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  • Birds of a Feather - Topics
    thread posted 03/19/09 by Kerry Jo Richards
    1077 Views, 26 Comments
    Title:
    Birds of a Feather - Topics
    Content:

    Birds of a Feather....Flock Together! 

    Last year we heard that Birds of a Feather sessions were a bit too general.  "System Administration" just too general for you?  Help us come up with specific topics that you can really sink your teeth into...from disaster recovery to wikis in the classroom, give us some ideas on what topics you're looking to discuss.

    In fact...no need to wait 'till BbWorld - start the discussion now!

Comments

  • are there any places to share Twitter usernames and start following other Bb '09-ers :)  Or maybe a common # - to search for posts???

  • Hi Kristine!  Yes - there is a hash for Twitter for BbWorld: #BbWorld09

  • great - I would love to start following others.  Are you on Twitter?  Any advice for finding them?  I am TechCzech....

  • I'm not on Twitter yet...but Sahar Javadi, Jan Day and lots of others are (I really need to get on!).  I'll ask someone to post more info on how to find them!

  • Hi Kristine, Great to see you are interested in Twitter. You can start with me...my Twitter is sjavadi. You can also look at who I follow. Some are Blackboarders (jpostonday, jknight, georgekroner, johnfontaine) and Clients...like Ed Garay (garay), Jeff Longland (jlongland), Laura Gekeler (lgekeler), Eric Kunnen (ekunnen), Leo Havemann (leohavemann) in the UK, Louise Thorpe (lpt21), Sarah Sherman (BLE1)...those are some I think of off the top of my head. Maybe others could chime in if they are interested in the BbWorld hash tag #BbWorld09.

  • We actually had a twitter committee at Educause Southwest that I served on.  We tried to attend different sessions and tweeted throughout the sessions with what was happening.  It was a much smaller conference but maybe we could have a committee with someone on each track so that different sessions were covered.  My twitter name is jmankoff.

  • Hi Kristine and others.

    I am pegasus73 on Twitter and follow others I know from past Blackboard conferences as well.  I think this would be a great birds of a feather topic.  The use of twitter in the classes.  I have been following twitter posts about the academic use of twitter.  There is a professor at Penn State that has his students pass notes about the lecture topic during the class and it is displayed on a second screen.  I am working with others in my group on a wet paint wiki site with links to some of these uses as examples for our faculty.    I will start using the tag for BBWorld tweets.  I just posted earlier this morning asking for suggestions there for BOF session ideas as well.  I will repost with hash tag.

  • Thanks Sahar - I was already following 3 of your suggestions :)  I used the hashtag for a Statewide conference.  It worked well - but not sure how many people 1. were on Twitter 2. knew about the hash tag - BUT I can see how it can be very powerful - if only for connecting through Twitter for the future.  I can't wait for my first BbWorld - and look forward to continuing discussions with anyone else.  I am K-12 BTW :)

  • Hi all

    From my Twitter post 2 suggestions for BOF so far.

    1. BOF for ASP hosted institutions by region, rather than one big group.

    2. BOF for K-12 professional development strategies

  • Hi

    I love Jean's suggestion.  I have followed others on Twitter as they did just that, tweeted during conference sessions.  I got useful information even though I was not at the conference.  This is one way those who cannot travel to DC could attend "virtually".  They also posted URL's in the tweets relating to the session topic, such as even a link to the ppt slides or web materials.

  • About last year's Birds of a Feather sessions.  I found most of them quite disappointing, as they were often not organised and had too many people.  It is hard to share stories in informal conversation if there are 60+ people in the room, as you end up with either hearing only a little bit from everyone or a lot from just a few people.  If you have to use a mic just to be heard,  I think there is something wrong in a sharing/discussion session.  In addition, chairs need to be arranged in a manner to facilitate conversation, like a circle, not in rows like a presentation.

