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"Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB) announced the launch of a native application for BlackBerry(R) mobile devices, debuting at the University of Washington this week, as part of the new Blackboard Mobile(TM) platform which is being leveraged by a growing number of campuses and K-12 schools to deliver a rich set of campus life services and content to mobile devices. The BlackBerry application enables many more users to enjoy an enhanced experience while navigating course catalogs and campus maps, e-mailing professors and classmates and receiving real time updates on course schedules, campus events, news and sports with Mobile Central (formerly MobilEdu(TM)), Blackboard Mobile's flagship suite of applications. Originally optimized for users of Apple(R) iPhone(R) and iPod Touch(R) devices, the best Mobile Central experience is now available to users of BlackBerry devices. The suite is also generally accessible to users of any smart phone or mobile Web enabled device. "This new platform allows us to easily reach our students, faculty and staff around the clock and deliver information whenever and wherever they want it, which increasingly is on mobile devices like the BlackBerry and iPhone," said David Morton, Director of Mobile Communication Strategies at the University of Washington (UW). "As a modern, global university, UW committed to embracing mobile communications and is pleased to be the launch institution for the BlackBerry initiative." "

CRITIQUE OF E-LEARNING IN BLACKBOARD "Just as utopic visions of the Internet predicted an egalitarian online world where information flowed freely and power became irrelevant, so did many proponents of online education, who viewed online classrooms as a way to free students and instructors from traditional power relationships . . ." In "A Critical Examination of Blackboard's EˆLearning Environment" (FIRST MONDAY, vol. 14, no. 6, June 1, 2009), Stephanie J. Coopman, professor at San Jose State University, identifies the ways that the Blackboard 8.0 and Blackboard CE6 platforms "both constrain and facilitate instructorˆstudent and studentˆstudent interaction." She argues that while the systems have improved the instructor's ability to track and measure student activity, this "creates a dangerously decontextualized, essentialized image of a class in which levels of 'participation' stand in for evidence of learning having taken place. Students are treated not as learners, as partners in an educational enterprise, but as users."

Users at Northwestern University will be able to log into both Blackboard Learn and Google Apps with a single signon thanks to the efforts of the institution's IT development team. The code created by the team as a Blackboard Building Block and named Bboogle has also been released as open source to let other institutions use or build on the technology at no cost.

The first 12 minutes of the webcast is worth watching. He opened up with a story of the investigation of cholera outbreak during Victorian era in London, and brought that into how it related to student success. He then summarized what the key methods of measurement were, and some lessons Learned: An "interdisciplinary" led to unconventional, yet innovative methods of investigation. The researchers relied on multiple forms of measurement to come to their conclusion. The visualization of their data was important to proving their case to others.

feldstein summarizes the findings from North Carolina.

"Two professors from the University of Westminster in London explained research finding that use of educational technology such as blogs and online questionnaires, combined with personal tutors, could enhance the feedback loop while also making face-to-face communication more efficient."

In this 4-minute video, Jim Groom articulates the "LMS is out-of-date" argument, and suggests that the future of online education depends on re-imagining the "form". He points to issues like openness of code and owndership of data.