Enabling Technologies Intros OCS for Blackboard

ETC DevCorp, an Enabling Technologies Corporation development company, reportedly announced the release of its latest add-on application, OCS for Blackboard, which integrates Microsoft’s (News - Alert) Office Communications Server R2 and the Blackboard application for Higher Education Universities and Colleges.

Officials at the company, a Microsoft Unified Communications (News - Alert) Voice Specialized Partner, claim that the new offering makes it even easier for students, professors, and administrators to dynamically connect, share and communicate because it has combined a rich web client and a powerlink connector to the Blackboard (News - Alert) system that automatically arranges all relevant information related to course, users, teachers and institution to within the Office Communicator environment.

The company said that any authentic user gets real time visibility on which professor, resource or student is currently online, and can select their preferred method of communication by simply logging in to their Blackboard account, which in turn verifies and clears their ID with the OCS.

Officials at the Enabling Technologies claim that most educational staff and higher education students they have gotten feed-back from feel secure with the fact they know the ID of the target person online because then they are more or less guaranteed of getting accurate, timely and relevant information to suitably plan study schedules only once and thereby save precious time.

Official sources claim this fact – guaranteed ID - is an important differentiator for marketing the product, the 45 day free trial of which can be downloaded by visiting the company’s dedicated Web link.

"The Higher Education Universities that we have contacted are very excited to trial the OCS for Blackboard application," said Bill Vollerthum, president of Enabling Technologies.

The parent company (ETC) and its and its associated marketing business partners will be distributing the product nationwide. In end February this year, ETC and Evangelyze Communications agreed to form a sales, marketing and consulting partnership to expand the reach and implementation of Microsoft Unified Communications solutions.

A few weeks back Blackboard partnered with NBC Learn, the educational arm of NBC News, to provide supplemental content and a vast repository of digital news to colleges, universities and K-12 schools and districts in the United States.

Under the agreement, Blackboard and NBC News work together to support the use of news content by K-12 and postsecondary institutions. Instructors and students can now access audio, video and other news content within their e-learning platform to strengthen the learning experience.