Blackboard and the Library

I gave a presentation this morning to a group of library staff here at Bond. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was asked to 'talk about Blackboard' sometime late last year. Rather than give a very dry explanation of the Blackboard implementation project and the nuts and bolt of the roll-out, I decided to take a page from Presentation Zen and try my best to deliver 'inspiration over information', while making sure that the main points still came across. There was some great discussion after the presentation and a few excited-looking faces, which was pretty good for a 9am start! I was impressed by the types of suggestions that came from the librarians, reinforcing my belief that there are some seriously switched-on people within the profession.

Talking with a colleague afterwards, I commented on how managing an LMS in Bond's environment was going to be very different doing it in the large public universities I'm used to. One of the things I've noticed here is the volume of creative ideas for using Blackboard that are being raised already. I'm finding myself regularly saying "What a great idea! I haven't heard of Blackboard being used to do that before, but I'm pretty sure it can." And the thing isn't even live yet. Just imagine what ideas will come up once people actually become familiar with the system. I can't wait.