Blackboard Announces Greenhouse Award(TM) Winners

WASHINGTON, DC, Mar 14, 2006 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX News Network) -- Blackboard Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBB) announced today the winners of its annual Greenhouse awards recognizing academic institutions for exemplary use of Blackboard(R) technology solutions to foster educational innovations. The Greenhouse awards feature three categories including Exemplary Course, Exemplary Campus Services and Communities of Practice. Entries were judged by a panel comprised of leading faculty and administrators involved in the use of technology to enhance education, including last year's Greenhouse Award winners as well as Blackboard managers. Eight winners spanning all the categories will receive a portion of $50,000 in funding aimed at developing and sharing best practices related to the use of Blackboard solutions for enhancing education.

Following are the winners of this year's Greenhouse Awards, with an overview of each of their winning entries. The complete entries can be accessed, free of charge at Blackboard's Connections site at http://connections.blackboard.com. Visitors simply need to click on the greenhouse tab on the site.

GREENHOUSE COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE AWARD

Seton Hall University: for use of the Blackboard Content System to develop and implement the Standards Portfolio, enabling members of the Seton Hall community to create and access assessment materials and e-Portfolios.

The Amarillo Independent School District: for use of the Blackboard Content System to create a high-quality, testable curriculum aligned to standards using a living document format. The living document format enables teachers to provide continuous input and best practices which can be shared across the district.

GREENHOUSE EXEMPLARY COURSE AWARD

Exemplary Non-Course

Wichita Public Schools: for STEPs (Standards for Teachers through Educational Projects), a professional development program to help K-12 teachers learn new technology skills, create project-based lessons, and meet the International Society for Technology in Education's (ISTE) National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for Teachers.

Exemplary Online Course

William Rainey Harper College: for E-Commerce Development, a course which introduces foundation concepts in E-Commerce and provides students practice as they create their own e-commerce stores.

Exemplary Blended Course

University of North Florida: for Community Nursing Service-Learning Homebase, a community-based service learning curriculum which integrates all of the universities pre-licensure upper division nursing students into one of six non-term service-learning "courses" called home bases with a complementary Blackboard(R) site. The home bases contain multiple partnerships around a geographic or program area.

Exemplary K-12 Course

Fayetteville-Manlius High School: for their Earth Science course which provides 9th grade students 24/7 access to classroom resources such as PowerPoint lecture notes, handouts, movies, graphing calculator tools, Podcasts, Internet links, and various reference materials, through the Blackboard Learning System(TM).

GREENHOUSE EXEMPLARY CAMPUS SERVICES

West Texas A&M University: for use of the Blackboard Commerce Suite(TM) to save 7,000 human hours by switching from emergency book loan checks to placing the money on the student's ID Card. The campus is recognized for its comprehensive off-campus merchant program featuring 46 area merchants at which students spent more than $350,000 on everything from prescriptions and groceries to auto repair.

University of Pittsburgh: for use of the Blackboard Commerce Suite to create and maintain multiple advanced data integration points across campus with their Blackboard Transaction System, Residential Management System, Persona offline door access, Security and Student Information Systems. The campus also recently replaced a majority of legacy, non-IP hardware with new TCP/IP native hardware: vending, laundry, copy and additional network registers for use all over campus and at the convocation center.

"It's simply amazing to see the breadth and depth of the winning entries for the Greenhouse Awards -- in only the second year of the award's existence," said Michael Chasen, president and CEO of Blackboard. "We continue to be impressed by the kinds of innovations we see clients creating and implementing with our technology. It's very exciting to be part of this process, and we look forward to continued sharing and collaboration of best practices around this contest and on the Blackboard Connections site."

About Blackboard

Blackboard Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBB) is a leading provider of enterprise software applications and related services to the education industry. Founded in 1997, Blackboard enables educational innovations everywhere by connecting people and technology. With two product suites, the Blackboard Academic Suite (TM) and the Blackboard Commerce Suite (TM), Blackboard is used by millions of people at academic institutions around the globe, including colleges, universities, K-12 schools and other education providers, as well as textbook publishers and student-focused merchants that serve education providers and their students. Blackboard is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in North America, Europe and Asia.

Blackboard

Educate. Innovate. Everywhere.

Any statements in this press release about future expectations, plans and prospects for Blackboard and other statements containing the words "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "will," and similar expressions, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including the factors discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on February 15, 2006 with the SEC. In addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of March 14, 2006. The Company anticipates that subsequent events and developments will cause the Company's views to change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to March 14, 2006.

Senior Manager, Public Relations; Blackboard:
Melissa Chotiner
Blackboard Inc.
+1 202 463-4860 ext. 2404
Contact via http://www.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=FDA0C3D184C277A8
Media Inquiries:
Dan Baum
DBC Public Relations
+1 202-298-7600 ext. 205
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SOURCE: Blackboard Inc.