Bb World is a large conference that takes place every year and covers the latest and greatest tools and building blocks that can be used in conjunction with Blackboard, the learning management system we currently use at Saint Mary's College.
The keynote speaker of the Bb World Conference was Steve Wozniak, Apple guru and technology prankster. Mr. Wozniak related stories about his past excursions into the public education arena as a teacher and relived some of the lessons he learned while working for the Los Gatos Unified School District here in the Bay Area. "The most important thing in education is to provide high levels of motivation and to inspire intrinsic rather than external motivation." Wozniak said in his speech. He then went on to encourage voters to fund education and think about the consequences of not providing children with the education they need to succeed in life.
In addition, Mr. Wozniak spoke about his experiences with human computer interaction and commented that the intention of learning management systems such as Blackboard should never be to replace face to face teaching, rather it should augment it by enabling users to engage in alternative modes of learning. The latest release of Blackboard, Blackboard 8 will be available at Saint Mary's College this coming January. Project NG ("Next Generation") will also being to be available with the upgrade to Blackboard 8 and will include many features of web 2.0 such as greater levels of social networking and collaboration from within Blackboard. Blackboard will also be available inside the new iPhone and inside of Facebook. If you would like to see a showcase of these new features please check out the links below.
Blackboard 8 http://www.blackboard.com/release8/
Blackboard NG http://www.blackboard.com/projectng/
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