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"Blackboard is buying out two major players in the open source services space: Moodlerooms and NetSpot. Blackboard has also brought onboard Sakai Project founding architect Charles Severance. With these additions, the company is also launching its own open source division: Blackboard Education Open Source Services. Moving into Open Source Services Teams from both Moodlerooms and NetSpot will make up Blackboard's new open source group. Both of those companies provide commercial services for institutions that use Moodle, including support, consulting, installation, and hosting services."

"In this interview Blackboard Learn President Ray Henderson and Moodlerooms Chairman and CEO Lou Pugliese explain why Blackboard is getting into the open source business, what's different about delivering services to those customers versus Blackboard's traditional customers, and what might be next on the open source agenda for the No. 1 learning management system company in the world."

"Four major textbook providers-Cengage, Macmillan, Pearson, and John Wiley & Sons-today announced that they will build tighter links between their advanced e-textbook platforms and Blackboard's popular course-management system. Blackboard announced a similar deal with McGraw-Hill last year. So the company now has partnerships with the five dominant textbook publishers. For students, a major benefit will be the ability to get to the publishers' e-textbooks and online assignments through the campus network without having to create new logins and passwords. For professors, the new links will make it easier to push students' grades on online quizzes from the publishers' e-textbook systems to the gradebook they use on the Blackboard system."

This is a real plus for BB.

"The Utah Education Network is a case in point. It left Blackboard, the market leader, for Instructure, a year old Utah-based developer with an open source product called Canvas. Consider the way messages are sent and received on Instructure's Canvas: The receiver has a choice between traditional university E-mail, gmail, Facebook and text messaging; Blackboard's system uses traditional E-mail and was designed before Facebook was created. For a student body that uses social media the way earlier generations used pencil and paper, the differences between the two competitors are profound."

"Too often assessment is an additional chore to be completed for compliance and reporting reasons. Waypoint Outcomes builds software that streamlines the interactions between learners and teachers. The results can mean a dramatically improved dialog about outcomes and rich data on student learning. Tightly integrated with Blackboard, Moodle, and Blackboard Vista or used as a stand-alone tool, Waypoint® helps educators improve the quality of feedback to students on authentic tasks and build a culture of continuous improvement."

"The applications tested by the university encompassed: * Blackboard Mobile Learn, on which all clients simultaneously accessed course curriculum and viewed on-demand streaming video; * Video-based curriculum, video delivered by Distribution Access, a Canadian educational video provider; * Apple Facetime for video conferencing; * Apple AirPlay for wireless streaming of multimedia content to an Apple TV connected to a classroom projector; * Live, local video content streamed through Haivision Network Video gear; * ResponseWare real-time polling from Turning Technologies. The university used VeriWave WaveInsite to set up and run the test and to measure performance. Each application was delivered simultaneously to all 100 devices. According to a statement issued by Aruba, the applications performed "with the highest quality and without any noticeable jitter, delay, or frame loss.""

"Teaching This group is the most directly connected to the act of teaching. 1. Grade Book - iPad: Gradekeeper, Android: Grade Book for Professors 2. Annotation - mark up student-submitted PDF files with highlights, text and drawings - iPad: GoodReader or iAnnotate PDF ($$), Android: RepliGo Reader 3. Attendance - some apps even make a seating chart with photos - iPad: Attendance, or Smart Seat, Android: Attendance 4. Course Management System - if your campus has turned on this functionality you can access course content and more - Blackboard Mobile | Learn (both platforms) 5. Polling - use tablets and smartphones like clickers in the classroom - iPad: eClicker ($$), Android: Student Clicker"