BbWorld09 final keynote

Live blogged during the session - so no grammar or spell check! Hope this gives you a sense of what happened.

Presented by Lester Holt - award-winning journalist covering wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, olympics and election. Weekend edition anchor of NBC News. Think he might be well-known in the US!

Holt admits he was not a very disciplined student - and didn't always do what he was supposed to. He WAS interested in technology, though - he felt he was born 30 years too early. Suggested that the BbWorld audience could have helped him get better grades.

Discussing the power of cell phones - the significance of mobile tech and changing the world of journalism and education. Creating new opportunities for boht industries - the borders are shrinking to form a global community. What happens in other countries effects us where we are.

Roles of journalists and teachers are similar - inspiring, educating, communicating. WE consume news differently now and "news" is a relative term. Journos are using new tech to deliver reactions and news instantly - mobile devices used widespread e.g. in Iran mobile phones, Twitter, cameras prevailed despite the government's attempt to crack-down on its use.

Hurricane Katrina effected students in a terrible way; NBC recorded this as a priority issue. The 2008 elections engaged and enrgised young people. Internet coverage had a fundamental impact on the election. PIcture and images matter.

Goals are the same of teachers and journos - engaging people in people, places, events. Young people are tuning out the old ways of accesssing news and the journos need to stay ahead: blogging and Twittering big deal for NBC. Young people used to seeing raw material not the polished content shown on TV, 24/7. 1 person can now do the job of what 4 people used to do using today's technology - and then sharing it at the click of a button.

A video of the changes in time of TV news broadcasting was shown.

The advent of the digital age has sped up the change in news delivery - e.g. breaking news on TV or SMS alerts, etc. Info shared with more people more immediately. Deadlines for journos are now greatly compressed. People with web publishing tools are competing with news channels. Journos no longer control the flow of information. Leveraging technology to improve the way broadcasting is delivered and managing - similar to teaching.

Stories are more than headlines - digital tech has enabled the storing and preservation of archives, which provides learning opportunities for students and citizens. History will be taught differently with the use and advancement of technology.

Change is certain and the way news is delivered mirrors the exoperience of educators. Advancements are leading to greater personalisation of digital content and collaborative partnerships.NBC is offering access to it sarvhices to Bb users (IN THE US?????) . These partnerships, e.g. Bb and NBC will improve the learning experiences for (American??!!) students; the service is called NBC News Archives on demand.

The answer to the BLE's prayers

This session is by far the best one I've been to - not because it was showcasing exemplary practice with Bb or stunning the audience with bells and whistles, but because it offered some real - and very relevant solutions to current difficulties the BLE tech team are facing with running Snapshot locally and with a controller. I hope I can convey everything here - but I have spoken to the presenter and she will a) send her explanatory slides and b) be happy to talk more.

Basically the College (Prince George's Community College) has paid for some bespoke building blocks and installed some FREE building blocks to fix the issue of wanting to run updates on the fly without using Snapshot (they are also hosted and use a controller) without mucking up DSKs and having changes overwritten with the next Snapshot run. Other solutions found were to assist with support issues.

Notes:

The challenge – managing growing Bb demands with no new resources; the strategy was to automate as much as possible.

Snapshot Problems:

1) Getting multiple requests to merge courses. Staff are spending time managing the process in creating files and updating snapshot to rename enrolments to move students.

Solution – merge course enrolment building block - custom built for institution. Staff able to do this themselves – only merging with same DSK and only their own courses. No Snapshot required!

2) Managing DSKs on Linux box with limited knowledge of linux commands; GUI interface preferred.

Solution – building block SmartDSM (FREE!). DSKs can be managed through the GUI; disabling, purging, counting, creating and modifying. The presenter has kept the war files as the building block is no longer available on the web, and will send them to anyone wanting them.

3) Managing Snapshot exceptions – e.g. when info from student records not correct, exception files need to be run manually from commandline – high potential for errors if wrong command run.

Solutions:

a) Manager User in Course building block (FREE) – modifying student enrolment on the fly from GUI. Also poss to change DSK.

b) data manager tool building block - More control over snapshot exceptions. Allows you to manipulate all user course and membership values

User Support issues:

Routine things that are done over and over again – collection of self-service tools for users and admins to be bale to manage things more easily

1) managing user enrol requests

Solution: Enrol non-student user building block

2) managing failed login-requests – providing students info to let them work out why they cant get in – not reading notices.

Solution – user look-up building block – on login page, checks LDAP account, Bb account and tells the user what the problem is.

3) Managing system user activity – hit or miss when determining ad hoc downtimes

Solution - Seneca’s online building block (FREE) – allows you to see who’s logged in the last minute up to 3 hours ago

4) Providing real-time support to users

Solutions – Meebo chat widget (FREE) - embedded on portal page and within Bb

AND Wimba Pronto (FREE) – authenticates against Bb and populates from Bb course/orgs list

5) Determining Active courses – hard to determine with hosted platform. Wanted something on the GUI to provide a report

Solution: course activity report building block – lists in excel content numbers, DB hits, announcement hits – not Learning Objects tools, but something she’d like to move on. Project Astra can identify these tools – in beta.

