Blackboard Collaborate Boosts Support for Sakai and Moodle
Blackboard has released updates to Elluminate Live and Wimba Classroom, two software tools that make up its Collaborate suite.
Collaborate is Blackboard's online platform for education that includes Web conferencing, virtual whiteboarding, instant messaging, message boards, podcasting, and other collaborative tools. It also offers an integrated gradebook and integration with learning management systems, including Blackboard Learn.
The new updates add or enhance integration between Live and two popular open source learning management systems, Moodle and Sakai. With the updates, Live gains new capabilities within Moodle, including backup and recovery, as well as an overall enhanced workflow. It also enhances Live's support for Sakai with "an improved user interface, the ability to obtain external recording links and an option to add unregistered guest users to a session," according to information released by Blackboard.
Wimba Classroom 6.1 also adds support for Moodle, including "granular security and video setting controls within the system interface," blackboard reported.
Further details and demo software can be found on the Blackboard Collaborate portal.
| Editor's note: This article has been modified since its original publication to correct the version number of Wimba Classroom update in paragraph 4. [Last updated May 17, 2011 at 8:49 a.m.] --David Nagel |