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Blackboard Announces Support for e-Readers

Wednesday 15. July 2009 - Blackboard Building Block Lets Students View Texts, Course Materials on Kindle

Blackboard Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBB), a global leader in education technology, today announced the launch of a Blackboard Building Block(TM) for e-readers that enables instructors and students to view course texts and materials on e-readers that are becoming increasingly popular in educational and training settings.

The Blackboard Building Block for e-Readers is part of Blackboard’s Next Generation roadmap for e-learning to enable teaching and learning to be accessible across multiple devices beyond the Internet and personal computers.

The Building Block currently supports the Kindle(TM) wireless reader device from Amazon.com, Inc. that downloads books, blogs, magazines and newspapers to a high-resolution electronic display. The Blackboard Building Block has been made available for free under an open source license to the Blackboard client community.

With the Blackboard Building Block, instructors and learners can select course texts, documents and other material from the Blackboard Learn(TM) platform and send to a Kindle device utilizing the Kindle Personal Document Service, enabling them to easily read and review a vast amount of information on campus, at home, at work or on the go.

“Teachers and students at all levels are beginning to embrace the ease of use and simplicity of e-readers,” said Michael L. Chasen, President and CEO of Blackboard. “With stronger support for e-textbooks and e-readers, mobile learning becomes a reality for students who can carry a wealth of academic texts and other information in the palm of their hand wherever they go.”

In May, Amazon.com unveiled an updated version of the Kindle with a larger screen which is intended to better support use by students and faculty. The company also announced partnerships with several leading textbook publishers and several colleges and universities who will begin using the updated Kindle device this fall.

The announcement of Blackboard’s Building Block for e-Readers was made at BbWorld , the annual meeting of Blackboard’s user and developer communities, and coincides with the launch of the Blackboard’s Extensions(TM) Web site. At the site, the Blackboard Building Block joins hundreds of free, paid and open source applications built by Blackboard developers, institutions and third parties to extend and enhance the Blackboard platform, as well as a wealth of digital content and multimedia resources made available by Blackboard’s content partners. Blackboard clients can now access all active extensions through one portal, allowing users to customize and enhance their learning platform and find solutions to unique problems.