Blackboard coming to iPhone

I haven't seen anything in the Bb site or blog, but apparently this was announced at the recent ConnectEd conference. This "unofficial apple weblog" provides a video demo and tells us about the

"upcoming Blackboard application for iPhone and iPod touch. The application will allow you to connect to your schools Blackboard server and get important information from your account....According to the representative in the video, the application will be free when it launches."

Facebook in Education

It's one of the more popular social networking sites among students, so here are a few articles about using it in education settings.

Teachers use Facebook to reach students: A brief article posted on TheRecord.com, a site operated by The Canadian Press, in which a high school teacher in Halifax explains how he uses Facebook in his teaching.

Blackboard Sync: "Blackboard Sync is an application that delivers Blackboard course information and updates through the Facebook interface to keep students in touch and engaged with their academic studies. CLASSMATES NETWORK: Blackboard Sync enables students to connect with their classmates through Facebook, thus creating social learning opportunities. SAFE SYNC: Blackboard Sync offers several options for participation to give the institutions as much control as they need."

Will Colleges Friend Facebook? This article talks about Schools, a Facebook application for education, developed by Inigral. "Schools upends the traditional application framework. Rather than make it available to anyone with a Facebook account, the service is based on partnerships with individual colleges that pay to allow their students access. The colleges then provide Inigral with constantly updated data feeds that allow the application to stay current with courses, clubs and other activities that students can join.... Abilene Christian University, which is already in a private beta testing phase and is set to deploy the application over the fall semester, has already gained publicity by handing out free iPhones to its incoming freshman class and being one of the earlier adopters of Google’s Apps for Education program. Kevin Christian, the university’s director of strategic partnerships, says that the university is finding it can have the benefits of 'living within the Facebook world' without ignoring 'prudent concern to retain Facebook as a true social networking site.”'Much as the university is planning to do with its new army of iPhones, Christian said some faculty members were planning on making use of the newly adopted technology in their classrooms."

Educational Uses of Facebook: That heading is for just one section of this excellent Wiki about Facebook at LTC (Learning Technologies Center). Ignatia Webs calls it "the superb wiki of George Siemens on Facebook and its benefits as a social network service. This wiki was one of the results of a workshop he did on facebook at the University of Manitoba. The wiki gives a nice overview of when which social network was started. After that he zooms into Facebook with a good analyses on pro's and cons if you want to use it in a corporate or other environment for educational reasons."

SmartTeaching.org

"...a leading online resource for current teachers, and aspiring education students and student teachers."

My title link is to their library of Teaching Resources & Articles. Most of those are about teacher training and teaching career resources.

But also check out their blog, chock full of tips-n-tricks, tutorials, and more. For example, here's a list of titles in the August archives (so far):

100 Awesome Classroom Videos to Learn New Teaching Techniques

100 Best YouTube Videos for Teachers

100+ Motivational Techniques to Take Learning to the Next Level

101 Ways to Cope with Teaching Stress

50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and Interactive Classroom

And for you Blackboard users:
The Ultimate Guide to BlackBoard: 100 Tips & Tutorials

Blackboard Sync for Facebook

"...delivers Blackboard course information and updates through the Facebook interface
to keep students in touch and engaged with their academic studies." See also this explanatory blog posting by Karen Gage.

Dancing with the devil: a view from Blackboard’s European conference

What's new & coming soon in the Blackboard systems? See this blog post written by Niall Sclater, a Moodle proponent who attended the Spring '08 Bb European Conference.

Blackboard Educator Central

Created for Bb's K-12 Clients. "Made for districts wanting to manage and evaluate professional development activities, expand professional learning opportunities, and build powerful communities of practice."

Webinar introduces Blackboard Release 8.0

RELEASE 8.0 for the Bb Academic Suite (for people currently using the Bb Learning System Basic or Enterprise systems). This link will directly open a video/audio introduction, originally presented in a webinar on 12/17/07. Bb Support says,

"This is a comprehensive webinar recording that goes over the new benefits for this release. The run time is only 30 minutes and we would highly recommend viewing this webinar prior to upgrading to Release 8.0."

Designing Kick Butt Quality Online Courses

[you can log in to this FREE course, hosted inside Blackboard. Username bbworld07, password bbworld07]

"How do you create courses that capture students' attention and direct them through the learning process? How do you merge clean, accessible design with sound pedagogical principles? This workshop provides tools and resources you can use to up the quality of your online courses and improve the online experience for your learners."

How to add YouTube videos to Blackboard course

Not just to your Blackboard course, but to any webpage.

YouTube - BlackboardTV Channel

"BlackboardTV (or 'BbTV') helps e-Learning innovators -- designers, instructors, students -- visualize online teaching and learning. The education and technology videos collected in the playlists on this channel enable users throughout the global Blackboard community to see, and learn from, e-Learning innovations in K-12 schools, higher education institutions and organizations."

See also YouTube BlackboardK12.