Desire2Blog

There's lots of speculation about how much ill-will has been created in the education community by Blackboard's predatory business practices, but not much hard data either way. The real question is how many former Blackboard/WebCT clients have left the flock since the merger (acquisition?) of the two giants that was first announced on October 12, 2005 . Now it's 3.5 years later. I thought it would be interesting to try to compile a list of schools/consortia/orgs that have switched away from either Blackboard or WebCT to any of the other alternatives, or vice versa. To that end, I've thrown together a simple wiki where anyone can enter information about changes they've made to their IMS/VLE adoptions during that time frame. Besides the home page, there are three additional pages on this wiki: Those who have left Blackboard/WebCT during the past 3.5 years Those that are seriously considering leaving Blackboard/WebCT during the next 2-3 years Those who have signed (a...

Desire2Learn has lobbed a softball directly at Blackbeard (err, Blackboard). We'll see if the Presidential Pirate (Michael Chasen) can hit the ball out of the park. From the D2L Patent Info blog , we read that D2L's John Baker made the following proposal to Blackboard's Chasen: Blackboard drop its recently-filed suit in a timely manner. In return, Desire2Learn will donate $1,000,000 to non-profit schools and educational organizations. Blackboard is invited to join us with its own donation. Up to 50% of the Desire2Learn donation will be directed toward schools in need in and around Washington, D.C., the home of Blackboard. Obviously, Blackboard hasn't been willing to do the right thing up to this point, and the amount of badwill that they have incurred over these lawsuits has to be a great deal more than they estimated when they undertook this path against D2L. Here's a chance to do the right thing - quite possibly the last chance for Blackboard to begin repairing...

Registration opens soon for both summer and fall terms at Lake Superior College. We will now be offering enough sections of online courses in an 8-week format to allow students to compete the Online A.A. (Associate in Arts) degree on a more flexible schedule. Courses run for 8 weeks at a time instead of 16, although the traditional length courses will still be offered and are in fact still the standard offering in our schedule. However, I do expect the 8-week courses to be quite popular. In addition, students will now have 5 different entry points (start dates) during the school year. Here's our new video: and here's the new print ad:

Even though I love Twitter as a way to stay connected with really smart people, I still think that this Current.com video is hilarious. The inane commentary shown in this video is the reason that I almost gave up on Twitter about a year ago. The tweets were basically worthless and I didn't care at all about which bagel shop someone had stopped at. However, then as I added the right people to the network, I started to learn something useful from it every day. Now it is the one web-based tool that I would least want to give up. Still, that is funny and very well done.

Why not throw away this tired, old assignment? "Please post an introduction of yourself to the rest of the class on the discussion board." This is the type of response you'll get to this opening week assignment. (This is an actual student post, although YMMV) "My Name is Kristine. I am currently working towards my LPN degree. I would like to complete my RN someday too. I stay busy, as I have a husband and a 3 year boy & a 2 year old daughter! I also have 5 horses and 4 dogs. They all keep me very busy, but I love it. We live on a farm in rural MN. I am very excited about this course, it should be very interesting!" Musical Introductions Change the assignment. Tell students to use a free music service such as iMeem or Seeqpod (or any of several others) to create a 3-song playlist that tells you a little something about them. You might ask them to write why these songs speak to them or what these songs say about who they are as a person. 2008 Web Tools...

At the eLearning 2009 (ITC09) conference last month there was a fair number of active Twitterers who were keeping up with the various activities by tweeting their experiences for others in attendance as well as many followers who were not at the conference at all. Sharing links, making comments, making plans for dinner and other get-togethers, and several other purposes were enabled by Twitter . Below are some of the almost 400 tweets that included the tag ITC09. There were many others that didn't include the tag. One of the best examples of how Twitter changed the conference for me was when I was sitting in a not-too-special presentation and saw a tweet about how a discussion about accessibility formed in another room after the presenter didn't show up. I was curious about how that was going and two minutes later I was able to join the discussion. I was also able to get almost immediate feedback about sessions where I was presenting to see what worked best and what didn't...