Lessons learned:

-Empowering users by introducing self-service tools

-free tools v useful to get started

-customised tools are much better

-letting tech team have more time to do other things.

Bb9: From Beta to Pilot to Production

A panel of representatives from 3 Colleges shared the Dos and Donts of upgrading to version 9.

Dos:
• Run v9 on a test server
• Focus staff on specific tasks – don’t let them play freely, because they wont
• Give them Bb assignments to complete on the new features
• Use lists of things that have been complained about in the past and show how they have been fixed – a good way of making them aware of the new features
• Dont run large training events – people don’t come. Short tutorial training sessions via Jing (5 minute long videos). Focus on short, specific things. One-to-one.
• Use school administrators to spread the word; get the upgrade announced at as many meetings as possible
• Get feedback from staff the beginning – generate tip sheets from this e.g. FAQs to prepare workshops (if you run them)
• offer free lunches
• Establish faculty mentors

Don’ts
• Assume they will come to the test server – students will, but staff wont. Find a core group of early adopters
• Don’t assume that silence is golden – be proactive and ask if it’s working

Some caveats with v9

• The new interface can be a little overwhelming? – The edit mode and content browser is different – even confident v8/7 users, who won’t come to training, get stuck.
• More than the interface, staff finf the Gradecentre overwhelmingly different.
• Respondus in v9 requires a new version. Learning Objects, Wimba, Elluminate all seem to be ok. Bb ran a building block programme where the bigger vendors developed and released updates; smaller building blocks MAY NOT WORK.
• Find out which staff members are using the old tools and make them aware of the changes.

MobilEdu - the next big thing a Blackboard

In his keynote presentation, Michael Chasen introduced two new young guys, whose company Blackboard has recently acquired. These mere children have developed super-cool iPhone widgets for institutions (though they will apparently work with any web-enabled mobile device). This MobilEdu seems to be the next (very?) big thing to come out of Bb. It IS cool, but it's merely about accessing stuff on the fly, not developing any improved learning or teaching methods. But that's ok - that's what learning technologists are for, right?

Here are a few notes - I expect LOTS more will be coming out of Bb's Marketing monkeys ASAP.


MobilEdu provides a collection of widgets for the iPhone for services that exist on different websites at a university:
• Maps, staff/student directories (e.g. accessing LDAP), event calenders, courses (the Bb bit), bills, athletics info (very US-oriented)
• MobilEdu is a product which brings these services together on to one place on a mobile device
• DEMO – works on any web-enabled mobile device
o Maps with GPS built in, so you can see where you are on a campus, as well as routes to other building you need to reach.
o Directory search
o Course catalogue
o Athletics - scores and schedules of teams
o Videos – YouTube and iTunes U
o News – aggregating all news feeds on campus
• The Bb integration: My Courses app – all items for course available on the device; course dashboard
• Bb Learn App (BbSync) for iPhone may not necessarily continue to be supported with MobilEdu – Bb hasn't decided yet.

Introducing..... Blackboard's Michael Chasen

For those who have heard "MLC" (Bb's CEO) speak before, well, you probably didn't miss much as you'll have heard something fairly similar... Still, he is the main man at Bb and it is his party, so he can spout stuff out if he wants to. Actually - it really wasn't so bad. His presentation was broken up with some of the videos on the Bb site - you know, the ones that have ripped off the Apple/PC adverts, showing Bb Classic and Bb NG. Chasen also introduced his new bff, Ray Henderson, former CEO of Angel and now another big boss at Bb. His shorter presentation, which I felt was more engaging and "human", was a nice piece on how the users can help Bb to make the world a better place. Gah - I can't help the cliches - I'm in America, goddammit.

My notes are below:

· Blackboard is really trying to work on its communication channels – usingTwitter, Fb, blogs, Email, Press Release, etc to keep in touch with clients.

· 1600 clients represented at BbWorld09, coming from 17 countries and 45 states

· Next phase of Project NG: the influence of tribes –> the BIE (Bb Ideas Exchange), Bb clients

· Long term strategy – universal access to education is a key priority at Bb; sharing of content - entire courses as well as files; single code-base of the system; ability to measure educational results – investigating pay-off of learning tech investment; from the students – better use of mobile and social tech e.g. iPhones compatability.

· Next steps of NG – a good first step was made but more improvements with customisation and interactive content is being developed; K-12 T&L focus - teacher efficiency and flexibility

· Demo addressed these things. The login page is more customiseable. New tools:

o Course materials selection expanded

o Searches made in other APIs within Bb framework e.g. searching You Tube

o NBC partnership to search for and embed their videos (US only??? Unclear)

o Echo360 tool - only available in US

o Google Docs integration

o Building block for Kindle to forward content to Kindle device

o Wimba – IM tool populated by participants on a course

o Wiki – developed with courses, linked to gradebook

o Parent dashboard developed for K-12; lesson plans; aligment to US State standards

o Reading list gadget to add textbooks that students should purchase with ISBNs – can be used to calculate costs of courses

o Acxiom Identity-X Form – identity-checker to validate that a student is who they say they are. US only??

