Blackboard Version 9.1

I was able to interview Mr. Lee, our Instructional Technology Facilitator, last week about Blackboard, and he answered several questions to help me fill in the spreadsheet that our group has created comparing and contrasting different course management systems and other software. Mr. Lee pointed me to the A lab classroom where Ms. Boswell oversees students taking courses through the North Carolina Virtual Public School. The NCVPS uses Blackboard for their course management system, and I was able to look at class pages in this new version of Blackboard (version 9.1) to see what improvements have been made. Our school system still has a blackboard account, but we are still running version 6.something, and the functionality is much lower on the older version. If we understand things correctly, we should be able to upgrade to version 9.1 without any additional costs. While I can say that I am not thrilled that the county is looking to Blackboard instead of Moodle for the near future, I am pleased at the improvements that Blackboard has made over the years. Learning this new system may take a while, but it appears that Blackboard has many useful tutorials online, and I will continue my talks with Mr. Lee and Ms. Boswell. There are capablilities for wikis, blogs, discussion boards, etc., and I will be reporting back on specifics soon.

A New Direction

Well, right after I posted my last blog, I got an e-mail from our School Instructional Technology Facilitator that the Technology Department had decided NOT to go with Moodle after all, but to focus on Blackboard, at least for the next couple of years. So in one way, I feel like I've wasted a lot of time trying to figure out Moodle, but since I was having such trouble doing that, dropping it seems like a relief at least for now. I am now in the process of researching the ins and outs of Blackboard, and I will soon be sitting down with our high school instructional tehnology facilitator to glean some more information. Our group is trying to decide how all the different technologies that the county is using will best integrate together, and we have created an in-depth spreadsheet detailing the features of major software packages that we either are already using or are strongly considering using in our county. This sets my internship in a new direction, but I think I will be able to run with this topic now. A new week awaits. We'll see what changes it brings.