Today, Blackboard issued a press release announcing a new free application, Blackboard Sync, to connect students to their campus Blackboard information within the social-networking site,?Facebook.
Students who elect to use Blackboard Sync can receive information on new assignments, discussion board postings, course materials, and even new grades while logged on to their Facebook accounts.
...In addition, students can easily find and connect with their classmates on Facebook, giving them the ability to turn routine social interactions into social learning opportunities. With millions of students using both their Blackboard system and the Facebook Web site every day, Blackboard Sync enables students to learn more about their classmates through their profiles and to leverage their Facebook accounts to create and join online and offline networks and groups to collaborate and study together.
The application does not pull information from Blackboard. Instead, it pushes a message to the student announcing that new information is available on Blackboard. Students can then login to their campus Blackboard to receive the information. Each campus that uses Blackboard has the ability to prevent the application from connecting to their network.
One of the most popular feature of Blackboard Sync is expected to be "Roster", which will allow students to immediately see the available Facebook photos/profiles of the other students in the courses for which they are registered.
Interestingly, while the news appeared in various higher education online journals, reader reactions varied. At the time I posted this entry, there were no comments on The Chronicle of Higher Education article (subscription required), "Blackboard Unveils Application to Bring Course Updates to Facebook", while Inside Higher Education's article, "Facebook, meet Blackboard", was getting some lively comments. The story was also covered by the Washington Biz Journal, "New free Blackboard application links homework to Facebook."
Inside Higher Education's article made a very interesting observation:
Meanwhile, technology companies ? including Facebook ? are beginning to realize that the key to expanding social networking?s reach is to open such connections to other platforms and to bring content to where users already are, rather than add to a growing number of Web sites (with their own usernames and logins) with separate profiles and lists of friends.
While the application currently supports only the Facebook connection, the company has indicated that there may be other uses for it in the future, including possible integration with mobile devices.
Blackboard Sync is part of Blackboard Beyond, a larger initiative that includes Scholar, a social bookmarking tool. For more information about Blackboard Sync, visit http://blackboard.com/communities/beyond.
What do you think of this development?
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