Ray Henderson's 50 days at Bb

· Background – student, teacher, publisher, educational technologist

· Priorities – client support, openness, transparency and innovation

· Opening up the database in NG.

· Taking the first step to NG – most open, scalable, strongest platform. Moving to NG will help Bb make things better

Another BLE - only 23 Colleges not 5

The City University of New York described their how they upgraded a multi-institutional University to Bb8. This was probably the closest resembling institution to the BLE, so I attended the session to see how they were managing. It was useful; managed to take away some tips - my notes are below.

• 23 schools under one school – CUNY
• ITS is managed centrally, including Bb; Colleges individually manage business cases for other processes
• 140,000 students using Bb6.3
• Snapshot running differently with different databases; administered locally, with individual local business rules
• Hard for students studying across more than 2 Colleges.

• Project objectives
o Consolidated support
o Improved ease of admin

• Domain Architecture – using Community System
o Central admin but still allowing for local identies
o 1 database with a domain for each school;

• Phased approach – some early adopters (small schools) went straight in for v8
• Nov 07 : stakeholders and communication methods established, Bb Contract negotiated
• Roles & Responsibilities set up; project team with reps from each school; project teams in the individual colleges
• Problems – large database led to performance issues, which the service pack 3 fixed; they experienced a number of outages – vendors were engaged to get these things fixed (e.g. SUN)
• Migrated to hosted platform to mitigate risk
• Lessons learned – disaster recovery, testing environment

Tribal gathering... at BbWorld09

Seth Godin, author of “Tribes”, provided the opening keynote presentation at BbWorld09 in Washington, DC. Godin - a last minute replacement to the advertised keynote - delivered a very energised and inspiring talk about tribes, sharing his ideas of how people think, how change spreads and how education is moving. Below, I've tried to capture the essence of what he was saying, which is quite hard - his presentation was a lively collection of images and thoughts. But here goes:

The current commercial world relies heavily on mass marketing and mass advertising and this trend has made its way into schools, via semi-"brainwashing" and mind-blowing techniques. Although considered the only way to get messages across, the market-place is demanding that the education sector provides something different.

The non-commercial world is moving away from providing top-down offers to individualisation – e.g. in order to watch TV, we are no longer dependent on the channel schedulers, as we can choose whatever we want to watch, whenever. Godin presented us with an opportunity to think about how we can do things differently; he suggests that tribal behaviour is the method we can use to change the way things are done. Historically there were three main tribes, which were based on religion, work and community. Hence, a common culture connected people.

The tribe of people who want to connect and network with other like people is very powerful. He asked the audience to clap in unison - it took 4 seconds for around 2000 people to clap the same rhythm. Incredible, Godin enthused, given that there was no drum beat to follow. The basic human need to be part of a group; many people wear an unintentional uniform in wanting to be part of a group - for example, football team shirt or gothic white makeup and leather coats. Godin is most interested in how to create a tribe of people who wish to make change. He believes that one person has the power to leverage a tribe. A tribal leader can take on the role of a rock star to their followers no matter how few of them there may be. For example, Garr Reynolds book "Presentation Zen" became a hugely successful and created a leader out of a relative unknown.

The dynamics of tribal behaviour is very interesting and highlights the influence a tribe can have over authority. Godin suggests that making change is now called tribal leadership. Movements start with a committed few, then they grow. How does this happen? He uses the term "positive deviants" to describe someone wishing to make change happen; someone who figures out, without instruction, how to do something a little better. The role of the leader is to find other positive deviants, amplifying their message. Who are these people in an institution? How do we give them a platform? You don’t need to convert everyone – just a few people who care enough to spread the word. Godin suggests that the failure of Kindle (Amazon’s ebook reader) was because there were no social tools built in to allow users to share and network with each other.

In establishing a tribe, you must be willing to let people follow you. The people are already there and ready to be led e.g. the Beatles didn’t create teenagers, Bob Marley didn’t create Rastafarianism . The people were already there to be led. No-one follows a boring tribe – every successful tribe is led by a heretic. A heretic goes to the edges.

Every institution needs someone to shake things up every so often.

Leadership = marketing.

Today, marketing is about one thing – leadership; the best brands grew by leading. They

1) Challenge the status quo

2) Create a culture that stands for something

3) Curiosly look for the opportunities

4) develop charisma

5) Communicate all directions

6) Connect with others making contributions making meaning to make a difference, allowing tribe members to be noticefd and that they matter

7) Commit to the cause.

No tools are needed – you can inspire to be inspiring.

The "4v2" notion:

The people making a difference are the ones doing things for their audience rather than marketers doing things to them.

Godin concluded by asking the audience where their tribe was? He advised that if it’s worth doing, it’s an obligation to lead. So go create a movement!