THE WORD PROCESSOR

Word processor as being "a computer program for writing, editing, revising, formatting, and printing text" and they claim that it can overcome many of the mechanical problems associated with typing as:

• mistakes can be corrected on the screen
• there are no errors in the final copy
• complex editing such as repositioning blocks of text can be done with a few keystrokes
• there is no need to retype because of an error
• once typed, anything that is correct will not need typing again
• all changes can be accomplished with ease and features such as boldfacing, justification, etc. Become possible (Lockard et al. 1994, 30).



The Writing Process

A word processor is a computer application that allows text to be entered and stored in a computer file. This text can be changed and formatted in a variety of ways. It would, therefore, appear to be ideal for use in the writing process where children have the opportunity to do all their writing at the computer. In this way, the first draft could be produced, reviewed, and the necessary changes made on the computer doing away with the need to completely re-write it. Once completed, the text could be printed out to produce a very professional product that does not bear any traces of correction.

Process writing has four stages, drafting, revising, editing and publishing (Forcier 1999, 130). If this is done by hand writing, students are going to quickly become bored with rewriting their document, but using the word processor, the document only has to be written once and then all the changes made to that and the final printout will bear no traces of all the alterations that have been made. This will, Forcier (1999, 130) suggests, encourage a far more positive attitude to writing and motivate students to experiment with language.

However, he warns that teachers need to guide the students' composition and provide the necessary feedback for revision. Roblyer, Edwards and Havriluk (1997, 130) note that the word processor can help the students (and teachers) produce documents with a better appearance, and this is, of course, a great advantage to students who have poor handwriting. They also point out that the use of the word processor makes sharing of materials easy; teachers can exchange lesson plans and other teaching materials on disc and change them to fit their own needs and students can share ideas and products among themselves.

Forcier (1999,130) states that students can also use the word processor for collaborative writing, a technique that allows more than one student to engage in a writing activity together. He outlines the stages in this process as:

• students agree on an outline
• parcel out the writing tasks
• written documents are merged
• students edit each other's work

When using the computer for this process, he suggests that the activities could be:

• Brainstorming
• Begin drafting on the computer
• After 15 to 20 minutes, students exchange places and continue writing where the previous student ended
• Edit work

He notes that there is now software available which allows for collaborative writing to take place over a network with students able to write and edit each other's work in real time (1999, 130), Microsoft Word can be used to 'track' changes. This shows additions, deletions and changes that different writers have made to a shared document.

However, while the word processor has a lot of potential to improve student's writing, I do not think that it should automatically be the main application to be used in a class. Unfortunately, the majority of schools do not have sufficient computers available to allow the entire writing process to take place at the computer and so the word processor is frequently only used at the publishing stage (I heard about one school where the children did not even do this; parents helpers typed the children's work into the word processor and the children got a printed copy of it -- they did not even see the computer). This obviously negates most of the advantage of using it.

From a personal point of view, I could not survive without a word processor. Since starting to use one, I believe that my writing has improved, but this process did not take place overnight. When I started, I was much more concerned with operating the computer than I was with what I was writing, but after about six months, I was familiar enough with the word processing package to start concentrating on my writing (today, with much more user-friendly software, this would be accomplished in a much shorter time).

I would suggest that for students' writing to improve through the use of the word processor, they must have frequent access to it and so the school must have sufficient resources to provide for this. Forcier (1999, 130) supports this view:
If students are to capitalize on the power of the word processor as a tool and employ it with confidence, they must develop an understanding of its application and a reasonably high level of skill in its use. Using this tool, they will enhance their written communication as they acquire and construct knowledge in various content areas.


Keyboard Skills

A further problem that arises when considering the use of the word processor is the lack of keyboard skills that most children have. I was given a typewriter when I was about eight and taught myself to type in my own peculiar way. With the advent of typing tutors for the computer, I set out to teach myself how to touch type, but it just would not work. When you have learnt bad habits, it is extremely difficult to 'un-learn' them. Inquiries have shown that students are now coming into the TAFE system to learn typing who have been using computers for some time and so have picked up bad keyboard skills and they cannot be taught to type correctly. In an age when keyboard skills are more important than they have ever been, we are producing a generation of kids who cannot learn to type properly.

