A Hip, New Blackboard

Today brought the long-awaited release of the much hyped Blackboard 9. According to Inside Higher Ed, early reviewers are impressed with its snazzier, cleaner look and easily-modified login pages. This version also allows those who loathe change to choose different looks instead, such as older versions of Blackboard and the clunky WebCT templates (these are starting to seem almost retro now). Also - cool changes in the interface itself, allowing course designers to click and drag elements around on the page. What I like most, though, is the integration with social tools, such as FaceBook - students can get reminders of test and assignment due dates at their favorite social sites without entering Blackboard. Blackboard 9 would probably be the most exciting new technology I've seen all week if my husband hadn't come home with a Wii Fit the other day.

Nicenet Still Free and Easy

When we were first looking into purchasing WebCT or some other CMS 10 years ago, we discovered a simple, free tool called Nicenet Internet Classroom Assistant - brand new at that time. Clean and simple, Nicenet allows you to set up a quick online class in about 10 minutes. Features include a forum, a calendar, link sharing, document sharing and a list of class members. We used it for our very first online course, and with its lack of integration with dozens of other tools and cumbersome administrative side, I'm glad to see it's still available, still used, still free, and very much like it was 10 years ago. With a name like Nicenet, how can it not be friendly?