsecondary degree.  To help mitigate this impending crisis, Blackboard clients and contacts across the globe are implementing innovative policies and practices to close the gap between high school and college.  And in true educator fashion, they allowed us to share their greatest challenges and opportunities with you in Closing the Gap between High School and College – the newest publication in Blackboard’s growing body of practice-driven research.

For the report, we interviewed 24 education experts and leaders to pinpoint the three key challenges to closing the achievement gap: disparity between high school exit requirements and college entry expectations; lack of understanding and support for the modern student; and disconnect between skills being taught in high school and skills necessary for success in college and career.