A point to be considered is for how long typing skills will be necessary as processes such as voice recognition continue to improve. Maybe this will be another of the traditional skills that we can forget about.



Why keyboard skills should be taught

Keyboard skills should be taught at present for two reasons. The first is to ensure that students do not develop bad habits that will prevent them from learning to type when the time comes. The second is to ensure the efficient use of equipment; the lack of computers experienced by most schools is only compounded by students having poor keyboard skills as tasks that should be completed in a short time take much longer.

The question is, when should it be taught? I think that there are two different things that have to be considered. The first is basic keyboard layout and what the special keys do. This should be taught from whenever children start to use the keyboard. The second is typing skills. While there are varying arguments as to when this should be started (some teachers say that it can be taught at kindergarten, others say that children of this age are incapable of using a keyboard correctly), most people seem to agree that year three is a suitable starting point.

We did some work with year three students using a typing tutor and found it to be very successful; all the children learnt the home keys and how to use the other keys properly. However, after using the typing tutor, we asked them to use the word processor, and when they did so, they resorted to 'hunt and peck'. We could not find a way of overcoming this lack of transfer of skills between tasks. In hind sight, we were probably putting them into cognitive overload as we were asking them to think about the story they were writing, how to use the word processor, and to place their fingers on the correct keys. Something had to give and it was the correct fingering which was the least important aspect of the process.


At what age should children start word processing?

There is a range of ideas about this. Some suggest that children should use the word processor early in schooling leaving handwriting until motor skills have improved, while others take the opposite view and claim that it should not be used until children have mastered handwriting skills. In view of this Hunter, Benedict, and Bilan (1989 in Lockhart et al. 1994, 38) state that "Ultimately, individual teachers and schools must decide when to implement word processing, taking into account not only the appropriateness for the students but also the school's ability to provide sufficient computer access". Lockhart et al. (1994, 38) add that "Regardless of when it is introduced, word processing should support, enhance, and extend the curriculum, and should not become an isolated computer activity"




The effect of using the word processor on hand writing skills

Roblyer et al. (1997, 130) state that some educators feel that word processing will free students from the physical constraints of handwriting and enable them to advance more quickly in their written expression skills, others wonder about the impact of this early use on students. It may affect their willingness to spend time developing handwriting abilities and other activities requiring fine motor skills.

They state that there has been no research undertaken in regard to the effect of the word processor on handwriting but they claim that computer users state that their "handwriting isn't what it used to be" as there are infrequent opportunities to use these skills (1997, 130). It respects to the fine motor skills, it could be argued that using a mouse and other input devices could help to develop them.

Undoubtedly, an increased use of the word processor will bring about a deterioration of handwriting skills. However, we must ask whether it matters if our handwriting skills deteriorate or students do not develop good handwriting. While it will continue to be important for us to be able to write notes, how much public writing will we do by hand in the future? In a parch report one of my students wrote that the teacher of the class that she was observing said that there was not enough time to use the computer as the available time had to be used for learning more important things such as hand writing. Which will be the most important skill for the children in this class as workers in the Information Age to have, the ability to produce good handwriting or to be able to use a computer?

We must stop teaching the skills that we value, and teach those that will be of value to the students. This, of course, is easier said than done. The education system is one of the most inert systems that we have and it is very difficult to introduce changes to what is taught. A further constraint is that most parents have a conservative view of education and they are often the first to complain if the curriculum is changed so that children are no longer taught what and how they were taught.

