EduGarage (Blackboard Developers Network) Membership

EduGarage, home of the Blackboard Developers Network (BbDN), is designed to provide you with key information and services about developing and deploying Building Blocks (Enterprise "classic" license) and PowerLinks (Enterprise CE/Vista licenses only) for the Blackboard Academic Suite including the Blackboard Learning System, Blackboard Community System and Blackboard Content System. Building Blocks and PowerLinks are plug-in technologies that integrate your Blackboard learning platform with external applications, content, or services. They can include portal modules, content, specific tools and assessment engines to name just a few. These technologies can link Blackboard with external systems, applications, or services, or can be applications that run entirely within the Blackboard environment.

Many Building Blocks and PowerLinks already exist. There are four primary sources that you can search to find both free/open source and commercially-supported plugins for your Blackboard learning platform:

• Blackboard Building Blocks Catalog
• Blackboard PowerLinks Showcase
• EduGarage Projects Page
• OSCELOT Projects Site

As a member of the EduGarage Developer Community, you also have access to technical documentation and other resources to help you build your own plug-ins including:

• Complete Documentation
• Online Forums and User Groups
• Code snippets and Sample code
• Tutorials and other technical documentation
• One Blackboard Developer Edition license
• Limited support for installing Blackboard Developer Edition

To locally install a developer version of the Blackboard Academic Suite, please have one of your designated System Administrators or Developers for your institution log in to EduGarage at http://www.edugarage.com and access the Downloads area. Then select and install the version of the Blackboard learning platform that matches your production environment. Step-by-step installation tutorials are available. Be sure to also check the Documentation link for relevant information.

Additional developer accounts can be created for members of your institution by having your institution's primary contact or designated System Administrator send the name, e-mail address, and title of additional developers to edugarage@blackboard.com.