Blackboard Inc, a global leader in enterprise technology and innovative solutions for learning and education have announced the release of a new free application that will allow Apple ® iPhone ™ and iPod Touch ® users to access course information, find out test results, receive updates and alerts, get important feedback from teachers and much more, whenever and wherever they are. Hmmm.
The main advantage of the new application is that the information is accessible 24 hours a day and as such encourages students to actively participate and engage more with their education simply because they can choose to access the information whenever they please. As if being in the classroom isn’t enough.
“Many of today’s students and learners live in a mobile world, and now they can learn in one too,” said Michael L. Chasen, president and CEO of Blackboard. “This application is part of our focus to help students more deeply engage in the educational experience by creating learning opportunities that are not bound by time or place.”
SmartPhones, hand held devices, palm tops and personal digital assistants (PDAs) are commonplace these days, even in school, so it is not really surprising and makes complete sense for these tools to be used not just for social and business communication but also in educational settings too.
Thousands of schools, higher educational establishments, businesses and government organisations around the world already work with Blackboard Learn. These organisations are able to choose what information is available to the user and can block what they don’t want to be accessible.
Blackboard is basically helping organisations to meet the needs of learners by enabling them to communicate information in an environment and a format that students are already familiar and comfortable with.
Take social networking as an example. Social networking sites are extremely popular, especially amongst young people, and Blackboard has previously released a free application which is integrated within Facebook, one of the most popular social networking sites on the Net.
Users of Facebook can access course information, find out if they have a new assignment or if they have new grades directly from within the Facebook site, they have no need to log on to a different system to do it. This makes it convenient and far more likely that the students will engage.
Now Blackboard have taken it a step forward with Blackboard Learn ™ available as a download from the Apple iTunes ® App Store for iPhone and iPod touch users.
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