Tag Archives: Bb

Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference 2010, Swansea, Wales

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Swansea Marina

Swansea Marina as viewed from the Maritime Museum

The notes listed below are some of my own thoughts regarding the conference. Comments from visitors welcomed as always:
http://www.bbworld.com/2010/TeachingAndLearning/content.asp?id=1621

Detailed Programme: http://bb.blackboard.com/Swansea2010Schedule/

Day 1

Conference Keynote – Ray Henderson

  • At Bb sales conference in January the overwhelming message that they received was regarding the Durham Conference and the issues clients had who had migrated to 9.0 in the summer. This cannot happen again…
  • Tripled the resource involved with handling/resolving case issues (don’t know the absolute numbers)
  • An approach of consulting, receiving feedback and suggestions from clients was very much stressed by Ray. As an indicator of this Continue reading →

Durham Bb Users’ Conference – Thoughts

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Durham Cathedral as viewed from Durham Castle 05.01.10

Durham Cathedral as viewed from Durham Castle 05.01.10

Hello all.

What a couple of snowy days this turned out to be! Although weather apart, I thought this was very well attended, even up to the very last session on the second day.

I find that of all the conferences, seminars or symposiums I have attended in the last few years this is without doubt the most useful and relevant to me in terms of my job role and day to day activities. The presenters are of a high standard and knowledgeable about what they do – which helps greatly as most of them are practitioners.

The main pointers I have gleened are:

  • Single sign on for multiple systems (external especially) is still a big issue
  • Institutional VLE regarded as the core tool and other tools/services added as required
  • If Blackboard make a mess of the release of 9.1 they are in big trouble with HEIs in the UK
  • Start promoting Bb 9 to staff asap
  • Students are not necessarily web 2.0 or more specifically web savvy/literate
  • Students are still students and we some times miss this issue in the web hyperbole

Many thanks to Malcolm Murray, the LT staff and Durham University for hosting a well run and professional event.

Blackboard World Europe Conference 2009 – Barcelona

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I recently returned from the BbWorldEurope09 Conference . The full programme and details can be viewed here:
http://www.bbworld.com/2009/Europe/content.asp?id=1453 

From my own personal point of view, here are  the highlights.

  • The demonstration of the Open Source e-Learning tool – XERTE - by Gill Fourt and Pat Lockley from The University of Nottingham. Here  is an online tour of the tool. A simple e-Learning tool to use, very enthusiastically delivered by Pat
  • The explanation and demonstration of Yorkshare by Wayne Britcliffe and Richard Walker. The way in which they have developed this area and the high standard of presentation is a leading example to many HE VLEs
  • Trevor Batchelor (Uni of Birmingham), Adrian L. Powell (Uni of Sheffield), Susannah J. Quinsee (City Uni London) and Vicki Simpson (Uni of Surrey) spoke about the move from Bb Vista to Bb 8 or 9 and how each of their institutions are approaching this move. Most of the HEIs have taken the opportunity to review what the institutions currently provides and evaluate their staff needs for the immediate future.
  • John Couperthwaite and Rob Jones (University of Birmingham) explained and demonstrated thier use of the lecture capture software, Echo360. A clear and engaging explanation of thier work to date, similar to that we have done at Newcastle University. Good to see John login live to the system, always a big plus in my book. They have used the system to capture lectures on an ad hoc basis and again as was our experience students find the resource extremely useful and lecture attendance has hardly decreased.

A great opportunity to visit the city of Barcelona and meet some of the Catalan people. A shame I didn’t get the chance to see more of it.

Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference

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chalk_bbI attended the ninth annual Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference on January 8th and 9th. This was my second attendance at the conference, however, this time I presented at one of the sessions along with my colleague.

We presented on a project I am involved with at work which is about lecture and event capture implementation and use (ReCap). From the feedback we’ve received it was a successful presentation, with several questions fielded afterwards. I think in the near future we will be welcoming several visits from other HEIs and FEs about our service.

Full details about the conference can be found here.

Here is the PowerPoint presentation of our talk.

Durham Bb Conf 2009 Lecture and Event Capture
View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: university newcastle)

 The facilities offered by Durham University for the event were first class. The Calman Learning Centre was a great venue, well equiped, spacious and a great vista of Durham City with the Cathedral being the focal point. I look forward to the next one in January 2010.

Bb World Europe ’08

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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.

Blackboard logo

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.