iSean

most folks in the ed tech field know about the recent patent dispute between Blackboard (BB) and Desire2Learn. Desire2Learn is refusing to comply with BB’s request to pay royalties and this has generated much discussion. in fact, Desire2Learn has become something of a folk hero (in corporate terms) for taking BB on.

well, EDUCAUSE (leading organization supporting technology in higher ed) recently came out and told BB that BB should relinquish their rights with regard to a patent they recently received. here’s a snippet from the actual letter that EDUCAUSE wrote:

EDUCAUSE is a non-profit association dedicated to serving its 2000 college and university members, as well as its 200 corporate members. We do not endorse products or take the side of one company over another. Our corporate guidelines, established in 1998, are very clear that EDUCAUSE is primarily accountable to its institutional members. In the event of a conflict between corporate and institutional member objectives, we must support our institutional members. Let me clearly state that we are not siding with Desire2Learn at the expense of Blackboard. Our discussions and actions are based solely on the collective interests of our institutional members.

There are two core tenets behind the community concern. One deals with co-creation and ownership; the other deals with innovation. Course management systems were developed by the higher education community, which includes academics, organizations, and corporations. Ideas were freely exchanged, prototypes developed, and refinements continue to be made. The new EDUCAUSE Catalyst Award, given to course management systems this year, celebrates that course management systems “were conceived and developed among faculty in pockets of innovation throughout the world. They originated simultaneously at a number of institutions,” as stated in the award announcement. One of the reasons course management systems were singled out for this award is because of the “fluid movement of ideas and initiatives between academia and the commercial sector as individual limited-use efforts evolved into enterprise-wide systems.” Our community has participated in the creation of course management systems. A claim that implies this community creation can be patented by one organization is anathema to our culture.

We realize that what one believes is not necessarily legally binding. As a result, EDUCAUSE engaged the services of a highly reputable, independent law firm to review the patent. The preliminary conclusion is that the patent was very broadly defined and was inappropriately approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. That is certainly the view of the higher education community, many of whom are contributing evidence of prior art.

you can view the whole letter below this article.

i hope BB sees the light and does the right thing. i don’t use BB in my own teaching, but this whole episode has  caused me to promote open source solutions (e.g., Moodle, Drupal, phpBB, WordPress) beyond BB to my own students (future teachers). BB would most certainly get a lot of positive press if they were to heed the advice and recommendation from EDUCAUSE. Time will tell . . .

Technorati Tags: Blackboard, CMS, education, educause, LMS, patents, online learning

my university recently started subscribing to the Chronicles of Higher Education. i’d never really read it, but i figured i’d check it out. it’s a bit cumbersome to visit the library and go through the login stuff, but at least the end result is a duplicate of the actual Chronicle website. when i want to read the op-ed pieces in the NY Times, i have to use LexisNexis. it’s interface is less appealing. i have to search for the title or the author of the piece i seek and then i can read the op-ed pieces that are reserved for NY Times select subscribers. then again, i could always pay for the select service. but, back to my topic . . .

in the Chronicles yesterday, there was an article about ‘Students Lack of Information Literacy.” i have talked about this before, but it’s nice to see a large organization addressing this issue. apparently ETS has developed a new test designed to measure students’ information literacy and computer savviness. the test is called the ICT Literacy Assessment Core Level. with a name like that, it’s bound to catch on quickly. [/sarcasm]

ETS ran a pilot study on 3000 college students and 800 high school students and found:

According to the preliminary report, only 13 percent of the test-takers were information literate. ETS set what company officials described as a rough, unofficial information-literacy bar using information from a variety of sources, including the Association of College and Research Libraries.

obviously, the result are pretty pathetic, but what do we expect? not a single state test that is required under No Child Left Behind is testing information literacy skills. why would a school spend valuable resources and time trying to promote these skills if a portion of their funding is going to be based on NCLB testing results? even if it’s the right thing to do and will help students in the long run, school administrators are really in a bind.

i applaud ETS for trying. i am 100% behind their efforts to start measuring information literacy skills. that being said, i also realize that changes to NCLB are going to have to happen first . . . and our students continue to miss out.

and, to provide you a little snippet for those who don’t subscribe, here is a finding that was labeled as “good” by ETS: Students generally recognized that Web sites whose addresses end in .edu or .gov were less likely to contain biased material than those with addresses ending in .com.

and here is a finding that was labeled as “bad” by ETS: Students were generally poor at identifying biased Web content.

this is right in line with an activity that i do with my students, unfortunately. i wish ETS all the luck in the world as they try and get this new test to catch on with educational institutions and states.

Technorati Tags: education, information literacy, NCLB, Chronicles of Higher Education

i have been a little slow here lately. that’s because i am busy working on an article for the Knowledge Tree journal. i’ll talk more about my article soon and it is due pretty soon. for the time being i’ll just let you in on the subject . . . i am looking at how technology (e.g., blogs) can be used to help change student dispositions (read: future behaviors). the article is due when i go to bed Sunday night and today i decided to simplify some things and shape up the organization. i will provide a link as soon as i can. stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: blogging, teachers, knowledge tree, dispositions

i have been fiddling with Google’s writely lately. i signed up before Google bought writely, but i wanted to see how Google was coming into play now that they’ve had the site for about a half of a year. my initial review is here. in fact, you can see my initial writely document with a quick update at this link. you won’t see the interface of writely, but you can see the document.

the biggest influence i notice from Google is that writely now has tagging enabled. if you are a blogger yourself, you know all about tagging. i think much of my traffic shows up because of the tags i use at the end of each blog post (via technorati, of course). Macintosh computers have tagging built in, though i think tagging is still something more likely to be used by geeks than the general public. but, wow is tagging powerful. everything i do with regard to an ED 205 course i teach is tagged each semester like this: 205_063. the 063 tells me it’s from 2006 and the 3rd semester (1st is winter, 2nd is spring/summer, and 3rd is fall). i also use tags for the content (e.g., digital divide). i can search for digital divide tags that also include 205_063 or from last semester 205_062. i no longer have to use folders like i used to do. i just make a dated folder every few weeks and drop everything on my desktop into the folder and move it out of the way. i can hit command-space bar and type a tag or two and have any file(s) in about 2 - 3 seconds. that’s power.

well, writely now has tagging built in (click to view larger version):

no more messy folders. if you use Gmail, you have an idea how this can play out. i have thousands of emails in gmail, but no folders. i can quickly search and narrow down emails i am seeking. writely appears headed in a similar direction. writely has more . . . for example, you can easily use writely to write blog entries and even save writely files straight to a blog:

i think writely is shaping up to be a nice cheap alternative to MS Office. i sure hope schools are able to find a way to save money and use something like writely. then again, how long will writely remain free? (sigh)

Technorati Tags: blogging, Google, writely.com, Word, word processing, writely