Blogs

When I pitched this series of “Postcards from the Participatory” back in November of 2011, I'd intended it to be a small collection of narratives exploring Massive Open Online Courses from the inside.

My conclusions from day one of BbWorld, after listening to a range of Blackboard leaders and managers, are as follows:

When I first started chatting with David Marr at this year's Blackboard Education Technology Conference* (also known as Bb World or #BbW12 on Twitter) I was immediately intrigued by how much he sounded like someone who really "got" Student Affairs. Marr, the President of Blackboard's Transact platform, spoke to me about student engagement, financial aid, the admissions funnel, retention, auxiliary services, strategic enrollment management, campus cards, and Student Affairs advancement.

On the last day of school, my daughter’s grade one teacher invited parents to attend a class awards ceremony. Each of the twenty-one children in her class was presented with a unique award. Although my attention was at first fully focused on my daughter (a writing award!), I was especially happy for a boy who received recognition for his ability to identify more bugs, birds, and reptiles than the teacher. It made my heart soar that she’d singled out the importance of the boy’s identification skills, especially in a world where people increasingly place little value on knowing what lives around them.

Back in the day, music was expensive and books were cheap. A cassette (ahem) ran almost $15 and then a CD was at least $20. My books were (usually) paperbacks for less than $10. The library was also well-stocked with books that I wanted, while the music selection was less impressive. So my music collection largely consisted of mixed tapes I recorded off the radio and copies of the tapes of my friends. If there was a particularly expensive hardcover book I wanted, I would either get it from the library and buy it later in paperback or ask for it as a gift. We owned a lot of books in my house growing up (a lot of vinyl records, too), so it’s of little surprise that you would find me at swim meets plugged into my walkman, reading.

Subscribers to the Green Schools Listserv recently got invited to participate in a sustainability survey. And while the opportunity to fill out yet another fool survey is not generally attractive, this one was from a grad student at Erasmus U in Rotterdam. I have a soft spot for Rotterday (Frau R says I have a lot of soft spots, mostly north of my neck), so I decided to give it a go. I'm glad I did.

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously stated that "The rich are different from you and me." Given the demographics of wealth distribution in this country, it is not a wonder that Tavis Smiley and Cornel West have teamed up to create a manifesto based on that statement. But since this is a blog about law, policy and technology, I offer a variation on that theme. The moguls are different from you and me. And keep eyes and ears peeled: they are getting together to talk money today in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Are you in New Orleans this week for the big Blackboard conference (or BbWorld as the company brands the conference)? What are your big goals for the conference? What do you hope to learn from Blackboard?