My BFO – Blackboard may be a Learning Management System, but it remains teacher-centered and not learning-centered.

Now, I am not a Blackboard basher…I have enjoyed using Blackboard for six years. But it does have limitations, and one of them is that it lags the rest of the edtech world in features, particularly those associated with Web 2.0.

I was creating some discussion forums and saw that our upgrade to Bb 7.3 this past May had added a new feature – “tagging”

Well all right now!!!

Tagging is an essential component of user-generated material on the web, and is part of what makes Flickr, YouTube, SlideShare, and Delicious work so well. As described in Delicious (relating to bookmarks, but the same principle applies to pictures, videos, posts, etc.):

“A tag is simply a word you can use to describe a bookmark. Unlike folders, you make up tags when you need them and you can use as many as you like. The result is a better way to organize your bookmarks and a great way to discover interesting things on the Web.”

I thought – “Cool, now students can tag their posts and search other posts using tags!” This would be folksonomy at work in my class!

Wrongo!

What I soon learned when I tried out a few threads is that students cannot tag anything, nor can the instructor while replying. It is only when the instructor collects multiple threads that a tag can be added. While this has some marginal usage, it remains Web 1.0 in philosophy. I put tags on my blog posts and appreciate when others do the same. Students have learned to search using tags. Blackboard apparently allows students to search by tags, but only the tags that the instructor has put in on the threads the instructor chooses. This is NOT a folksonomy, but a very teacher-centered approach.

I’ll still use Blackboard…but in many cases it will be a springboard to jump out of into the interactive world wide web…where I can turn students loose and watch the learning occur!

{Photo Credit: shoebappa – Nice picture that combines the concepts of “Blinding Flash” and “NAVY”!}