Unsure about how to upgrade from Wimba or Elluminate Live to Blackboard Collaborate 11 or 12? I participated in a panel presentation at Blackboard Collaborate Connections Summit along with Sarah Crawley, Dan Lim, Robin Smith, and David Tao where we shared our experiences about their upgrade processes. Here are my slides from my portion of the presentation. Blackboard Collaborate Upgrade Panel - Upgrading to Blackboard Collaborate at NIU I mentioned the following available online resources during my presentation: Faculty Preview Session Survey of Existing NIU Faculty Wimba Users More info about Blackboard Collaborate at NIU

I am happy to announce that we will be hosting our second event of the year in London. It will be a half-day event starting in the afternoon on September 17th. We’re excited to have Macmillan Digital Education as co-organiser of the event by our side, once again. Therefore, we decided the Macmillan London campus in Kings Cross would be the appropriate location for the event. This event is free to attend for ticket holders which wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of our event partners busuu and Speexx, and our special thanks goes to them. Sell Tickets Online through Eventbrite Together with our speakers and panelists we will be looking at the vast topic of "Multilingualism in Europe", and include different perspectives to give our audience a comprehensive overview of the challenges and opportunities in different European markets including the UK, the German-speaking and Scandinavian countries. Below you find our programme for the event separated into three stages from pre-coverage, over the day of the event, to the whitepaper which will conclude the topic. Pre-Coverage As we cannot possibly touch upon every aspect of this large topic during the event itself, we chose to help our audience, and everybody interested in the topic of language learning in Europe, prepare themselves for the the event through our pre-coverage in this specially designed channel on EDUKWEST. Our pre-coverage is a series of articles, OP-EDs and interviews from and with people involved with the topic over the next four weeks, starting today with an OP-ED about language assessment co-authored by Voxy’s Paul Gollash and Katharine Nielson. Day of the Event Throughout the event we will be following different tracks including EU policy around "Mother Tongue +2" and how language learning is central to the EU’s language policy. We will be hearing about the impact of multilingualism on employability, how it creates cultural awareness and how this has direct implications for the workplace. These days everybody is talking about big data, and we want to explore the role data and analytics play in corporate and in-company language training. When it comes to language learning motivation is a vital factor. We will be exploring what motivates learners to start learning a second, third, or even more languages, what keeps them motivated throughout that process, and how technology can assist them reaching their goals. We will also not omit the discussion about the challenges language learning online is faced with when it comes to data protection and security, and what the differences in different European countries regarding the importance of data protection are. Whitepaper The discussions and findings of the event as well as the challenges that hinder the implementation of multilingualism in some European countries will be processed and published in a whitepaper following the event itself. The final programme of the event as well as the full list of speakers will be announced within the next week. I am very much looking forward to seeing you all on September 17th in London.

During this presentation at BbWorld 2012, my colleague from NIU, Vance Moore, and I were joined by Rajeev Arora, V.P. for Marketing & Strategy at Blackboard Collaborate, and discussed how NIU has harnessed the power of multiple Blackboard platforms to create a smooth-yet-powerful online learning environment. Northern Illinois University: Success with Blackboard Collaborate, Blackboard Learn, Blackboard Mobile, and More! We mentioned the following online resources (and included links in the provided slides) during the presentation: Teaching with Blackboard at NIU NIU Faculty Development Online Programs NIU Faculty Development Program Archives Faculty Preview of Blackboard Collaborate 11 Survey of Existing Faculty Wimba Classroom Users More info about Blackboard Collaborate at NIU NIU Mobile App Designing a Mobile-Friendly Blackboard Course More info about Blackboard Mobile Learn at NIU Blackboard Faculty Quick Guides NIU Faculty Development Blog Teaching with Blackboard Podcast

