Oct. 8, 2009 (PR Newswire) --

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB), a global leader in education technology, announced today that a wealth of multimedia content from NBC News - covering decades of historic and current events - is now accessible to educators and students through the Blackboard Learn(TM) platform.

Through a partnership with NBC Learn, the educational arm of NBC News, thousands of K-12 and postsecondary institutions in North America now have access to NBC News Archives on Demand, enabling them to more effectively engage 21st century learners with digital content directly in their online courses.

With this unique resource, educators can easily search for instructionally relevant content about real world events - including audio, text and short-form video files - that can be embedded directly into courses on the Blackboard system to enrich the learning experience in a wide variety of subject areas.

As a result, educators can complement courses and lectures with historical and up to the minute video clips and other content on topics ranging from politics, the economy and climate change to health issues related to pandemic preparedness including the H1N1 influenza. Students get to participate in a much richer and more engaging course experience and can use the content and resources to support their own research, project work and presentations.

"I'm using the archives to help students place what they are learning in a real world context," said Mark Rains, an associate professor at the University of South Florida. "Very few of my hydrogeology students will go on to practice hydrogeology, but they will all live in a world in which the limited availability of water triggers a range of environmental and social implications. We read and hear about these problems in the media, but few really understand how to connect that news to the underlying principles of their academic work. I previously struggled to bring real time, real world content into the classroom and I'm hoping the NBC Learn Archives can help change that."

"We are excited to offer these exceptionally rich multimedia resources for the benefit of educators, students, and lifelong learners," said Ray Henderson, President of Blackboard Learn. "NBC's brand as a news authority combined with the superb production values of their footage will help educators craft richer and more contextually relevant courses for their students.