Speakers:
Nick J. McClure, Lead Systems Programmer, University of Kentucky

Discuss different types of Application and Server monitoring that can be used to determine the uptime and performance of the Blackboard Application, Database Servers, and Network. We'll talk about the types of tools that can be used, and what information to provide to management, support staff and users.

Speakers:
Glen Parker, System Administrator, University of South Florida

A suggestion box provides a voice to people and let you hear ideas you might otherwise have missed. We'll build a suggestion box in Blackboard from start to finish. We'll talk about the design, the data storage, the communications elements, the integration points, and the miscellany that goes into a finished project. If that's too much, the block is pure Blackboard, and can simply be downloaded.

Speakers:
Tandeep Sidhu, Application Developer, University of Maryland, College Park

As more and more students are using web enabled devices, there is a demand for mobile access to Blackboard. Come and learn how University of Maryland, College Park built a mobile optimized version of Blackboard using Building Block Web Services. The students can view Course Announcements, Grades, Documents, and Discussion Board entries through this application.

Speakers:
Karl Riddle, Information Tech Analyst, University of Cincinnati

Students at the University of Cincinnati have access to email, a 25Gb SkyDrive, and Windows Meeting Spaces, all via a single click in Blackboard. This session will provide an overview of Microsoft Live@edu and how easy it was to create a Blackboard Building Block that offered students one click access to some very powerful tools. Ideal for both executives and technical staff as well.

Speakers:
Ashraf Amrou, Tech Lead, e-Learning Systems, Old Dominion University

This presentation introduces an enhanced 'My Courses' module. The main enhancements this module provides are ease-of-use, in-place configuration, and grouping of courses. The courses are organized into a collapsible four-level tree structure (Level 1 represents user roles, level 2 represents semesters, level 3 represents individual courses, and level 4 provides additional details such as listing the instructor names). The user can expand/hide any portion of the tree with a single mouse click.

Speakers:
Patricia Goldweic, Senior Software Engineer, Northwestern University

In an effort to leverage the collaboration features provided by the Google Apps platform, Academic and Research Technologies at Northwestern is developing a building block and related software components that enable the easy access and sharing of Google content from within Blackboard. Features include single sign on, automated account provisioning, and automated sharing of Google content through an instructors' linking/book marking tool. We plan to describe the technical components and demonstrate its use at Northwestern.

Speakers:
James M. Pease, Web Application Developer, Syracuse University

Jim Pease from Syracuse University will present his implementation of the Learning Environment Connector API to integrate the Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment with Blackboard Learn Release 9. His presentation will include a demonstration of the connector followed by a technical overview of the API and the Sakai implementation. Attendees will see features of the connector in action, learn about it's setup and configuration, and hear about implementation challenges and future direction.

Speakers:
Stephen P. Vickers, eLearning, The University of Edinburgh

This presentation seeks to describe the issues arising for developers seeking to migrate outbound authentication deployable components to Building Blocks to work under the new Learn 9 environment. Whilst there is a challenge for developers to acquire new skills and experience, there are also new opportunities to take advantage of the more extensive integration points offered by the building block technology.

Speakers:
John C. Calvin, Systems Architect, University of Toronto

The University of Toronto, Canada's largest university, completely redesigned its Blackboard back-end infrastructure last summer. Problem diagnosis was the primary goal. Since many production issues could not be replicated in our Quality Assurance (QA) environment, it became necessary to treat the entire production platform as a live experiment. Careful physical installation, an extremely sophisticated network design, and comprehensive system instrumentation of every component exposed areas of concern for investigation. Cabling and labeling matter. Learn why.