EdVentures in Technology
teaching, learning and change
March 28, 2008 at 5:39 pm · Filed under EdTech, Higher Education, PSU E-Learning Blog
A busy day in RSS-Land. These just flew across my Google Reader account. Apparently the US Patent & Trademark Office (USP&TO) has issued a preliminary finding that rejects all 44 of Blackboard’s patent claims. According to both Desire2Learn and Blackboard, this is just the first step in a lengthy review process but it is interesting for those of us who have been following this saga. Desire2Learn has made a PDF copy of this finding available on their website here.
From Desire2Learn:
On March 25, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued its Non-Final Action on the re-examination of the Blackboard Patent. We are studying the document, found here, but in short, the PTO has rejected all 44 of Blackboard’s claims. We caution that this is a NON-final action; both Blackboard and Desire2Learn will have an opportunity to comment before a final action will issue, and after that, the decision will be subject to appeals.However, we’re still pleased.
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From Blackboard:
Dear Blackboard Community,
Today, the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued a first Office Action in the reexamination proceeding regarding Blackboard’s U.S. Patent 6,988,138 (”the ‘138 Patent”). This Office Action was expected and is the first step in a reexamination process that often takes years to complete. It has no effect on the validity of the patent, the lawsuit between Blackboard and Desire2Learn or the pending injunction against Desire2Learn.
We remain very confident in the strength of our patent and have provided more information about today’s announcement should you have questions. Please see www.blackboard.com/patent for more information.
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All of this follows on the heels of Blackboard’s victory in their lawsuit against Desire2Learn a few weeks ago.
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Tags: blackboard, patent, lawsuit, desire2learn
March 14, 2008 at 12:30 pm · Filed under Diigo Links
Allegheny LMS Blog
tags: lms, lms-project
January 11, 2008 at 12:30 pm · Filed under Diigo Links
bFree - Blackboard Course Extraction Tool Annotated
tags: bb, bfree, blackboard, unc
Use bFree to open a Blackboard™ course archive file and display an outline of the course. Preview and extract individual content items, or extract any or all content as an independent web site that mimics the original Blackboard™ course.
July 11, 2007 at 4:03 pm · Filed under EdTech, Higher Education, PSU E-Learning Blog
Announced at the corporate keynote at BbWorld07, SafeAssign is a plagiarism prevention service integrated with the LMS that attempt to uncover and/or deter plagiarism while educating the campus community about what plagiarism is. Leveraging a dedicated assignment tool, assignments are uploaded to a central service which compares the submission against their databases and other submitted works held in the Global Reference Database. Any institution running any of the newer Blackboard Learning Systems is eligible to download and install the PowerLink/Building Block for their campus free of charge. Future platform deliveries will have this service embedded and will not require separate installation.
SafeAssign checks submitted papers (Word, RTF, PDF, TXT, HTML and ZIP packages of these) against the Internet using Windows Live Search technology. Blackboard has partnered with ProQuest ABI/Inform and searches against their 2.5 million articles database. SafeAssign also checks against a local institutional database of locally submitted work, as well as a Global Reference Database which is comprised of submissions volunteered by students from SafeAssign campuses. Obviously this database is expected to grow over time as the SafeAssign system is adopted by Blackboard institutions. It is important to note that the Global Reference Database is an opt-in service that students may elect to take advantage of in order to protect their own work.
Beyond the course integration aspect, SafeAssign also boasts a Direct Submit feature that allows faculty (not students as of the current release) to check documents on a “one-off” basis if they receive work that triggers their “spidey-sense.”
Gradebook integration is not yet available for CE/Vista campuses meaning that after the creation of the assignment, the faculty member will also need to create a new grading column in order to provide a grade value. It is expected that a patch will be issued that will provide this service in the coming months.
General Counsel Matthew Small noted that this new service will in no way affect the PowerLink or Building Block servicing TurnItIn, and the general flavor is that TurnItIn is still considered a strong corporate partner. Greg Ritter pointed out that those institutions currently employing TurnItIn may be loath to move away and abandon the student submissions collected through their use of the TurnItIn service.