    I would recommend a limit on the number of participants in any one BoaF session, with multiple overflow rooms and facilitators if there is the demand for that topic.

  • Hey Brian, good point about the smaller groups.  Thinking a bit more about it - if the BOF rooms were arranged in table rounds (like dinner tables), how would it feel to have multiple group discussions going on in that room?  That might allow us to make use of limited space but still allow for those smaller conversations?  What do you think? 

  • I was thinking about the topics. "Use of Sync", "Grade Center Issues", "Release 8 to 9 Upgrades", are some possible 'tighter' topics.

  • I wouldn't mind the multiple group discussions, but it depends on the acoustics, as one could imagine it getting quite loud in the wrong room (also depending on how many groups, etc).  Also, would need each group to understand what they should discuss and be given more specific tasks than in previous BOF sessions (which in my experience were someone saying something quite general like 'Please take the mic if you want to say anything about staff development you do').  Each group could be asked to choose a few key points to feedback via a group rep to the wider group at the end.  Those key points could be captured by a Blackboard rep with a laptop and shared more widely back to the group/conference in some way.

    Ira, I like the upgrade strategies topic, and am a little curious about the sync ones (as we are not using it at all), but with 'GC issues' I think we are likely to get a lot of complaining about GC bugs, which could turn into a gripe-fest rather than a BOF good practice session (I'd rather that product development lead focus groups on the issues side of it to understand them better and fix them).  It might be more helpful to discuss strategies for rolling out the GC or how to encourage grades and feedback online as a valuable part of student learning.

  • Hi all

    I like the idea of a BOF on gradebook topics.  Maybe best practices in the gradebook.  Gradebook feedback or calculations in the gradebook.

  • my twitter id is hotfocuszx3 & i am interested in others thoughts & ideas for Bb09

  • Would a BOF focused on What is Blended Learning?  How is your school 'blending'?  How are you getting your faculty to take risks in using curriculum technology to support blending?

  • Hi all,

    Thanks for all the feedback! This is really helpful.

    Sahar

  • We are going to also have a Bb Broadcast Center on the exhibition floor where we can have folks attending BbWorld report what's going on to others who can't make it. So they'll feel more like they are there in person. You can tweet conference happenings, get interviewed on a FlipVideo on a session you attended, upload photos of the conference to Flickr and more. More details to come!

  • And look out for an email from Blackboard that will come out this week (5/12/09) which should mention other ways you can connect with your colleagues who can't make it to BbWorld during the conference!

  • How about a BOF on the Project Astro?

  • The Project Astro team is actually doing a session!  http://www.bbworld.com/2009/bbworld/content.asp?id=1484  (search the page for "Astro")

  • I'd love to see a Birds of a Feather topic directed at SCORM users. We'd love to suggest changes to the SCORM data reporting and the player itself but have been told other schools would need to be on board. If you are using SCORM and Blackboard, feel free to contact us directly at blackboardhelp@jfsc.ndu.edu. Thanks!

  • Hi all and thanks for getting this going. I've looked at the twitter hash for #BbWorld09 but it seems old...is there a better place to go for pre-conference tweets? Thanks all for sharing your tweets.

    Also, I'm looking to meet up with CE 4 to CE 8 migration peeps using banner as their SIS. Is there already a BOF topic for this? Thanks!

  • Hi Adam,  We've been using the #bbWorld09 hash tag for a couple of months now so in one sense it is "old" but in another it is "established."  :)  It is the best place to go for pre-conference tweets.  My twitter handle is jpostonday.

    Jan

  • Thanks Jan. You gave me the push that I needed to understand that I apparently don't know how to use Twitter. Now I know that http://twitter.com/BbWorld09 is not the same as http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23BbWorld09. When I click on BBWorld09 under "follwing" I get the first URL, but when I search for BbWorld09 I get the other link with the updated information. Of course, this discussion isn't about twitter so I'll hold off on posting anything else about it. Thanks again!