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What are you taking home as the big story of BbWorld 2012? At this point (Wednesday night) I have 3 main takeaways.

The big news (thanks Kayvon Beykpour!) from Wednesday's multi-speaker keynote at BbWorld (#BbW12) is that in September, students will have the capability of taking their mobile learning destiny into their own hands. Presently, mobile options for students who wish to use Mobile Learn exist at the institutional level.

Following on from yesterday's post, and reflecting on posts dating from February, it strikes me that Greenback U's overriding concept of sustainability frames it as a technological problem. But, while we have a number of very-good technologically-oriented academic programs, we have far more departments, faculty and students who focus on the arts, the humanities and the social sciences. Maybe that's part of the reason that the sustainability issue has such a hard time getting traction around here.

When I pitched this series of “Postcards from the Participatory” back in November of 2011, I'd intended it to be a small collection of narratives exploring Massive Open Online Courses from the inside.

My conclusions from day one of BbWorld, after listening to a range of Blackboard leaders and managers, are as follows:

When I first started chatting with David Marr at this year's Blackboard Education Technology Conference* (also known as Bb World or #BbW12 on Twitter) I was immediately intrigued by how much he sounded like someone who really "got" Student Affairs. Marr, the President of Blackboard's Transact platform, spoke to me about student engagement, financial aid, the admissions funnel, retention, auxiliary services, strategic enrollment management, campus cards, and Student Affairs advancement.

On the last day of school, my daughter’s grade one teacher invited parents to attend a class awards ceremony. Each of the twenty-one children in her class was presented with a unique award. Although my attention was at first fully focused on my daughter (a writing award!), I was especially happy for a boy who received recognition for his ability to identify more bugs, birds, and reptiles than the teacher. It made my heart soar that she’d singled out the importance of the boy’s identification skills, especially in a world where people increasingly place little value on knowing what lives around them.

Back in the day, music was expensive and books were cheap. A cassette (ahem) ran almost $15 and then a CD was at least $20. My books were (usually) paperbacks for less than $10. The library was also well-stocked with books that I wanted, while the music selection was less impressive. So my music collection largely consisted of mixed tapes I recorded off the radio and copies of the tapes of my friends. If there was a particularly expensive hardcover book I wanted, I would either get it from the library and buy it later in paperback or ask for it as a gift. We owned a lot of books in my house growing up (a lot of vinyl records, too), so it’s of little surprise that you would find me at swim meets plugged into my walkman, reading.