Desire2Blog

I threw together the following video rather quickly, so it doesn't have the highest production value. Photos from FUSION08D2L as well as some video clips of speakers and musical groups from Beale Street and Graceland. No sound except during the videos. Still rather bummed that I decided to leave my camera in the hotel room (I had thrice walked away from it during this trip) rather than tote it along for the final night on Beale Street with John Baker, Shonagh, McLeod, Matt, and lots of other D2Lers; plus Terri, Dany, Dawn, and several others including Stephen Downes. Suffice it to say that I really wish I could have included shots of most of this crew singing karaoke and dancing (and yes, that includes Stephen who the karaoke jockey introduced as David Crosby). It was over the top.

Andrea Foster's recent Chronicle article titled " New Systems Keep a Close Eye on Online Students at Home " is intended to get attention, but not intended to accurately tell you what is going to happen regarding the Higher Ed Act language about distance learning. After reading it more carefully, I can see now that there is nothing new being reported in this article. All of this doom and gloom about distance student authentication has been talked about for over a year now. I've used the Troy University Big Brother device several times in presentations and here in the blog to point out how completely absurd all of this is. This post from Nov. 2006 basically provides much of the same info that is in the Chronicle article. A second post in July 2007 looks at the first blush of the language that was written into the higher ed act. A few days ago I posted the clarifying language that is currently attached to the bill. Right after that Foster's article was posted at t...

I'll use CoveritLive for Jason's closing keynote in Memphis for the Desire2Learn User Conference - FUSION 2008 (FUSION08D2L)

I just like using that title - Blackboard Loses! I might use it at the beginning of every post, even if the post has nothing to do with Blackboard. Just finished reading an informative article in Campus Technology today that paints a picture of the contempt hearing that is colorably different from what most people are thinking. David Nagel talked with Matthew Small on Monday night after news spread about the contempt charges being thrown out by the Texas judge. Small, the chief legal dude for the evil empire, tells Nagel the following - (excerpted from CT article) Small recounted that the judge in the case in reviewing the contempt motion seemed to have agreed with that, saying that version 8.3 is not, in fact, colorably different from version 8.2.2; nevertheless, the judge did not issue sanctions against Desire2Learn, leaving it up to Blackboard to meet the burden of proof that the new version does infringe. Does this mean a new trial? That isn't quite clear either. But Blackboa...

Very brief message at the D2L Patent Blog . Court Denies Blackboard's Motion for Contempt "We just received word from Texas. The Court denied Blackboard's Motion for Contempt. We anticipate we will receive the Court's written Order in a few days and will post it when we receive it. " Stay tuned for more. Party tonight at Graceland.

There has been a tremendous amount of angst (much of it generated by me) about the distance education language that is expected to be included in the Higher Education Act whenever that finally gets approved (probably by September). I'm at the ITC Board Meeting in Reno this week along with a colleague who has an inside track to information about the work being done on the clarifying language that will be attached to the bill. The ITC, and Fred Lokken in particular, has been instrumental in bringing attention to the many concerns related to the authentication of distance learner language that is currently included in the bill. Most of those arguments center around concerns about cost and availability of the technologies to accomplish this task. Much of that angst was based on speculation about what it means to authenticate who the distance learner is. The latest language in the bill goes something like this: "requires an institution that offers distance education to have process...

The next battle in the D2L-Blackbeard war begins on Monday in Texas. Blackbeard will once again try to leverage their home court advantage against their combatant from north of the border. I've read a great deal of the proceedings from the earlier skirmishes, and I believe that the judge has a definite bias against Desire2Learn and in favor of Blackbeard. Last week I had a conversation with John Baker, CEO of Desire2Learn, in which he told me that the D2L team is extremely confident that they will prevail and be found to not be in contempt regarding their patent work-around version 8.3. I wish I could share in John's optimism, but I've not seen, heard, or read anything that makes me believe they will get a fair hearing in East Texas. Furthermore, there are several people who I've talked to who believe that D2L has been way too optimistic throughout this whole affair. Not that there's anything wrong with optimism (I wouldn’t know, but I've heard that), but that m...

Who are you? Who, who, who who? I really want to know. "Distance learning promises anytime, anywhere learning. But that convenience for students comes with a potential risk for educators – finding a way to make sure the registered student is really the person doing the work." That is the party line from Acxiom , one of the market leaders in using personal information from their massive database to authenticate learners. I've been invited to attend a discussion about this service at the upcoming D2L User Conference in Memphis. I'm undecided whether I'll attend at this point, but I just might do so given the U.S. government's meddling into the whole authentication "issue." I'm not convinced that there is a real issue here, just a perceived one. Although if Congress finishes their work-in-progress that makes it into an issue, then it is an issue, at least for those of us in the U.S. There is an interesting tidbit on their page titled: Identity Veri...

The annual Desire2Learn User Conference - FUSION 08 , starts Sunday night, July 20 with a reception at the Pink Palace in Memphis . The photo at right is John Baker addressing the crowd in 2007 at the opening reception at the Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth, Minnesota. Sessions get started Monday morning with an opening keynote address by George Siemens . For those who might like a preview of the keynotes, I posted podcasts last month with conference lead-off Siemens and closing keynote Jason Ohler . For bloggers, photographers, or anyone else using any sort of social software tools, please use the following tag: FUSION08D2L (no difference between upper and lowercase). By tagging your content from the conference it makes it so much easier for all of us to find it. For example, if you Google for the tag for last year ( FUSION07D2L ), you find the following artifacts: A Flickr photo group with 238 photos from 5 people About a dozen blog posts from several different people A couple of ...

The Instructional Technology Council is reviving their member service of quick polls. Today they posted the results from the latest poll dealing with schools that are switching or have switched from one VLE to another, and also some questions related to the popularity of hybrid/blended courses. 44 member schools replied to the survey. Of those respondents, 25 schools, or 55%, have either switched platforms within the past year (11) or are planning to within the next year (14). Poll question: If you have migrated or are planning to migrate, please list the course management systems your institution could have used, or had a license to use, at your college - before the move. (You can select more than one) Those 25 schools responded with a total of 47 VLE that they were using or were licensed to use, or an average of nearly 2 platforms per school. Of particular interest to me was that 33 of those 47 responses indicated that they were migrating away from one (or more) of the Blackboard pl...

I've been wanting to try out Poll Everywhere , so let's do a little experiment to see how this works. Here is the embedded poll. After each vote is cast, you'll be able to see an update on this page. It took about seven seconds for my response to appear after I submitted my vote via text message on my cell. You can also send people to a webpage where they can vote with their computers, but I'm interested to see how many votes we can accumulate only by using cell phones. Each cell phone can only be used once to vote, so people can't stuff the ballot box with multiple votes. The free version is limited to 30 responses for each poll, although you can have as many different polls as you like. Paying a monthly fee will allow you to collect more reponses per poll. According to their website: "It's the easiest way to gather live responses in any venue: conferences, presentations, classrooms, radio, tv, print — anywhere." We'll be the judge of that. Let...

The LSC Public Information office and a local artist recently developed the following 60-second promotional video about Lake Superior Connect, the e-Campus at Lake Superior College. We will be using these spots to try to raise awareness of our new name and of the leadership role that we have played in bringing e-learning to Minnesotans. We also have two separate 30-second spots using the same content for TV ads and other online placements.