Editor's Note: This post is co-authored by Paul Gollash, founder and CEO of Voxy and Katharine Nielson, chief education officer at Voxy. English language learning is fraught with ineffective products and failed instructional approaches, complicated by disparate proficiency scales and non-standard interpretations of terms like "intermediate" and "advanced." This leads to confusion about what results learners should expect after language study. It also contributes to unclear guidelines for stakeholders who evaluate learners’ proficiency, from university admissions offices to future employers. Testing monopolies, such as ETS are now unreliable. Learners have been caught cheating the system and paying for their results, and oftentimes high scorers cannot communicate adequately, while those with poor scores can easily accomplish tasks in English. Additionally, commonly used tests such as TOEFL, TOEIC, IELTS, and PTE rely on different proficiency scales which makes it impossible to understand the scores of one in terms of another. Unifying scales, such as Pearson’s Global Scale of English, are a step in the right direction; however, we need to move beyond standardized tests that look at "global proficiency," and build new tests that actually identify what learners can and cannot accomplish in their target languages. We need to radically re-think how we test our learners. Since the real stakeholders in language proficiency are the interlocutors with whom learners communicate, the tasks and conversations that they need should form the basis of a truly innovative and more meaningful proficiency assessment. These stakeholders, such as the employer who needs a new hire to speak effectively with customers, or the new friend who needs to make weekend dinner plans with a language learner, or the lover who needs to be able to understand his partner’s feelings, possess the only real rubric that matters when it comes to measuring proficiency. So what do these new assessments look like? Well, to start with, they need to be grounded in what a learner needs to do in the real world. In the immortal words of Ferris Beuller, "You can’t eat an irregular verb." In other words, whether or not learners can identify the appropriate relative pronoun to fill in a blank likely has nothing to do with how well they will do in a college admissions interview or when buying a plane ticket on their first hard-earned vacation to an English-speaking country. The future of assessments, and in our opinion the future of all education, lies in project-based assessments. With project-based assessments, which simulate or otherwise model the actual experiences that a language learner will have, we can more closely and accurately evaluate the true competency of a learner. Learners' real-life performances on well-defined tasks will be the ultimate measure of their success, and the strong, clear signal of their proficiency. Up until now, this type of task-based assessment at scale has been elusive; by its very nature, task-based assessment is personalized and high-touch. Because each learner will have unique needs, he or she will also require a unique assessment. And while some tasks, like completing online forms or opening online bank accounts, can be easily simulated and scored by computer, others, such as answering interview questions appropriately or giving a business presentation, require at least one (if not multiple) human raters to guarantee that the assessment is valid and is scored reliably. However, recent technological advances have helped pave the way for personalized, adaptive instruction, and are poised to do the same for personalized assessment. And when a language learner can offer a potential employer a certification that he or she can successfully negotiate a simulated deal--rather than a piece of paper with a random score on his or her listening proficiency--the archaic field of language testing will finally live up to its potential. Picture License  Some rights reserved by Walter Parenteau

