Blackboard buys Angel Learning – Washington Business Journal “Education software maker Blackboard Inc., which was losing money a year ago, reported a break-even quarter and announced plans to acquire fellow education software maker Angel Learning Inc. for $95 million in cash and stock.”
Another one bites the dust…
Don’t Stop at Gmail | The Hoya: “Georgetown has never been on the cutting edge of technology. Changes to our e-mail system and wireless service have come slowly, and the university is still in the process of revamping data security following a major security breach last semester. Here is an opportunity to cut costs without sacrificing user satisfaction, to participate in a dynamic programming project involving some of the nation’s top universities and to shake off our dependence on a for-profit vendor for support and updates. Georgetown has the chance, for once, to be in the forefront of campus technology, and this is an opportunity we can’t afford to miss.”
(Via Google.)
Post from the Georgetown school paper makes the case for transitioning from Blackboard to an Open-Source LMS, and specifically mentions Sakai 
I started this entry while I was riding a train back from the Laguardia ePortfolio Conference I’m endeavoring to reflect upon and synthesize threads from various (enlightening) presentations I’ve seen, and discussions I’ve had the privilege of participating in. First a brief plug: the content from the conference was fantastic — many congratulations to the folks from Laguardia Community College for organizing such a wonderful event.
Sakai has amazingly broad potential. The energy and excitement in the community and among those who have been watching Sakai make it clear that we’re really realizing the benefit of contributor’s blood, sweat, and tears in the form of some exciting tools for teaching and learning. Sakai seems uniquely positioned to become the base of a whole ecosystem of tools supporting different facets of the academic experience ranging from instruction, to assessment, to facilitating interactions between learners. I think we may be at a crossroads in terms of positioning, particular as we evolve towards explaining the product, beyond the project & community. Laguardia’s conference and discussions, especially those related to “Sakai vs. OSP” really focused my thinking on various opportunities for Sakai to support different areas of teaching, and learning.
A statement: I think the the common usage of Sakai to discuss both a specific set of tools supporting course/learning management (Sakai CMS/LMS?) and a platform/environment upon which those tools can be built and deployed has resulted in some confusion. I have heard many questions recently in the vein of “do you have to use Sakai to use OSP?” or “we’re a Blackboard school, and aren’t going to switch, does that mean OSP is out?” The fact that OSP is a toolkit built on top of Sakai (the platform) seems to be a confusing point for many who don’t currently have plans to deploy Sakai as a CMS/LMS.
To clarify, yes: it is quite reasonable to deploy OSP as a system exclusively dedicated to portfolios, completely separate from the other tools. Inputting text, adding reflections, uploading evidences, and managing assessment are all perfectly capable of being performed in a stand-alone environment. In the same way that past releases of Sakai downloaded from sakaiproject.org “stealthed” (hid) the portfolio tools an institution could choose to leverage the OSP piece of the Sakai ecosystem without forcing your users to adopt the entire environment — one advantage of the platform’s open-ness and customization capabilities.
In fact, I think this scenario illustrates a very real way to explain Sakai. If Sakai is a platform upon which bundles of tools (courseware, OSP, etc.) can be built, then we have a product with many facets. Each facet (LMS, OSP, Collaboration) supports a different interaction scenario, part of a greater whole of learning. Going forward, perhaps explicitly separating that greater platform from its concrete manifestations (particularly as courseware) would help emphasize Sakai’s potential as a learning suite or system — with facets focused on all aspects of a learner’s experience: courses, co-curricular’s, career advising, libraries & research, collaboration, and personal expression for a start. This thinking was really influenced by listening to many people talk about OSP — as a toolkit for building concrete artifacts: resumes, co-curricular transcripts, certification documents, personal expressions — all leveraging the same tools, but in many respects separate endeavors linked only by
I think there’s a danger that we could allow ourselves to slot Sakai into a box defined by the products that came before. though that’s where many adoptors initial exposure came from. The example of OSP illustrates the clear potential of Sakai’s modular architecture to enable assemblage of higher-level environments supporting particular styles of teaching or interaction. A common environment lets us both build on previous work, and also focus on integrating the experiences for out students and teachers, participants and leaders. My programmer’s mind sees this as being much the same potential as is now playing out in the Eclipse eco-system.
So the question I think this brings up is: if we focus on this broader picture, and think about these “bundles” as being the real deliverable, could we better frame this relationship by rebranding (consistent with recent thoughts about relaunching) the Sakai courseware tools as a separate entity within the Sakai umbrella — “Sakai Classrooms” maybe? Leaving room for thinking of the ecosystem as bundles, which you can mix and match: “Sakai Portfolios”, “Sakai Communities”, “Sakai Social Networking”. Different bundles of functionality built on the same platform, possibly using the same individual tools, but illustrating some of the broader possibilities.
Desire2Blog: Sakai Seems to Think It’s Over:
Maybe Sakai thinks they are finished with this thing, but I’m pretty sure that D2L, SFLC, Blackboard, and all the other players are expecting it to continue on for quite some time. It could very well be that their input from this point forward will be minimal or less. However, their press announcement makes it sound like the whole thing is over. Clearly, that is not the case.
