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May 22, 2008

Bb Europe: some new features

While the B in Blackboard might just as well stand for Behemoth, right now it's the only game in town for us. Meanwhile, BbWorld Europe continues apace and the bloggers are buzzing. Niall Sclater of Open University has a longish post that highlights some of the features promised in a future version of Bb, aptly name Bb NG (Next Generation).

Here are a few bits--the rest is available at: http://sclater.com/blog/?p=95

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Michael L Chasen, Blackboard’s CEO, described the three principles of Project NG (Next Generation) which is bringing WebCT and Blackboard together into one platform: Student achievement, Openness and Web 2.0. So what does that actually mean?

There is an excellent instructor dashboard. . . It informs tutors about what’s new, what needs attention, which students have handed in work late, which haven’t logged in for a week etc.

The authoring facilities are also getting increasingly sophisticated. A course management block allows you to drag and drop blocks of content around the page, building new items and adding assessments, communication tools etc from drop-down menus. One of these menus is for mashups allowing you to integrate Google Earth maps, Flickr, YouTube and other resources easily into courses.

“Communities” can be set up by students to create their own social learning spaces if the institution wants to make this possible.

The student profile has been redesigned and looks good – something you could imagine would give a greater sense of ownership to the student.
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We'll see...

Posted by hag at 10:02 PM | Comments (0)

May 16, 2008

American Civil War resource until June 30

Alexander Street Press is offering free access, until June 30, to its digital collection of American Civil War materials. This contains four collections:

This is a gold mine! For example, from a search on "reading" we find that William Wheeler of New York was reading Hawthorne's "The Marble Faun" in the summer of 1860 (he like "Scarlet Letter" better), and that in the summer of 1849 William Quesenbury Claytor had just finished "Jane Eyre."

Wonder of wonders, there is even a reference to Alice B. Haven in a letter from Jeannette Hulme Platt to James Canfield, July 29, 1867 where she says "Last week I was charmed with "Memoir of Cousin Alice." She was a woman above women;..." Hurrah!

Enjoy it soon.

Posted by hag at 5:58 PM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2008

Powerset: Smarter searches for Wikipedia

Powerset has been working on a search engine that incorporates natural language and semantic web technologies. They've just released their first product which is used to search Wikipedia. According to their blog:

"Instead of being limited to keywords, Powerset allows you to enter keywords, phrases, or questions. Instead of just showing you a list of blue links, Powerset gives you more accurate search results, often answering questions directly, and aggregates information from across multiple articles. Finally, instead of leaving you at the search page, Powerset's technology follows you into enhanced Wikipedia articles, giving you a better way to digest and navigate content quickly. This post serves as a jumping-off point for all of the key information about the launch."

So, if you often search Wikipedia. or if you often use Google to search but end up at Wikipedia, you might want to try Powerset instead. Rumors are that Google will be trying to catch up soon...

http://www.powerset.com/

Posted by hag at 1:20 PM | Comments (0)