It is quite fascinating to follow Myanmar’s rise as a tech, edtech and thus startup destination in general these days given that the reign of the military junta only ended in 2011. As Myanmar is now slowly opening itself to new influences, the first telecommunications companies entered the country just about two and a half years ago. Sure, all in all we should be careful in making assumptions too quickly as the country is still in the very early stages of its modern development. Nevertheless, there are a number of indicators that confirm how the country might leapfrog some of the stages developing countries usually go through when it comes to technology. An Untapped Market The Asian Development Bank estimates a population of 61 million with an average annual GDR (PPP) of $1,711 per capita. With a very young population, 47% are under the age of 24, Myanmar is poised to adopt technology very quickly if this technology and the infrastructure are available and affordable. Mobile First Unlike following the traditional path over using a desktop computer or laptop over to owning a feature phone, and then smartphone or tablet like in many African countries or in India for instance, Myanmar’s population is pushing for a mobile first strategy. Although today only about 10% of the population own a mobile phone (and even fewer a tablet) and SIMs as well as data usage is expensive, there is fierce competition among telcos from around the world to establish themselves in the country, which will drive down prices eventually. So far Qatari company Ooredoo and Norwegian company Telenor were successful with bids for licenses some 14 months ago. Ooredoo has established a 3G network in the country. Half of Myanmar’s mobile internet users came online in the last year. 49% of internet users only use a mobile phone to access the web. Android Rules When it comes to smartphones Chinese-built Android phones that are priced around $50 are the weapon of choice. One the one hand, this is little of a surprise when we think about affordability, on the other hand $50 is not cheap when the average purchasing power doesn’t exceed $1,700. Maybe even more surprising is that people are willing to spend around $200 for a SIM (down from more than $2,000 on the blackmarket just some years ago). Social Networks Viber looks like an early winner in the messaging app space having a market share of 79% compared with Facebook Messenger which comes in second with 27% market share. That said, half of the respondents in the survey say they use Facebook, and 31% use YouTube. Education and EdTech In Myanmar a huge gap exists between highly educated and qualified people, often returning back home after having worked abroad, and the vast majority of people who often lack employability skills, admittedly something we in the West also have only started to work on more intensely in the past 12 to 18 months. English language skills, or the lack of, are another challenge. But, again, the good news is that people are willing to invest in their education and skills, and this is something we see in all the developing countries. What we see improve in the general field of tech will also translate into edtech. Investments The International Development Association (IDA) finances an $80 million credit for the country, another $20 million come from the Government of Australia through the Myanmar Partnership Multi-Donor Trust Fund. This new funding will improve and expand the Myanmar Government’s School Grants Program and Student Stipends Program with the objective to provide a quality education to all citizens. Another player in Myanmar’s education sector is Japan which just recently signed a memorandum of understanding on establishing Asia Specialty Education Center (ASEC), aiming at promoting cooperation in technological training between Myanmar and Japan. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) wants to help improve Myanmar's education status through an investment of $24.5 million. EdTech Startups A first example for educational app development is and an iPad app called Phew that helps young learners write the characters of the Burmese language. Revo Tech, the company behind Phew, plans to release more educational apps in the future. Of course, iPad users are a rare species in Myanmar when you compare with my statements above. On the other hand, the Google Play Store for Android apps is not (yet) available. Nevertheless this can be seen as a first step toward broader adoption which will happen eventually through increased competition and therefore decreasing cost of being connected and owning a device. Below you find a list of articles, giving you further insight in the market. Further Reading Students in Myanmar to Benefit from World Bank-Supported Project | World Bank Myanmar, Japan to establish Asia specialty education center | globalpost Myanmar poised to have ‘60 million citizens come online almost overnight’ | Tech in Asia Myanmar’s new mobile internet users embrace Android smartphones, pick Viber over Facebook | Tech in Asia Geeks in frontier markets: Myanmar is a sexy place to be in right now | e27 Startup aims at Myanmar’s youngest of early adopters with educational iPad app | Tech in Asia Picture: "Uppatasanti Pagoda-02" by DiverDave (talk) Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Working in a vacuum can be daunting. Who do you turn to for best practices in teaching and learning, for advice when a challenge arises, or to assist you in managing change? More than 1500 of your peers turn to a Blackboard User Group! During this panel presentation at BbWorld 2012, my colleagues Cheryl Boncuore, Ken Sadowski, Heath Tuttle, and I shared about the professional and personal benefits received from participating in a Blackboard User Group (SLATE - Supporting Learning And Technology in Education). Group leader, Ken Sadowski - winner of a 2011 Catalyst Award winner for Community Collaboration - has nurtured this 10-year old Midwest User Group from its humble beginnings to over 80 member institutions. Slides and other resources shared during the presentation are at www.slategroup.org/bbw12 To learn more about SLATE or to become involved, visit www.slategroup.org

