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  by    pasukaru76   For almost a decade, there has been continued debate about the future of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) such as Blackboard, Moodle, and Sakai. As technology evangelists and futurists have prophesied the death of email, telephone landlines, and other ageing technologies, so too has the VLE been heralded to become as extinct as the dinosaur. It has come under sustained critique for its clunky user-interface; the walled-garden of authentication access, shielding it from the wider internet; the lack student ownership and autonomy; and more recently the absence of social features (e.g. ‘Like’ and ’Share’buttons) common to newer social media platforms. Will the VLE survive in the face newer platforms such as the ubiquitous and mighty Facebook? In the spirt of questioning older orthodoxy, we asked the NUI Galway Blackboard user community to voice their views on the utility of Blackboard versus Facebook. Specifically, we asked, “ which is more...

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by sharonlflynn The Blackboard Mobile User Group met on Monday afternoon, 7th January, as part of the 13th Durham Blackboard Users' Conference . The meeting was organised by Peter Rayment, Learning Technology Manager at Cardiff University, and attended by about 20 people from higher education around the UK. I was the only person from an Irish institution. The meeting took place in the impressive new Palatine Centre (see picture), which houses the Law School at Durham University. We started by going round the room, each person giving a brief introduction and describing the current status of Blackboard Mobile ( Learn and/or Central ) at his/her institution. We launched Mobile Learn at NUI Galway at the end of March 2012, at the end of teaching and just 4 weeks before the start of exams. With a promising initial take-up, we were interested to monitor its use during the teaching semester starting in September 2012. Three weeks into term...

Today I asked my PLN to recommend a twitter app for the iPad, one that is good for multiple accounts. The results are collated in the storify embedded below. If you have any recommendations, please tweet them to me (@sharonlflynn) or comment below. [ View the story "Twitter app recommendations on iPad (via Twitter)" on Storify ] Tweet

View of Empire State Building The last two weeks have been a bit surreal for me, and on Tuesday I spent a very pleasant day in Dakota Studio on 5th Avenue in New York City, recording a presentation for the Kaltura Education Video Summit . The summit will be a virtual event, taking place on 6th December, and you can register now for free. My presentation is on Supporting the use of video for teaching and learning (in the Blackboard LMS) and I am one of a long list of speakers , but the only one from outside the US, as far as I am aware. So, how did this strange situation come about? Being in New York, pre-recording a presentation for a virtual conference to take place next month? Well, just two weeks ago I got an email from Meytal Burstein, marketing manager with Kaltura , letting me know that my abstract had been accepted for the virtual Summit, and that I was invited to give a 30-35 minute presentation. I was very pleased, of course, and expected to deliver the presentation from my d...

I've decided to stick with my avatar. Here's why... (from Storify)   [ View the story "Hiding behind my avatar - follow up" on Storify ] Tweet

Following on from last week's webinar, I'm very pleased to see the publication of a Blackboard/Kaltura case study on how we are using Kaltura at NUI Galway . I'd particularly like to acknowledge Oliver Ryan (Physics) and Susan Folan (Acadamh) for their contributions to the case study. Read the full case study to find out how Oliver and Susan have been using Kaltura to support their students' learning. We have also been featured recently on the Blackboard blog , in a nice write up by Katie Drossos. Tweet

I am very pleased to participate in this afternoon's webinar , hosted by Blackboard, on how we are using the Kaltura building block for video at NUI Galway. Here are the slides that I'm going to be presenting with: To find out more about Kaltura at NUI Galway, take a look at our Blackboard blog . Our guide for instructor users describing the Kaltura building block can be found on our Blackboard support site . Tweet