The conversation I overheard at the FU last week that should convince you that Blackboard is doomed.
November 12, 2007
It was a simple, everyday conversation that I overhead at the FU last week, walking down a corridor. Two students were chatting about class and how they were being made to download texts, as I’ve often heard, just to distributed the handouts they had already been given in class and the texts they could get more cheaply at the nearby copy shop, when one of them said, “forget Blackboard: let’s simply organize our own group using Google Groups.”
And there it was: both how students mostly learn, from each other, and what they prefer to do when left to their own devices, using cost-free web services that they could tailor to their own purposes. So I went on the web to see what would come up if I typed “using google groups” into Google and in seconds found a great blog post on using Google Groups by some instructors (and this post has no less than 54 comments) on their group blog, “Learning with Laptops,” and there you go: a fine example of instructors learning how to use these technologies, too!
December 3, 2007 at 2:28 pm
same thing happens all across the board (hrhr. littl pun there). people use yahoo or google to set up groups, share documents etc because it departments in universities have a difficult time catching up with the developments on the web.
December 3, 2007 at 2:33 pm
same thing happens all across the board (hrhr. littl pun there). people use yahoo or google to set up groups, share documents etc because it departments in universities have a difficult time catching up with the developments on the web. it folks at the online educa were reporting similar student activities