TEACHING METHODS

• For effective teaching to take place a good method must be adopted by a teacher. A teacher has many options when choosing a style to teach by. The teacher may write lesson plans of their own, borrow plans from other teachers, or search online or within books for lesson plans. When deciding what teaching method to use, a teacher will need to consider students' background knowledge, environment, and learning goals. Teachers know that students learn in different ways but almost all children will respond well to praise. Students have different ways of absorbing information and of demonstrating their knowledge. Teachers often use techniques which cater to multiple learning styles to help students retain information and strengthen understanding. A variety of strategies and methods are used to ensure that all students have equal opportunities to learn. A lesson plan may be carried out in several ways: Questioning, explaining, modeling, collaborating, and demonstrating.
  
  Questioning
  A teaching method that includes questioning is similar to testing. A teacher may ask a series of questions to collect information of what students have learned and what needs to be taught. Testing is another method of questioning. A teacher tests the student on what was previously taught in order to identify if a student has learned the material. Standardized testing is in about every Middle School and High School. (i.e. Ohio Graduation Test (OGT), Proficiency Test, College entrance Tests (ACT and SAT). Before that we have to teach how to make questioner. If the questioner is perfect then this method will be effective.
  
  
  Explaining
  Another teaching method is explanation. This form is similar to lecturing. Lecturing is teaching, giving a speech, by giving a discourse on a specific subject that is open to the public, usually given in the classroom. This can also be associated with demonstrating and modeling. A teacher may use experimentation to demonstrate in a science class. A demonstration is the circumstance of proving conclusively, as by reasoning or showing evidence. Modeling is used as a visual aid to learning. Students can visualize an object or problem, then use reasoning and hypothesizing to determine an answer.
  
  Demonstrating
  Demonstrations are done to provide an opportunity in learning new exploration and visual learning tasks from a different perspective. Demonstrations can be exercised in several ways. Here Teacher will be also a participant. He will do the work with his/her Student for their help.
  
  Collaborating
  Students' working in groups is another way a teacher can enforce a lesson plan. Collaborating allows students to talk among each other and listen to all view points of discussion or assignment. It helps students think in an unbiased way. When this lesson plan is carried out, the teacher may be trying to assess the lesson of working as a team, leadership skills, or presenting with roles.
  
  
  
  
  Evolution of teaching methods
  
  Ancient education
  About 3000 BC, with the advent of writing, education became more conscious or self-reflection, with specialized occupations requiring particular skills and knowledge on how to be a scribe, an astronomer, etc.
  
  Philosophy in ancient Greece led to questions of educational method entering national discourse. In his Republic, Plato describes a system of instruction that he felt would lead to an ideal state. In his Dialogues, Plato describes the Socratic method.
  
  It has been the intent of many educators since then, such as the Roman educator Quintilian, to find specific, interesting ways to encourage students to use their intelligence and to help them to learn.
  
  
  Medieval education
  Comenius, in Bohemia, wanted all boys and girls to learn. In his The World in Pictures, he gave the first vivid, illustrated textbook which contained much that children would be familiar with in everyday life, and use it to teach the academic subjects they needed to know. Rabelais described how the student Gargantua learned about the world, and what is in it.
  
  Much later, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Emile, presented methodology to teach children the elements of science and much more. In it, he famously eschewed books, saying the world is one's book. And so Emile was brought out into the woods without breakfast to learn the cardinal directions and the positions of the sun as he found his way home for something to eat.
  
  There was also Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi of Switzerland, whose methodology during Napoleonic warfare enabled refugee children, of a class believed to be unteachable, to learn - and love to learn. He describes this in his account of the educational experiment at Stanz. He felt the key to have children learn is for them to be loved, but his method, though transmitted later in the school for educators he founded, has been thought "too unclear to be taught today". One result was, when he would ask, "Children, do you want to learn more or go to sleep?" they would reply, "Learn more!"
  
  
  19th century - compulsory education
  Main article: Prussian education system
  The Prussian education system was a system of mandatory education dating to the early 19th century. Parts of the Prussian education system have served as models for the education systems in a number of other countries, including Japan and the United States. The Prussian model had a side effect of requiring additional classroom management skills to be incorporated into the teaching process.
  