[tags]blackboard, bbworld07, safeassign, turnitin, plagiarism[/tags]
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July 10, 2007 at 10:55 pm · Filed under EdTech, Higher Education, PSU E-Learning Blog, TechTalk
Today’s keynote had a couple of huge announcements, one of which may have an incredible impact on one of their partner vendors, TurnItIn.
CIO Michael Chasen announced that starting today all of the Blackboard Learning Systems: Blackboard, CE and Vista are able to download and install via either Building Blocks or PowerLinks, a new anti-plagiarism tool, SafeAssign. The tool can act either stand-alone locally or, like TurnItIn, it can upload student work to a centralized database that will then “protect” a student’s intellectual property from inappropriate use by other user’s of SafeAssign. There were a couple of interesting features such as a direction citation tool that identifies the specific resource that appears to have been used and the ability to allow students to “opt in” to the service (which I believe can be turned off administratively thereby effectively mandating use of the service). I wonder what kind of financial impact this will have on TurnItIn when Blackboard institutions learn that they can save the tens of thousands of dollars they spend on their annual subscription costs?
In other news, Chasen also announced the availability of a new tool intended to bridge the three learning environments. Available with the licensing of one of their three systems: Community, Content or Outcomes, is their Learning Environment Connector. Although a QA tech I was speaking with thought it was already available, I haven’t been able to find it on their site to link to as of yet. The idea is that schools will be able to bridge users to other Bb LMSes, as well as to the three Systems. This is big news as it is the first sign that the company is working to bring the formerly disparate environments together. In our own university system in New Hampshire, it means that Plymouth State which employs the Campus Edition version of the LMS may well be able to leverage the community and content systems that both UNH and Granite State College were only able to access as they were Blackboard sites. Rather than worry about the differences in our LMS, we can now focus on developing points of collaboration and tangency for our respective and some times cross-pollinating student bodies.
[tags]blackboard, bbworld07, chasen, turnitin, safeassign[/tags]
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April 12, 2007 at 11:59 pm · Filed under Twitter Log
- Ok jutecht your Mariners are beating my Sox 3-0 #
- @jutecht: What is the time differential for you and I? It’s 8:30 EST here. I think -5 GMT but with Daylight savings it’s hard to remember. #
- Ack… Sox losing in a no-hitter thru 6. #
- @dnorman: Does BlogBridge have an autofind function or do you have to manually add all your feeds? #
- At Cafe Monte Alto grabbing my double-decaf cap with a shot of coconut and a touch of cocoa. Mmmmm…. #
- Exploring YackPack (http://yackpack.com) to create new communication channels #
- @elsua: I’m not tracking Johnt, what’s the scoop? #
- @librarianmer: May I add my best wishes on a safe flight - I’m not looking forward to the commute back home tonight from Plymouth, NH! #
- In a Distance Ed Planning meeting #
- In a phone conference with Blackboard #
- Done with the Bb phone conference, thinking about heading home soon due to weather conditions. #
- Working with PBwiki for a faculty workshop tomorrow. #
- Heading home on slippery roads, wish me luck! #
- @coolcatteacher: Vicki I’m so sorry to hear about your dog, will Butterfinger be ok? #
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January 26, 2007 at 4:38 pm · Filed under Higher Education, TechTalk
According to Groklaw and a press release from the Software Freedom Law Center, the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) ordered a re-examination of Blackboard’s patent on certain aspects of the e-learning environment.
The Patent Office found that prior art cited in SFLC’s
request raises “a substantial new question of patentability” regarding
all 44 claims of Blackboard’s patent….
A re-examination of this type usually takes one or two years to
complete. Roughly 70% of re-examinations are successful in having a
patent narrowed or completely revoked.
This is very interesting news for those who have been following this issue since Blackboard’s announcement of their patent last summer and their subsequent lawsuit against their next strongest competitor (in terms of market share) Desire2Learn. While this may take up to two years, a patent rejection might well be the impetus that is needed to bring Blackboard back to reality. The corporate monolith mentality and disdain for their user community has not served them well in the past year.
