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.