BbMHSupport: MHSupport is monitoring a client for latency issues with exams that pull questions from large test pools. #somethingtowatch
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This is a tweet from Blackboard Managed Hosting Support (BbMHSupport). What an incredibly wonderful communication. They have gotten word that a problem MIGHT exist. They are monitoring it. They are sharing that fact with everyone else.
This problem might be unique to one client or might even be based on something outside of Blackboard. But since we all know about it, we can also watch for it and not be caught by surprise. Based on feedback, the support people will know if this is a problem affecting only one client or something larger. Win, win.
Blackboard’s Managed Hosting group is doing some really great things, including this and many webinars. It all increases transparency, builds trust, and provides better service. GOOD JOB!
https://twitter.com/BbMHSupport
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The perverse and ironic issue with Blackboard is despite being a learning management system it rarely encourages learning.
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In this article he also says, “A learning space should be a space filled with life and be infused with an instructor’s spirit and passion.” I think he is definitely right in the second quote. I am not so sure about the first quote. But educational research supports the hypothesis that teachers teach better when they are doing what they want to do, rather than what they have been told to do. Creating his own alternative to Blackboard should be better, at least for him. I would love to get feedback from the students at the end of the term.
ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education
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Waiting for my iPhone
My #iPhone4S will be delivered by 10:30 am. I thought about spending the night outside so I could have the real #Apple #fanboy experience and be first in line when #FedEx drives up.
The Steve Jobs who founded Apple as an anarchic company promoting the message of freedom, whose first projects with Stephen Wozniak were pirate boxes and computers with open schematics, would be taken aback by the future that Apple is forging. Today there is no tech company that looks more like the Big Brother from Apple’s iconic 1984 commercial than Apple itself, a testament to how quickly power can corrupt.
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Steve Jobs was a genius and all of the wonderful comments about him are well deserved. This New Yort Times article comes at from an entirely different perspective with a different conclusion.
Steve Jobs, Enemy of Nostalgia - NYTimes.com
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Visual Literacy for Managers - How Sketching enables Visual Problem Solving and Communication
College is an amazing safe space to fail. We are experimenting with new friends, a new city, new hobbies and new ideas - and we’ll often mess up academically and socially as a result. But we know that as long as we don’t screw up too dramatically, we’ll finish college, graduate, and move on - that mix of risk and safety is intoxicating. Yet somehow as we grow older we lose it.
College textbooks cost too much. So how do students deal with this? They create an intriguing (and illegal?) system of removing protection from electronic versions of the texts and then share them on bittorrent. Students are like water: when stopped by an apparent barrier, all alternatives are attempted.
“What if higher ed lost its grip on the credential business? … Digital badges received a big boost last week, when the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced a $2-million competition to create and develop badges and a badge system.”
This article from the Chronicle explains badges and how they could dramatically change higher education. Is this the first step in a major transformation, or just another educational idea that will fail?
Reading the web this morning I came across two interesting statements. The first was that online learning is not as good as “an inspiring teacher” but it was available 24 hours a day while the teacher was only available a few hours a week and had to be shared with other students during most of that time. Then I came across this Mother Jones post that says motivation is the critical difference between online and face to face education. Not motivation by the teacher, but the motivation provided by scheduled classes, assignments, tests, and so on. I just had the discussion with my son about “required” courses in college. We like what we “choose” to take and dislike (like less?) what we “have” to take. But we take it anyway, complete the assignments, perhaps (hopefully?) learn something in the process, and move on. When you know that not attending class means that your seat is empty and everyone will know it, you go to class, even if you don’t feel like it. But online, skipping class is a personal choice, and normally only the teacher knows it. Do we work on personal motivation or making online participation more public to improve this situation? Or both?
