During the the 2008-2009 school year the usage of Blackboard was increasing due to the rollout of the 1 to 1 laptop program of the Kapalama Middle School. The Blackboard server was being pushed to its limits and the application version (6.0) had reached its end of life cycle as Blackboard was going to discontinue support of that version. That summer we were able to acquire new servers and upgrade the application to its current version (8.0).
During the past couple of years Blackboard usage has continued to increase with the rollout of 1 to 1 through the Kapalama High School and while our servers have performed well, request for updated features have increased. Blackboard had released a new version in 2009 and several improvements since to warrant us to upgrade our version to the latest version available (9.1). Please see attached for improvements and new features available. Also, during this past year we’ve had a few teachers use the new Blackboard version in their classroom and have had a positive experience with the improved interface and added features that the upgrade will provide.
We hope to complete the upgrade in June with the new version available to all teachers and students for the 2011-2012 school year. It is anticipated that course content from the current version will transition accordingly to the new version.