Project Blackbird: Deploying Condor in a Blackboard Environment (EDUCAUSE Quarterly. Key Takeaways Breaking down operational silos through collaboration across organizations enables creative new uses of existing technology. Clemson University’s lead Blackboard system administrator solved a significant operational problem through innovative application of Condor software, originally employed for high-performance research computing. Users and system administrators both benefited from Blackbird, which reduced the time needed for archiving Blackboard courses by 65 percent. Clemson University implemented Condor architecture on the Blackboard learning management system (LMS) application servers in order to gain higher throughput when processing Blackboard course archives.
This article describes archiving Blackboard course data at Clemson, the implementation environment for Condor, and the broader significance to the campus community of breaking down operational silos. Blackboard Course Archiving The Growing Challenge of Archiving Blackboard Courses Figure 1. Condor to the Rescue. 7 things you should know about data visualization 2. 7 Things You Should Know About Cloud Computing. 7 Things You Should Know About Podcasting | EDUCAUSE CONNECT. "Podcasting" refers to any software and hardware combination that permits automatic downloading of audio files to an MP3 player for listening at the user's convenience.
Part of the appeal of podcasting is the ease with which audio content can be created, distributed, and downloaded from the Web. Barriers to adoption and costs are minimal, and the tools to implement podcasts are simple and affordable. Podcasting allows education to become more portable than ever before, giving educators another way to meet today's students where they live and learn—on the Internet and on audio players. The "7 Things You Should Know About... " series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning practices and technologies. Each brief focuses on a single practice or technology and describes what it is, how it works, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning.