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...

This is a continuation of my interview with the Academic Technology Systems Administrators about technology planning at Palomar College.  In this part we focus on some rubber meets the road issues like paperless environments, AV technologies, telephony, and lots of other issues.  The written response of the technicians is provided in the post below, and the audio of an interview with them follows the post. Additional Questions for ATRC Staff 1.  Would you support a goal of creating a paperless environment at Palomar College, if it meant that you would not have access to printers and would have to...

There was a day when Steve Ballmer’s keynote to the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show would have been truly exciting.  Now, it is just more stuff.  Do we really need the PC to take over the driving experience?  The range of computing devices is truly impressive, and the success of Windows 7 is well deserved, but what are people doing on those devices and this great OS?  Something they could just have easily done on the telephone two decades ago?  We still have phones.  The enabling technology is in place, and at no small cost, but what is being enabled? It’s true consumer electronics...