Since the advent of VoIP, countless edtech startups have tried to leverage the technology to build learning platforms that connect learners and teachers from across the world. Most of these early startups are long gone but thanks to faster Internet connections, better hardware, new protocols like WebRTC and video calls entering the mainstream, live video lessons have seen a renaissance. ClassDo is one of those new startups aiming to build a global marketplace for lessons of all kind. Based in Tokyo but with an international team, ClassDo has attracted users from all continents mainly through word of mouth. Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing. ClassDo enables teachers and students from 100+ countries to discover each other, for live face-to-face online lessons. While many education solutions are single country or single region, ClassDo truly removes all country and currency barriers - It provides seamless payments among teachers and students worldwide by unifying disparate currencies into one global standard of "lesson credits", multilingual support, and also supporting low bandwidth countries for video chatting and book sharing without any software installation. ClassDo is also part of the very disruptive "Sharing economy" movement. In the same way that Uber allows people to share their cars without being part of a taxi company and AirBnB allows people to share their homes without working for a real estate firm, ClassDo allows teachers to set up their own online without being hired by a school. Who are the founders, how did you meet, what are your different roles in the startup. Chiew Farn Chung - CEO Brief profile : Wrote first program at age 13, represented Singapore for International Computer Programming Competition at age 15. More than 10 years of business/tech experience at Japanese manufacturers and top tier global investment banks. Edward Middleton - CTO Brief profile : President of the Tokyo Linux Users Group since 2007. Open source contributor. Expert in scaling large server architectures. Yee Whye Teh - CSO (Chief Scientific Officer - Algorithms) Brief profile : Professor of Statistical Machine Learning at Oxford University. Research papers quoted 7000 times according to Google Scholar. Edward & Chiew have both been members of the Tokyo Linux Users Group for more than a decade. Yee Whye & Chiew have been schoolmates since 13 years old. What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve. 3 problems : You cannot find someone with the relevant knowledge around you ClassDo allows you unfettered access to any teacher/knowledge across 100+ countries. Timezones are automatically converted for you, and you don't have to worry about payments in a foreign currency. Too narrow a definition of "online education" Education is not just about STEM subjects or languages. It's knowledge - a local indonesian who advise you on the best homestay experience, a chef who can advise you on how to open a Japanese restaurant, someone who can help you publish your first book etc. No tech skills or too much administrative work ClassDo is designed based on the "it just works" mantra. No installation needed. Searching, Booking, Classrooms and Payments are all integrated and automated - just concentrate on the lesson. In which markets / regions are you active. What markets / regions are next. ClassDo's users are not concentrated in any single region but instead distributed evenly across all five major continents. North America (19%), South America (9%), Europe (16%), East Asia (25%), South East Asia (18%), Africa (4%), and Middle East (8%). Who is your target audience. Students - who are seeking knowledge, but cannot find a suitable teacher around them. Or cannot be bothered to search on badly done individual pages/forums/blogs around the web for someone. Teachers - who want to offer their knowledge globally, not just to students around them. But has no technical skills to set up their own online school, or cannot handle the admin work involved in global payments. On ClassDo, a user can be both a student and a teacher - learning something new while teaching something they have expertise on. How do you engage with your target audience. How do you convert them into users of your product. Each user have their own "portal" - their very own online school. For example user "Kirsten"'s portal will be http://kirsten.class.do Teachers - invite them to set up their own online school on the ClassDo platform Students - allow them to discover all these online schools that teachers have set up. What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost. Teachers do not pay any fees or commissions. Students buy credits to take paid lessons. The more credits they buy at a time, the cheaper each credit costs. ClassDo earns a small amount to run servers when students purchase credits. If you raised funding, how much did you raise. Who are your investors. If not, are you planning to raise funding. Completely bootstrapped at this point. Since inception, we make a profit for every paid lesson. Some world-class investors have gotten in touch with us. We are very interested in finding a good partner to grow. Are there milestones you are especially proud of and would like to share. 80% of ClassDo's users are via word of mouth. We grew to 100+ countries since launching 19 months ago. We were actually caught by surprise and had to scramble to cope with the growth. ClassDo staff speaks 12 different languages. We got ClassDo's video chat technology to work in developing countries. Teachers in Kenya for example, are earning money from the developed world by offering their knowledge, without having to leave the country to become a migrant worker. What are the next steps in growing your startup. Enable more teachers and students around the world to discover each other. Links classdo.com | Twitter

Here’s a quick recap of a few of the highlights from day 1 of BbWorld 2012… I missed the flash mob, and if you did too, here you can check it out…

This video was shown to kick-off the Blackboard Corporate keynote at BbWorld 2012 and exemplifies the challenges and opportunities in serving active learners in the 21st century>

To start off the coverage for our September event on multilingualism in Europe, we chose an Infographic from movehub.com which illustrates the respective second language for every European country. A few of the findings come as little of a surprise. Of course, English is a strong second language in many countries in Europe including France, the Scandinavian countries with the exception of Finland and Italy. Russian has also maintained its strong position in several of the Eastern European countries including the Baltic states and the Ukraine. What is maybe even more interesting, certainly with regards to our event, is the role immigration plays. We can see this historically in the example of Finland where a small however influential Swedish minority has established Swedish as an official language that Finnish pupils are required to learn as a first foreign language in elementary school. Our presenter Niss Jonas Carlsson of Brain Glass is going to explain the challenges involved for Finland more in detail in his presentation and will also introduce us to the challenges Sweden is faced with when it comes to language learning, not the Swedes having difficulties learning English but immigrants to the country learning Swedish. More recently and economically motivated is the boom of English language learning and teaching in Poland. And since so many Poles have migrated to Britain, Polish has become the strongest second language in the country. A third example for the impact of immigration on language is the strong Turkish population in both Germany and Austria which Kirsten will give you some information about, especially in the context of requested linguistic proficiency in German for family reunifications. All in all, we can conclude that there is far more linguistic variety in Europe than English only which can be explained by a plethora of historic and cultural relations that make Europe this multilayered and interesting continent it is. However, English, French and Russian being the top three second languages in Europe is mirrored worldwide with English taking the top spot (55 countries), then French (14 countries) and Russian (13 countries).