[tags]blackboard, patent, software, freedom, lawsuit, desire2learn, lms, cms [/tags]
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November 27, 2006 at 10:37 pm · Filed under Higher Education, Learning Theory, TechTalk, Web 2.0
What would happen if we took everything we thought we knew about the virtual learning environment and threw it out the window? What would it look like if we treated the learning environment as if it belonged to the learner? What could learning look like if it weren’t treated as an administrative function? These were the questions I asked my colleague Casey Bisson as we travelled to and from a NERCOMP Social Software SIG.
This first post will set the stage for this re-visioning.
At Plymouth State University, we use SCT’s Luminis product as our campus portal. We are very proud of our true single sign-on methodologies as pretty much everything a student needs is tied to their portal account: email, calendar, groups, news, their e-coursework (via WebCT), library resources, the Student Information System (SIS), even their 200+ MB of network storage is web accessible. It is one of the most robust environments I have used when it comes to student services.
Yet there exists a disconnect. The portal does not speak the language of our students. It is based on technologies at least 5 years old and is not as interactive or responsive as the web tools available today. In Web 2.0 terms, it is more like Web 1.5 - more pull than push, more consumptive than contributive. In short, it is perceived to be an administrative tool rather than a learning resource. A necessary evil for doing the business of higher education.
And then there is our Learning Management System - WebCT (now Blackboard). Everything about the LMS screams academic administration tool. It provides all the requisite tools: syllabus tool, communications tools, assessment tools and learning content tools. But even with Blackboard’s burgeoning attempts at learner-centricity in the journaling, web link and media library contributions, peer review and blog tools available in their latest Application Pack, it is still a tool for teaching rather than learning. If you’ll pardon the melodrama, it lacks soul.
In part 2, we’ll throw out our current set-up and start from scratch.
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August 31, 2006 at 7:59 pm · Filed under Higher Education, TechTalk
My colleague, Dan Bramer at watersedge, beat me to the punch on this one. In our email today came this announcement from Blackboard which provided a link to the official renaming schema of WebCT to Blackboard Learning System. In our case, running WebCT Campus Edition 6, our new product name is Blackboard Learning System CE Enterprise Ltd License. Try saying that five times fast!
Our campus products will not see any naming change until we apply both Application Pack 1 and Service Pack 1 to the former WebCT application. But it is good to start getting used to the new name now as it is bound to cause some initial confusion among our faculty, staff and student body.
technorati tags:webct, blackboard, lms, cms, higher_ed, education, college, university, learning, system
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August 19, 2006 at 8:12 pm · Filed under Random Thoughts, TechTalk
I apologize to the small contingent that follow this blog for any flaky feed behavior over the past few days.
I’m in the process of changing my web host from HasWeb to Dreamhost on the advice of a number of colleagues who have recently adopted Dreamhost as their provider of choice. The biggest advantage is that you can host any number of domains you desire from one account rather than having to purchase additional accounts to support new domains. Additionally, I am gaining greater bandwidth and storage capacity than I previously enjoyed with HasWeb. This is important as last month I somehow managed to exceed my bandwidth allocation which I found interesting given the low traffic this blog sees.
Anyway, this has not been a painless procedure. I managed to transfer my web files and blog database with the assistance of my colleague Tim Haroutunian, and the Dreamhost One-Click Installer installed WordPress 2.0.4 without issue. However, my theme refuses to generate a feed so I had to select another theme until I can fix the problem - which accounts for the new look on the site. The Pirates of the Caribbean feel of Dapit Hapon 1.1 by Gail Dela Cruz is growing on me.
Additionally, I am being required to learn more of the command line interface via SSH. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as I really should be more fluent in this area, but to be honest it is sucking up a lot of cycles and I’ve few to spare right now.
I am looking forward to rebuilding my site and reinstalling Moodle, MediaWiki and ELGG - unless Blackboard decides to drop a lawsuit on the Open-Source Movement!
technorati tags:dreamhost, blog, webhost, moving, wmts
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