Blackboard Comes to Campus to Boost Teacher Understanding
By Steven Choi '10
News Reporter
On Wednesday, September 26th, Choate hosted about twenty people from several different schools for Blackboard Day, which took place in the Getz Auditorium. Lasting the entire class day, there were six speakers, including History teacher, Joel Backon, and Physics teacher, Jon Gadoua. “Blackboard allows me to do a lot of things that I couldn’t do otherwise,” stated Mr. Backon, who spoke about using Blackboard effectively in the teaching of History. “You can do things in class with digital content. Blackboard saves time in class and outside of class.”
Blackboard’s mission statement is “to enable educational innovations everywhere by connecting people and technology.” The speakers at this lecture successfully portrayed Blackboard as a luxury for the teacher, student and parent. Blackboard allows one to: use powerful tools to create effective content, include parents in the school community and engage them in their children’s learning, track a student’s improvement over time and provide student-centered learning in a controlled environment. Making it easier to collaborate and share knowledge, Blackboard is appreciated by many educators across the nation.
Getting Teachers Involved
The lecture was separated into 5 different topics: Using Blackboard Effectively in the Teaching of History, Individuated Learning in Physics Using Blackboard, Blackboard Roadmap and Where We are Going in K12, Sample Courses from Blackboard Clients, and Introduction to Scholar. Each of the topics dealt with the simplicity of Blackboard and its enhancement of students’ learning. Because Blackboard provides access to discussion boards, homework assignments, and countless internet resources, the speakers completely supported it.
Blackboard was truly proven to be the most efficient from the following reasons. Blackboard is utilized by over 1,200 US school districts. Forty-one of the top hundred schools named by Newsweek rely on Blackboard. Odds are that almost one half of college-bound graduates will have learned on Blackboard by the time they graduate. The “environment” of Blackboard contributes tremendously to its success. Easy to manage, Blackboard provides a classroom environment, but much more convenient. Because of the growing English-as-a-second language population, Blackboard offers schools with a larger ESL population with an option of running multiple languages; therefore, it tends to their needs by providing a convenient environment.
A multitude of examples were used on Blackboard day to accurately reveal the positive aspects of Blackboard. For example, in the Sycamore Community Schools in Ohio, 85% of teachers use blackboard software to communicate with parents and expand classroom instruction. It unites the school community by email, blogs, discussion boards, etc. In the Sarasota School District in Florida, Blackboard is used to help professional learning. Helping teachers take courses online, Blackboard links them to a large network of teachers, materials necessary in the classroom, and lesson plans at their convenience. “By using Blackboard, adding content is as easy as making an attachment to an e-mail. Our teachers appreciate that,” said an instructor from the Baltimore Public School System. This program is significant to instructors everywhere because it allows them to manage resources, assign work and post grades without difficulty.
On Blackboard day, the different perspectives on Blackboard were revealed: that of the parent, that of the teacher, and that of the student. A teacher could use Blackboard to check school updates, to review homework assignments, to strengthen student-teacher communication and to engage students beyond the classroom. A student could use blackboard to turn in a homework assignment, access college resources, or perhaps contribute to a discussion for a class or organization. A parent could use Blackboard to check the progress of the student, to review the student’s course work, or check the community calendar.
Blackboard Day was a day to teach instructors of the marvels of Blackboard. By providing many realistic examples and visual aids for the teachers, Blackboard had gained new customers who can now appreciate the conveniences that many schools around the nation benefit from.
