Who invented blackboard online

Blackboard, in recent years, has been growing out other products and services to help the company break free from its reputation as just an LMS provider. That notion gave rise to Blackboard Ally for accessible content, Blackboard Collaborate for conferencing and engagement, SafeAssign for plagiarism detection services, Blackboard Analytics for insights about student learning patterns and others. Then, about two-and-a-half years ago, the company realized that it should incorporate all of its tools into a single offering — similar to the way Microsoft began offering Microsoft Office as a packaged deal.

Instructure has begun to expand to other offerings as well. Arc , for example, is a video and audio collaboration tool from Instructure, and Gauge is an online testing and assessment service primarily for K Close Ad. Continue to EdScoop. Setting a tone in the cloud Hosting everything in the cloud, as it turned out, would give Canvas an edge. As Joshua Kim so astutely points out , if Blackboard can integrate its stack, then perhaps that moves into the realm of possibility. Fifteen years ago, my close friend Matt Pittinsky and I, not long out of college, started a company with the idea that technology could transform education.

We had big ideas and lots of youthful ambition. Those dreams and that ambition grew into Blackboard — a company that today supports tens of thousands of clients around the world helping them bring teaching and learning online. We now offer a range of products and services to support education needs at all levels: from commercial to open source and from K to higher education and beyond. And we will continue to make big investments in the next generation of solutions for education.

Today Blackboard is in a clear leadership position and will continue to grow and help clients in new ways for many years to come. While it has been a great privilege to lead the company for so long, the Board of Directors and I have decided that now is the right time to bring on a new CEO to help the company take the next steps to carry this vision forward. The invention of the blackboard had an enormous impact on classroom efficiency.

Due to their simplicity, effectiveness, economy and ease of use, the simple blackboard and its cousin the whiteboard have substantial advantages over any number of more-complex modern technologies. Blackboard classroom history begins, in rudimentary form, in ancient times. Students in ancient Babylonia and Sumeria inscribed their lessons on clay tablets with a stylus predecessor to the pen and pencil in cuneiform writing.

These could be used wet and erased to be used again, or baked to create a permanent document. In India in the 11th century, teachers used something similar to personal blackboards in their lessons. At the end of the 18th century, students in Europe and America were still using individual slates made of actual slate or pieces of wood coated with paint and grit and framed with wood.