Academic Clients Embrace Blackboard Building Blocks to Customize and Extend their Blackboard Learning System Platform.Business Editors/Hi-Tech Writers ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 1, 2002 Blackboard Building Blocks enables academic institutions to innovate through integration of instructional technologies with Blackboard Learning System A widely used education system from Blackboard Inc., Washington, D.C. (www.blackboard.com). Part of the company's Blackboard Academic Suite, it includes course management, content authoring, collaborative discussions, virtual classrooms, as well as testing and grading. (TM) Today at EDUCAUSE 2002, Blackboard Inc. announced the availability of client-built Building Blocks available for download from the Blackboard Building Blocks(TM) Catalog (http://buildingblocks.blackboard.com/bin/ext_catalog.pl). Since the launch of the program in November 2001, more than 100 academic and commercial institutions have joined the Building Blocks program to develop third-party applications for the Blackboard e-Education Suite(TM) -- the largest offering of tools to extend an e-Education environment for any commercial platform in the higher education higher education Study beyond the level of secondary education. Institutions of higher education include not only colleges and universities but also professional schools in such fields as law, theology, medicine, business, music, and art. market. "With the first anniversary of the program approaching we are pleased to highlight some of the innovative tools and applications our clients have integrated with their Blackboard Learning System," said Daniel Cane, Senior Vice President of Blackboard Research and Development. "The variety of applications these institutions have integrated points to the flexibility of the Blackboard Learning System and our Building Blocks technology. And, with our clients, we discover more and more each day." The following are samples of the tools available through the Building Blocks Catalog: Baylor University Baylor University, mainly at Waco, Tex.; coeducational; chartered and opened 1845 by Baptists (see Baylor, Robert E. B.) at Independence, moved 1886 and absorbed Waco Univ. (chartered 1861). The library has a noted Robert Browning collection. , Waco, Texas For the Branch Davidian siege in Waco, Texas, see . For other uses of "Waco", see Waco (disambiguation). Waco (pronounced: /ˈweɪkoʊ/) is the county seat of McLennan County, Texas. Cameo Melichar, Sharon Hynan, Sandy Bennett Sandra ("Sandy") Kaye Bennett (born May 25, 1972 in Dargaville) is a former field hockey defender from New Zealand, who finished sixth with her national team at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. She also competed with The Black Sticks at the 1998 and the 2002 Commonwealth Games. and David Seago from Baylor University (Texas) have developed a Web-based individual tool called Online Journal. The Online Journal Building Block provides pedagogical ped·a·gog·ic also ped·a·gog·i·cal adj. 1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of pedagogy. 2. Characterized by pedantic formality: a haughty, pedagogic manner. benefits for both students and instructors, as an additional tool for personalized assessment, evaluation and discourse between student and teacher. Online Journal allows Baylor to integrate its successful Web-based journaling tool into the Blackboard learning environment. Sandy Bennett of Baylor University will be available in Blackboard's booth (#1123) at EDUCAUSE 2002 to discuss the Online Journal. Griffith University Griffith University is an Australian public university with five campuses in Queensland between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. In 2007 there were more than 33,000 enrolled students and 3,000 staff. , Brisbane, Australia Debi Salmon, Tracy Engwirda and the Griffith University team have been busy building tools to meet the needs of their instructors and students. Two of those tools - Search Content and Frequently Asked Questions - are now available to the Blackboard community. Using the Search Content tool, students and instructors can search folders and content items within a course. The Frequently Asked Questions tool allows instructors to easily create and organize a list of frequently asked questions. The searchable tool enables questions to be grouped into categories as well as easily collated for viewing or printing. Source for both of these tools is available at the Blackboard Open Source Web site (www.bb-opensource.org). Princeton University Princeton University, at Princeton, N.J.; coeducational; chartered 1746, opened 1747, rechartered 1748, called the College of New Jersey until 1896. Schools and Research Facilities , Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton, New Jersey is located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. Princeton University has been sited in the town since 1756. Dennis Hood Dennis Hood (born 1970) is an Australian politician. He is a member of the South Australian Legislative Council, and the South Australian leader of the Family First Party. and the team from Princeton University are focused on user satisfaction - especially for the 500 instructors who use Blackboard each term. One tool they are preparing for release to the Blackboard community is a Facebook tool. Using the Facebook, instructors can match names to faces by viewing their course roster online. Within the roster each student's name and email address See Internet address. are paired with a digital photo. Princeton will release the source code for this tool in the Building Blocks Catalog. Seneca College Faculties and Schools Faculty of Applied Arts & Health Sciences
Santo Nucifora at Seneca College has built a number of tools to make monitoring the Blackboard Learning System easier for System Administrators. The first Building Block in the Seneca toolkit series, Who's Online?, has been updated for Blackboard Learning System and Blackboard Community Portal System portal system: see circulatory system. (Release 6) and is now available in the Building Blocks Catalog. Using the tool, administrators can identify which users have logged into Blackboard Learning System within the previous 3 hours. This is especially helpful when trying to troubleshoot periods of slow system response time, or for monitoring system load. Source code for the Seneca Toolkit: Who's Online? Building Block, is available at http://bbug.ca. Blackboard's Building Blocks Program Launched in 2001, the Building Blocks Program is designed to enable, encourage and support institutions and Independent Software Vendors (ISV's) to build on top of the Blackboard e-Education Suite. Using the Building Blocks tools, clients and commercial vendors can integrate Blackboard with external systems, tools and content to meet institution-specific needs. The Building Blocks Program continues Blackboard's tradition of setting the standards for e-Education, and Blackboard's mission to transform the Internet into a powerful environment for the education experience. About Blackboard Inc. Blackboard Inc. was founded to transform the Internet into a powerful environment for the education experience. The company offers a complete suite of enterprise software products and services that power a total "e-Education Infrastructure" for schools, colleges, universities and other education providers. Blackboard solutions deliver the promise of the Internet for online teaching and learning, campus communities, auxiliary services and integration of Web-enabled student services and back office systems. Blackboard's Learning, Community Portal and Transaction Systems are consistently ranked by industry analysts as the market share and customer satisfaction leaders for thousands of academic institutions and a leading number of the Internet's most popular consumer education sites. The company is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices and staff across North America North America, third largest continent (1990 est. pop. 365,000,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. , Europe and Asia. Visit www.blackboard.com for more information. |
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