The first Blackboard (Bb) conference event I’ve attended. It was held in Manchester over 3 days (Monday 12th may to Wednesday 14th May) and also coincided with the arrival of over 100.000 Glasgow Rangers fans! I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Anyway, back to work…. The info for the event from Bb.
Programme and Events.

The vast majority of people attending this event were mainly, learning technologists, “staff trainers”, developers, academics and managers from the UK education community.

Day 1

Colin Stirling gave an introductory talk about the history of Manchester and how this relates to current iinovations in teaching and learning. He is the Vice President (Teaching & Learning) @ Manchester Uni. It was an entertaining and informative presentation….comparing the plight of Luddites and the way in which we need to change how we teach students. he also thoughtfully warned us to get out of town as quick as possible on Wednesday…..on reflection sound advice.

Day 2

As my area of interest is more pedagogical then technical over the next couple of days I attended mainly presentations of this type. I won’t mention each in detail but will arttempt to pick out the best bits.

• I attended Chris Turnocks session. He is a Teaching Fellow @ Northumbria Uni (NU). He has been involved in conducting a study to see what the students use the VLE for. At NU 70-80% adoption of Bb, main issues are inconsistency between and within modules. As with most vles it is mainly used as a transmitive tool.
• At noon Michael Chasen, one of the original founder of Bb, explained the development roadmap for Bb. He demonstrated a beta version of Bb 9. it looks very much like iGoogle/BBC. More interactive features, ALAX, the UI has completely altered….not sure about the back-end at the moment? I wish we could move to 9 straight away, versions prior to this look really old and out-dated. Bb on your mobile or iPhone is also in development.
• John Morrison from Bb talked about 4 areas: Scholar, Safe Assign, Bb Sync and Edugarage. Scholar looks interesting and one we might persue, similar idea to del.icio.us or Furl - Sharing of bookmarks/urls created by tutor or by student, also allows tag clouds to be created and view other peoples urls outside of your immediate network.

Day 3

After the dinner on the previous night I managed to make it to the 8.30 am start….although it didn’t start until about 8.45. For the first keynote speech of the day Andreas Schleicher from the OECD. He is the head of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Lots of stats to absorb at that time of the morning. The main issues I picked out were that Finland, Korea and many of the Arab states are altering the way they teach young people in school and they will reap the rewards in the coming decades in terms of a skilled workforce.

• Attended a session delivered by Helen Lyons and Louise Thorpe from Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) explaining the qualitative study they have undertaken with staff and students @ SHU. Thet asked students to keep a reflective diary for 2 weeks detailing what they used Bb for and eLearning in general.