As you may have heard already, Blackboard, Inc. acquired ANGEL Learning, Inc. in May of this year. Of significance for Bb clients was the hiring of Ray Henderson (former ANGEL VP/Chief Products Officer) to be the President of Blackboard Learn where he will have responsibility for product development, support, services and hosting for all (Bb & ANGEL) eLearning products. Ray has more than 20 years in educational publishing and technology platform development, so it will be interesting what he will bring to Blackboard.
The merger will have no impact on MVCC’s current Bb environment, we will remain on version 8. Any future upgrade will be coordinated through the CTL and our faculty.
Below are a few links regarding the acquisition:
Press release: https://www.blackboard.com/Company/Media-Center/Press-Releases.aspx?releaseid=1285265
Ray Henderson’s keynote announcement to the ANGEL User’s Conference: http://www.blackboard.com/resources/company/ANGEL_CommunityUpdate_051409.pdf
For planning purposes, below is the Bb maintenance schedule for the 2009/2010 academic year:
Summer 2009
August 5th thru 7th (Wed – Fri)*
Fall 2009
October 24th (Sat)
December 23rd (Wed)*
Spring 2010
February 13th (Sat) OR 15th (Mon)
March 15th (Mon)
Summer 2010
May 29th (Sat)
August 12th – 14th (Wed – Fri)
*These dates correspond with other maintenance projects that require system downtime.
An interview with Kimberley Blessing, author of Adapting to Web Standards, by fellow New Riders author Richard Harrington.
The campus experienced a loss of commercial power this morning just before 8:00 am. As a result, both Blackboard systems (version 6.3 and version 8) as well as our primary internet web server were brought down. A backup web server (in another building) is currently online and better reflects the status of the power outage, you can check it (at www.morainevalley.edu) for more timely updates as they happen.
Once ComEd has restored power to the campus and we are confident of its stablity and reliability, the systems will be brought back online as quickly as possible.
A restart of the Blackboard environment is planned for this Friday morning (June 20th) during the morning maintenance window.
This restart is to follow up after the Monday evening incident.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
We wanted to confirm that Blackboard did have periods of unavailability last night (Monday, June 16th) from approximately 9pm until after 10pm.
The problem affected the storage servers that contain documents such as those attached for download or in the digital drop box so some students may report that they could neither download or upload files to Blackboard last night.
Every effort was made to reduce the amount of impact and to restore availability as quickly as possible.
A restart of the environment may likely be planned in the next few days during a maintenance window to follow up after this incident; we will notify you prior to the restart so you and your students may plan for it.
We apologize for any interruption.
Adobe has released public betas for their next version of Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth. To download, visit Adobe Labs.
Note: Remember to coordinate any software install on a college computer with User Support.
In preparation for the fall implementation of Blackboard version 8, training workshops are being offered by the Center for Teaching and Learning. The workshops will be held during the summer semester and are designed to provide hands-on experience with the new features and tools including Syllabus, Glossary Manager, Self & Peer Assessment, and the Early Warning System.
More information on the workshops is available at http://www.morainevalley.edu/ctl/summerWorkshops.htm.
Blackboard has recently released a web site designed to provide learning resources regarding their latest release.
Sahar Javadi, Senior Product Marketing Manager says, “you’ll find interactive product tours designed to provide a quick but engaging, and easy-to-forward, look at various parts of Release 8.0. For even more detailed informatino, you can view a recorded Webinar and download a brochure.”
You can visit the site at: http://www.blackboard.com/release8/.
In order to resolve the technical issues we’ve experienced between our version of Blackboard and Internet Explorer 7 as well as provide more functionality (such as an improved grade book and a plagiarism prevention tool) we are in the planning phase for upgrading our Blackboard system. We would very much appreciate your participation and feedback, so a test server loaded with Blackboard version 8 has been configured for your use and will continue to be available until the week of May 16. Your comments and suggestions regarding the usability and capabilities of the new version will be helpful as we develop the training and implementation timeline.
To login, visit http://bbtest.morainevalley.edu and use your current (version 6.3) username for both the username and password on the test system.
This is a test environment designed to provide our Blackboard faculty an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the new version prior to its implementation in the fall. Hard drive (storage) capacity is minimal and data backups will not be performed, so we are limited to copying one (1) of your courses from our current environment or create a new one, which ever you wish. Please contact Sandi Racich (racich@morainevalley.edu) to create or copy your course. Courses created or copied to the test system are for evaluation purposes and will not be copied to the new system.
For the most up-to-date information regarding support for a Microsoft product, visit the Microsoft Support Lifecycle web site.
On-Line Web 2.0 Accessibility Course using the W3C ARIA Specifications
Dates: April 15th to May 8th, 2008
Days: Tuesdays and Thursdays
Time: 3:00pm – 4:00pm CST (Chicago Local Time)
The on-line course is designed for web developers creating Web 2.0 applications to learn about the accessibility of these technologies to people with disabilities. Participants will learn about keyboard support, focus management issues and how to use the emerging W3C Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) specifications to create accessible Web 2.0 applications.
Participants should have web development experience with html, css and javascript technologies. Participants will program and test the accessibility of web widgets created using the new ARIA technology.
Register Online at: http://www.fast3.uiuc.edu/workshops/accessibility.htm#web2.0accessibility
Here’s a link to a 30 minute screencast from Donna Wicks at Kettering University for those interested in learning more about version 8. Thanks to Jason Rhode (Northern Illinois University) for sharing.
http://tinyurl.com/3dco7w
