As many faculty are already aware, there is a Blackboard Mobile Learn app available for iOS and Android devices. That isn’t news, as the app has existed for a couple years now. What is news relates to a change in the way that app is licensed. Previously the app was usable only by certain devices using certain connections, in a fashion that was confusing to explain. Unless, of course, the institution you were attending actually purchased a license, in which case everything just plain worked. That last is still true, that the institution can purchase a license to use the Mobile Learn app…...

For fairly obvious financial reasons, Palomar didn’t send any of our Blackboard system administrators to the annual BbWorld conference again this year. However, thanks to the power of Twitter and a whole host of avid convention-goers, we have been hearing some interesting developments coming to Blackboard. The Blackboard corporate keynote is concluding as I write this, so details on these points are still sparse on the ground from where I sit, but here is a brief overview of the noteworthy things I’ve heard (in no particular order): Blackboard is launching a content repository system...

We are having a get together next week of a few people who have been using iPads for academic work here at the college. There are several professors and several staff people coming. We will be considering various questions, which I note below in hopes of gathering wider comments, but one of the chief ideas I want to explore is “Can the iPod take the place of the desktop for average users, professorial, staff or student?” I know for sure one of the points that will be made is that the virtual keyboard is not adequate for anything other than brief notes or emails. For a professor to type a...

I like infographics.  I subscribe to the feed for visual.ly, which brings me ten to thirty new infographics each day.  The site itself is a repository of more than 2000 infographics, and growing.  Good infrographics are strong on impact, good at simplification, and well documented.  I can’t say that many of the infographics at visual.ly are strong on documentation.  You need a high powered magnifier to read the tiny print in which the URLs are shown at the bottom of infographics.  And if you do figure out what they are, visiting those sites often does not inspire confidence and sometimes...