  
  20th century
  In the 20th century, the philosopher, Eli Siegel, who believed that all children are equally capable of learning regardless of ethnic background or social class, stated: "The purpose of all education is to like the world through knowing it." This is a goal which is implicit in previous educators, but in this principle, it is made conscious. With this principle at basis, teachers, predominantly in New York, have found that students learn the curriculum with the kind of eagerness that Pestalozzi describes for his students at Stanz centuries earlier.
  
  Many current teaching philosophies are aimed at fulfilling the precepts of a curriculum based on Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE). Arguably the qualities of a SDAIE curriculum are as effective if not more so for all 'regular' classrooms.
  
  Some critical ideas in today's education environment include:
  
  Instructional scaffolding
  Graphic organizers
  Standardized testing
  According to Dr. Shaikh Imran, the teaching methodology in education is a new concept in the teaching learning process. New methods involved in the teaching learning process are television, radio, computer, etc.
  
  Other educators believe that the use of technology, while facilitating learning to some degree, is not a substitute for educational method that brings out critical thinking and a desire to learn. Another modern teaching method is inquiry learning and the related inquiry-based science.
  
  Elvis H. Bostwick recently concluded Dr. Cherry's quantitative study "The Interdisciplinary Effect of Hands On Science", a three-year study of 3920 middle school students and their Tennessee State Achievement scores in Math, Science, Reading and Social Studies. Metropolitan Nashville Public School is considered urban demographically and can be compared to many of urban schools nationally and internationally. This study divided students on the basis of whether they had hands on trained teachers over the three-year period addressed by the study.
  
  Students who had a hands-on trained science teacher for one or more years had statistically higher standardized test scores in science, math and social studies. For each additional year of being taught by a hands-on trained teacher, the student's grades increased.
  
  
  21st century - rise of metacognition
  The latest teaching approaches encourage development of metacognition skills, and often leverage information available from neuropsychology studies.

MATHEMATICS

Mathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions.

There is debate over whether mathematical objects such as numbers and points exist naturally or are human creations. The mathematician Benjamin Peirce called mathematics "the science that draws necessary conclusions". Albert Einstein, on the other hand, stated that "as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

Through the use of abstraction and logical reasoning, mathematics evolved from counting, calculation, measurement, and the systematic study of the shapes and motions of physical objects. Practical mathematics has been a human activity for as far back as written records go (see: History of Mathematics). Rigorous arguments first appeared in Greek mathematics, most notably in Euclid's Elements. Mathematics continued to develop, in fitful bursts, until the Renaissance, when mathematical innovations interacted with new scientific discoveries, leading to an acceleration in research that continues to the present day

Today, mathematics is used throughout the world as an essential tool in many fields, including natural science, engineering, medicine, and the social sciences. Applied mathematics, the branch of mathematics concerned with application of mathematical knowledge to other fields, inspires and makes use of new mathematical discoveries and sometimes leads to the development of entirely new disciplines. Mathematicians also engage in pure mathematics, or mathematics for its own sake, without having any application in mind, although practical applications for what began as pure mathematics are often discovered later.

Blackboard system

A brief history of Blackboard.
Blackboard LLC was founded in 1997 by two education advisors, Matthew Pittinsky and Michael Chasen, as a consulting firm to provide technical standards for online learning applications. Blackboard LLC was contracted to the IMS Global Learning Consortium, a worldwide non-profit organization within the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative of Educause. Blackboard’s vision was to provide a user-friendly means by which college professors could put course information, including syllabi, reference sites, and study guides, on the Web.
In 1998, Blackboard merged with CourseInfo LLC, a course management software provider and startup company at Cornell University, and the merged company soon released their first software product for online learning. Blackboard’s continued growth and the expanding public profile was driven by acquisitions. In March 2000, Blackboard Inc. acquired the Richmond-base competitor MadDuck Technologies. In January 2001, Blackboard purchased CampusWide Access Solutions Inc. from AT&T and CEI SpecialTeams from iCollege Inc. In 2002, another online learning competitor, Promethius, was purchased from George Washington University, and then in 2003, the assets of the transaction system company, SA Cash, were acquired.
Finally, Blackboard released plans to raise up to $75 million in an initial stock offering and went public in June 2004. Since then, Blackboard Inc. Merged with the rival e-learning software company WebCT and together it is estimated they control up to 80 percent of the academic course management system market in North America. Blackboard is used by more than 70 percent of the U.S. colleges and universities named to theForbes.com Most Connected Campuses’ List. As of June 2006, the Blackboard empire includes over 12 million users in over 60 countries. Products are offered in 12 languages to over 2,200 learning institutions and contain more than 2,500 supplements from educational publishers. Blackboard Inc. (BBBB) is traded on the NASDAQ exchange and through the course of 2005, the trading price approximately doubled. With metrics like a renewal rate approaching 90 percent and a continued trend of moving clients from lower level services to higher level licenses, investors are positive on the prospects of Blackboard Inc.