While I’ve not been directly involved in the D2L/Blackboard patent or legal proceedings, I did want to chime in. Many schools that I’ve talked too (and I think the gist of what Michael’s comments reflected) while they recognize that the legal process will drag on for quite a long time, see the likely invalidation as a huge step. Much of the uncertainty expressed by some of our members, or people we’ve talked with recently has been eased, now that the legal shadow looks likely to be removed.
Having said that, Barry is right to point out that this case isn’t over, and I’m sure our edupatents crusaders would be quick to point out that even after this case is over, this particular wave is unlikely to recede any time soon.
Update: Michael Feldstein covered this situation, and how the process is related in terms of Sakai, SFLC, and others in his usual impressive detail.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a preliminary decision Tuesday that would invalidate Blackboard Inc.’s patent on its e-learning management systems.
(Via Washington Business Journal.)
A Texas jury has found Kitchener software company Desire2Learn Inc. guilty of infringing on an American competitor’s patent.The verdict, announced this afternoon, allows Blackboard Inc. to demand a ban on sales of Desire2Learn’s products in the United States.
(Via e-Literate.)Michael F. isn’t the only one who’s speechless at this decision. The precedent this sets is uncomfortable on many levels, despite the fact that both:
Desire2Learn has reassured their customers:
With your support and that of the entire educational community, we were able to present a strong case. While we are disappointed that the jury did not agree with our position, we will continue to challenge the patent’s validity and Blackboard’s charges of infringement. We are currently evaluating our next steps.The United States Patent and Trademark office has committed to reviewing the patent. As these activities take place we will provide you updates through our patent blog at www.Desire2Learn.com\Patentinfo.
(Via Desire2Learn)First off, addressing confusion and concerns I’ve heard expressed during conversations with a number of individuals: this decision in no way implies that Sakai infringes on any Blackboard IP. Additionally, both Sakai deployers and any Commercial Affiliate you may contract with for services are explicitly mentioned under Blackboard’s previous commitments not to sue Universities and open-source.So “all” we (the Sakai Community) have directly lost is freedom of choice and a small piece of the spirit of innovation in education. While I don’t live in the right district, drafting Lessig for Congress seems like a better idea all the time. I do wonder however, if Blackboard’s previous “pledge not to sue” open-source products and affiliates might have unexpected implications.Though open-source communities seem unlikely to play the FUD game, does this mean that cautious schools may have only 2 options: Blackboard products or open source? If you’re looking to upgrade an existing LMS or deploy a system for the first time, does this affect your decision making regarding product selection?I should also take the opportunity to point out that this kind of key vulnerability is exactly why the separation of licensing from commercial relationships is such a powerful dynamic. Desire2Learn is by all accounts an excellent company, whose customers are happy. No matter how good the company behind the product, however, choosing D2L as a platform also directly binds you to the fate of a single commercial entity. A company who can fail, be sued, bought (a la WebCT, eCollege), experience a strategy shift (Be Inc.), etc.Participating in a community (or to grab a phrase from Barak Obama “a movement”) like Sakai gives you tremendous long term advantages. You can get competitive bids from multiple vendors due the huge number of commercial affiliates. You can switch vendors if you’re unhappy without having to migrate your service. If Sakai moves in a direction not aligned with local interests you can choose to create your own fork or derivative product. Finally, in the same way that diversified investments allow you to reap the rewards of the stock market while lowering your overall risk — Sakai (and other open source products like Moodle, Atutor, etc.) allow you capitalize on eLearning technology without putting all your eggs in one basket.Update: Michael Korkuska (Sakai Executive Director) blogged about the decision and it’s impact on Sakai and the industry as well.
Blackboard Is Losing Customers, but What Does It Mean? at e-Literate
“The big loss appears to be unambiguously in Blackboard Basic licenses. One factor that theoretically might have contributed to this loss is consolidation of Basic licenses under a consortial Enterprise license. In this case, the loss of a license wouldn’t equal the loss of a customer. But according to Mr. Stanton, the number of Basic license losses due to consortial consolidation in the last year was ‘immaterial’ because Blackboard currently only supports a very small number of consortial licenses. So it looks like the drop in Basic licenses really does represent a loss of customers.”
I was really surprised to find out that Blackboard Basic customers don’t get LDAP authentication — it’s a feature I certainly expect in pretty much any serious product at this point. In particular, given the recent focus on Identity Management (IdM), it seems that many institutions would be hard-pressed to even consider any products that don’t integrate within a broader campus authentication strategy. Additionally, with LDAP being such a widely-deployed standard, the marginal cost of the feature has to approach $0.
Fortunately, with Sakai converging on the Unicon JLDAP provider, this is a story that we’re at least getting better at, though in the past we’ve suffered from an embarrassment of riches in this area.
Jeshua Pacifici talked a bit about his experiences migrating from Blackboard to Sakai. Very broad detail focused, less information on the technical and detail sides of migrations (e.g. how to get Courses/Projects out of Blackboard). High level overview of some benefits, caveats, and others.
