Exhibition Hall

I also went around the exhibition hall last night for an hour and a half or so to talk to our favourite sponsors. I picked up some learning object creators sample disks for you Robin, and I talked to the Kadoo folks, who have refined who you can share your stuff with so it can work with Blackboard permissions. However, when I tried to actually create an account (without Blackboard) it didn't like the BbWorld access code, so I'll point that out to them today and see if I can get one set up.

Learning Objects mentioned some interesting stuff. Podcasts as part of Expo is supposed to be coming out really soon (I thought it was already out though?), something about it being in late beta. They also seemed to have another option they are pursuing where you can have a separate, hosted blog/wiki/podcast site. The main reasons for doing this I think were because PowerLinks (and hence old WebCT) couldn't support a lot of their stuff. Did have lots of things like better permissions and drag and drop for the organisation of your blogs and wikis. Worth keeping an eye on, though I don't know what it will really look like for Bb.

Blackboard seems to be promoting Blackboard Sync and a new tool called Blackboard ProEd. I'm not sure the name is the best, as it makes it sound like the rest of Blackboard is Anti-Ed. I think it's supposed to be for delivering professional education, but not quite sure why that is radically different than other forms of education, unless they mean staff development. I'll take a closer look sometime today or tomorrow.

As an aside, I noticed someone at Blackboard referred to a restaurant called "Carnevino" (meaning meat and wine) as "Carvenino" (which looks a lot like carves children, and gives the restaurant a bit of a creepy feel).