Blackboard portfolio of products. Blackboard Inc. offers two comprehensive product lines which are termed the Networked Transaction Environment (NTE) and the Networked Learning Environment (NLE). [2,3] The NTE product is the Blackboard Commerce Suite which contains the Blackboard Transaction System, the Blackboard Community System and Bb One. The Blackboard Suite provides software for the establishment and functioning of universal financial and data accounts for students, faculty, and other members of the campus community, enabling clients to track commerce and access transactions on campus, off campus, and online within a one-card program. The NLE product is the Blackboard Academic Suite which contains the Blackboard Learning System, the Blackboard Community System and the Blackboard Content System. This single platform integrates data and applications for e-learning. The Blackboard Learning System is the heart of the NLE and it enables instructors to create and manage course matter, employ publisher content, communicate with students, and evaluate performance.

Benefits of the Blackboard Learning System
Students and faculty may benefit from course management systems such as the Blackboard Learning System. Potential benefits include: (1) increased availability, (2) quick feedback, (3) improved communication, (4) tracking, and (5) skill building.

Increased availability.
Blackboard can be accessed from the internet at anytime and anywhere. Students can retrieve all of their course materials including assignments, lecture notes, slides, internet hyperlinks, and audio/visual aids. They can submit their assignments as soon as they are complete. It is this accessibility that most appeals to students. In a 2004 survey conducted by Duke University, students were presented with a list of 10 Blackboard functions. The students were asked to select those functions that were most useful to them. The number one choice for 85% of students was “easy access to course materials and readings.” In 2005, Bowdoin College in Maine conducted a Blackboard Pilot Study of students in web-enhanced courses using Blackboard. Of the students who responded, 61% indicated that Blackboard was most helpful “in terms of increasing my access to course materials.” Availability is paramount for students.

Quick feedback.
There are two principal types of feedback provided to students via Blackboard: faculty-initiated feedback and automated feedback. Instant grading, and therefore instant feedback, can be provided when using Blackboard’s Test Manager function for quizzes and exams. If the instructor selects the appropriate feedback options, students can take their tests and have all objective-based questions graded and scores available immediately after they submit their responses. Even if there are essay questions on tests, which must be graded individually, students can see sample answers and thus have a good idea of their outcome on the test. Students can submit their homework assignments from anywhere and see if the assignments they have submitted have been graded. Using the Blackboard Gradebook, assignments can be returned to the students and grades can be viewed confidentially. Faculty using Blackboard can also get instant feedback through the Blackboard’s Survey option which allows students to respond immediately and anonymously to multiple choice or true-false questions about the class.

Improved communication.
There are several features of Blackboard that allow for communications with students. Four of the more distinctive options are announcements, discussions, virtual classroom, and email. The announcement function is available to students immediately after log on in the Blackboard system. This assures that all students are current and this minimizes administrative work for faculty. As for the discussion function, the literature indicates that asynchronous discussion within course management systems develops collegiality among students and provides a means of support for students. The Blackboard option, termed Post a Question, encourages students to respond to fellow students’ questions and allows instructor surveillance. The virtual classroom is a synchronous environment which supports text-based chat and allows live interaction among participants. The email option within Blackboard is very flexible. Each student’s email address can be stored within the student’s profile area. Blackboard provides the ability to send email to individual students, to groups of students, or to all students.

