It's published! "Blackboard Essentials for Teachers" book is finally here.

For over six months, I've worked on Blackboard Essentials for Teachers. This is a beginner's guide to the most-used and essential features of the Blackboard LMS.
It also contains a chapter that acts as a quick start guide to using Collaborate, which is Blackboard's live, online meeting and presentation system.
Like my Moodle books, this one tells a story. We start with a tour of a course created in Blackboard. Then, step by step, I show you how to build that course.
Like my Moodle books, I try to tell you not only how to use Blackboard features. I also try to tell you when to use the features, and how to fit them into your teaching strategy.
As far as I know, this is the only book for Blackboard users from a major publisher since 2006.
You can find a detailed outline, and sample chapter, at the publisher's website. The book is available in print and as an unlocked ebook. See it here.

The LMS must open itself to the Web or die

ArsTechnica.com has an article on the future of classroom technology. One quote from that article caught my attention:

"The LMS is a great management tool, but we don't see it as a teaching and learning tool," said Groom. "Spaces determine how you think and learn. Blackboard as an example doesn't exist on the Web. You wind up accessing it through an abstract login. It's a kind of cockroach motel, locked into a space outside of time, outside of the Web. Divorce the learning and collaboration from the Web and you're separating it from where most people are doing their learning."

Moodle, Blackboard, and other learning management systems keep adding new features and more capabilities. With each new version, the environment inside the LMS becomes more rich with features. But what are these LMSs doing to open themselves up to the Web? How are they bringing Web content into the LMS? What features are they using to send students out to Web content without losing the student?

One good answer is Moodle's IMS LTI Tool. IMS stands for "Instructional Managment Systems," and LTI stands for "Learning Tool Interopability."

I encourage you to learn more about Moodle's LTI Tool by reading the excellent blog post by Gavin Hendrick.

(cross posted in the blog of my new site at http://www.williamrice.com/blog)

Should you serve videos directly from Moodle, or use a video sharing service like Limelight or Vimeo?

In the LinkedIn group "Moodlers Online," one member posted a question about the best way to share videos in Moodle courses. This is a frequent question. So I'd like to repost the question, and my response, here.

I've paraphrased the question below:

I am creating a Moodle site where all of the training is either WebEx, swf or .wmv based. It will have hundreds of training videos. Would it be better to upload the files to a video repository service such as Limelight or Vimeo, or just upload to Moodle? What are the pros and cons of each approach? I am worried about the slow loading of videos if they are stored and served by Moodle, and about the ability of Moodle to adapt to a user's slow internet connection.

And my answer:

You appear to be caught between two conflicting technical requirements for this. One the one hand, your users would get the best performance if you host the videos and a dedicated video streaming service and link to them from within Moodle. On the other hand, you need to lock down these videos to prevent anyone with the link from accessing them on the video sharing site. There is a relatively easy, technical solution.

The service that you referred to, Limelight, has an optional feature called "Media Vault." It will prevent your students from sharing the URL to a video. See http://www.limelight.com/content-Delivery-security/. Vimeo.com, another video sharing site, has a similar feature for their Pro account. You can embed videos that you've uploaded to Vimeo directly on a Moodle page, and configure the video so it plays only from that Moodle page (only from that URL).

Moodle is a great learning management system, but it's not a streaming media delivery application. I suggest you upload the videos to a video delivery service like Limelight or Vimeo, embed the videos to keep your users inside Moodle, and use content security to prevent them from being played outside of Moodle.

Hope this was helpful, and good luck with your project!

(cross posted in the blog of my new site at http://www.williamrice.com/blog)