Solution Watch has part 3 of the series on Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0. Part 1 had a huge list and review of Web 2.0 sites which could be used by students and teachers. One question which people have asked already is how will course management systems like Blackboard keep up with the tools available for free on these Web 2.0 sites and why will students want to use course management systems at all? I think the answer to part of that is that very few of the CMS are likely to be on top of the latest things possible. They change very slowly. Considering all the tools out there, if you could incorporate the functionality of the ones you want to use into one website to keep things organized, you could build your own CMS.
I've been searching for podcasts about Blackboard and have come across a few. Some are too site-specific while others could use a little more polish before I would recommend them to others. However, one podcast I did find to be useful and high quality is Teaching with Blackboard by Jason Rhode at Northern Illinois University. Episode 5, posted last week, discusses how to incorporate RSS feeds into Blackboard using Feed2JS , a website and tool for converting an RSS feed to JavaScript which can be copied and pasted into your Blackboard course. This gives you a relatively easy way to add dynamic content to a course. For many instructors, RSS may be a foreign language, but I think if you listen to the five minute podcast, you will learn enough to get the idea. If you want more, Jason's previous podcast covers RSS and podcasting in more detail.
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