Tracking.
Blackboard tracks student usage of courses and posts these results in the course statistics area. Instructors can obtain statistics on all students or individual students within the course. Individual assignments can also be tracked. Date and time stamps are included in the Last Submitted/Modified section of the submitted assignment, allowing for easy identification of late assignments. Students can also track their own progress by viewing the Gradebook.

Skill building.
There are several additional skills that are promoted with the use of Blackboard. These skills include organization and time management, which go hand-in-hand in helping students carry out their assignments efficiently. Blackboard provides the ability to include a calendar for each course in which a student is enrolled, thus optimizing students’ efforts to match course expectations. Current entries for each course are displayed in the Welcome area that the student sees after login. All documents posted by the instructor can provide start and end dates and times. The use of these dates and times for all documents, including tests and assignments, encourages students to use their time wisely. Likewise, checking the Course Calendar or the Gradebook, where all assignments are listed, allows the student to allocate time efficiently. In summary, course management systems like the Blackboard Learning System are beneficial to student learning. Donna Patterson, Associate Administrator of Technology at Valparaiso University School of Law, summarized a survey in her paper encouraging faculty to use technology in teaching and stated the point well: “The students felt that technology helps them feel more organized, absorb more material, and decipher the information with greater ease. The number one response from the student surveys was that they find learning with technology more interesting than sitting in a classroom with a dry erase board.”

Drawbacks of the Blackboard Learning System
Some of the drawbacks or limitations associated with the Blackboard Learning System include:
(1) the software is harder to learn than expected, (2) certain options may be restricted to specific operating systems, (3) there are inefficiencies in bandwidth use when materials have to be downloaded every time access is sought, and (4) cost.

Blackboard is hard to learn
A survey of 730 faculty, staff and students in the University of Wisconsin System, the majority of who use Blackboard, found that course management systems are harder to learn to use than expected. The survey represented 10 percent of the total faculty and half of those using course management systems. Faculty members found course management systems “time-consuming and inflexible.” The study also found that despite expectations, many students were not proficient with the technology. A separate study, an evaluation of Blackboard as a platform for distance education delivery at Hampton University School of Nursing, found that the internet is often a new learning environment for those returning to University for graduate degrees. These non-traditional students are often older and less experienced with campus computational instruction tools than are resident students and find working with the online Blackboard Learning System difficult. Furthermore, an independent survey of U.S. university websites shows that most have web pages dedicated to address common Blackboard problems and to provide means of troubleshooting. Although promoted as an easy-to-use system, there is a learning curve for Blackboard that precludes full and timely utility.

Blackboard options may be restricted to particular operating systems.
As reported on dailyprincetonian.com, initial announcements by Blackboard Inc. in 2001 were that new versions of its software would provide additional features only to those running Blackboard on Microsoft NT servers. This bundling of individual programs and applications within specific operating systems has been maligned over and over by innumerable critics. Still others find that Blackboard limits creativity, technologically speaking, by confining instruction to a restricted format. Stephen Arnold, a college instructor and Gentoo Linux developer, promotes open-source tools rather than fixed platforms for supporting classroom instruction, saying “It (open-source tools) gives me the freedom to try almost anything that comes to mind.”

Blackboard system inefficiencies.
Chris Thomas, chief strategist for Intel, is an advocate of mobilized technology and a critic of portal-based systems like Blackboard. Richard Culatta’s blog summarized Thomas’ reasons to mobilize to open-source technologies in which it is noted that there are significant costs and technological impacts of wasting bandwidth with portal-based systems like Blackboard, particularly when materials must be downloaded in order to view them. Dependence on server portal solutions is always subject to network problems. When information is sent directly to mobile devices, there is no system to crash. According to Thomas, the adherence to portal-based systems like Blackboard is, in essence, teaching students with archaic technology.

Cost.
Spending on information technology by colleges and universities is expected to set a record in the 2005-2006 academic years. According to the American Council on Education, costs associated with higher educational telecommunications this past year are estimated to be $7 billion dollars, a 35 percent increase from the prior year. These costs primarily reflect prices charged by outside internet service providers and course management system providers like Blackboard. According to Blackboard executives, costs for their network environment products, including Blackboard Learning System, may start low but as subscribers integrate more functions into Blackboard, subscription licenses may be $200,000 to $400,000-a-year. [14] For these and other reasons, the Blackboard Learning System presents drawbacks for many faculty, students, and CFOs of higher education institutions. As the world of learning becomes flatter, more and perhaps better options, such as open-source learning management systems, are becoming available and these are empowering students and teachers in today’s pedagogical arena.

Applications of the Blackboard Learning System in Higher Education
Distance learning: Blackboard and the online learner
According to Dr. Curtis J. Bonk, professor of Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University and recipient of the Most Outstanding Achievement Award from the U.S. Distance Learning Association, there are four different types of learners which he defines as R2D2, for “read, reflect, display, and do.” The first type of learner is the reader. This student is the auditory and verbal learner who prefers words, written language and spoken explanations. The Blackboard Learning System allows the instructor to easily meet the needs of the reader students. Lecture notes, audio recordings, animations, learning activities, case studies and video clips are easily added to the Blackboard system. These resources may be developed by the instructor or very commonly through the editor’s supplemental online material. Most editors provide the course cartridge download key and either the instructor or the Blackboard administrator enters the key under “control panel: import course cartridge.” The editor’s resources include the plug-in computer requirements. After the course cartridge has been downloaded, instructors can customize and individualize the course with their own specific content and requirements. The student is directed to the resources in the course documents or in the index easily located on the announcement page. The second type of learner is the reflective learner. This student is the observational learner who prefers to reflect, observe, view or watch learning. They want to see the answers. The Blackboard systems can be used to meet this students needs through the explanation of specific requirements and use of sample responses. The reflective learner likes to make careful judgments and view things from different perspectives. Blackboard’s discussion board allows the reflective learner to research an unlimited expanse of topics, make judgments and elaborate on the answers to specific questions posted either by the instructor or by other students. The third type of learner learns from display and is the visual learner. The visual learner prefers diagrams, flowcharts, timelines, pictures, films and demonstrations. The animations, video clips, audio recordings, web links and pictures embedded within specific course cartridges or accessed online meet this learner’s needs. In the Blackboard Learning System, materials in the educational publishers’ course supplements contain additional resources to reinforce lecture notes and postings to the discussion board. The fourth type of learner is one that learns best from doing. This student is the tactile or kinesthetic learner. According to Dr. Bonk this type of learner enjoys simulations, role play, creative movements, dramatization, and hands on projects. [15] The needs of this student are also met within the Blackboard Learning System as for example by using the course editor’s learning activities and case studies. Learning activities are varied, ranging from simple games like crossword puzzles, hang man, sequencing and matching exercises to online and offline reference links to advanced topics.

A blackboard-system application consists of three major components:

The software specialist modules, which are called knowledge sources (KSs). Like the human experts at a blackboard, each knowledge source provides specific expertise needed by the application. The ability to support interaction and cooperation among diverse KSs creates enormous flexibility in designing and maintaining applications. As the pace of technology has intensified, it becomes ever more important to be able to replace software modules as they become outmoded or obsolete.
The blackboard, a shared repository of problems, partial solutions, suggestions, and contributed information. The blackboard can be thought of as a dynamic "library" of contributions to the current problem that have been recently "published" by other knowledge sources.
The control shell, which controls the flow of problem-solving activity in the system. Just as the eager human specialists need a moderator to prevent them from trampling in a mad dash to grab the chalk, KSs need a mechanism to organize their use in the most effective and coherent fashion. In a blackboard system, this is provided by the control shell.Famous examples of early academic blackboard systems are the Hearsay II speech recognition system and Douglas Hofstadter's Copycat and Numbo projects.