Desire2Blog

It seems obvious that there is a perceived void in the development of future leaders in the field of e-Learning. At least it certainly appears that way. I come to that conclusion based on the fact that there are three different efforts by reputable organizations to develop leadership academies focused on e-Learning. One by ITC (note: I am a board member), one by WCET (note: I am involved in the event planning and execution), and one by SLOAN-C. From the Instructional Technology Council (ITC) : (copied from website) ITC 2009 Leadership Academy July 26-28, 2009, Costa Mesa, California Application Deadline: May 20, 2009 See Academy Web site The ITC Leadership Academy is designed to develop and enrich the leadership skills of distance learning professionals in higher educational settings. Ideal candidates include distance learning administrators or learning technologies administrators with three or more years of managerial experience in a distance learning...

In the category of chock one up for electronic communications, MikeLeSombre ( his blog ) changed his copyright on the image shown above after getting requests from several people (including me) asking him to reconsider his "All Rights Reserved" copyright and allow sharing through Creative Commons licensing. That's exactly what he did. Now his image is licensed as CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 which means that his image will be used and shared far and wide - legally. Thanks Mike. You have many fans who appreciate your handiwork with this poster. Resistence is futile* (see note above) All your IMS are belong to us.

A few years ago I started a scholarship fund at Lake Superior College for students who are pursuing an online degree program or at least completing most of their courses via online delivery. Back then I was struck by the irony (or maybe sadness?) while attending the student awards banquet that none of the scholarships were going to online students. That just didn't seem right considering that about 15% of our enrollment was for online courses, but none of the financial support was being given to online students. They were clearly a hidden population. Now the online enrollments make up over 25% of our total enrollment, but I am happy to report that for the past several years we have honored online students on scholarship night. (CC photo by stuartpilbrow ) This year there were three online scholarship winners. Today I received thank you cards from each of them. They want to communicate with all the people who made their awards possible, so I will post their words here in an effort t...

I haven't posted anything about the Blackboard purchase of Angel during the first two days of the hub-bub because as my mother once told me, "If you don't have anything snarky and bitchy to say, just don't say anything at all." As I was preparing to write this post (and while mulling over her words of wisdom), I decided that I need to set the record straight regarding this much-maligned purchase. (CC angel photo by adselwood ) What a fabulous move by Blackboard! Once again, the Blackboard suits in the white hats have pulled a marvelous coup in the LMS market. Current Angel clients should embrace the fact that they have now been adopted by the mothership - where there will always be a bird in every pot, a car in every garage, and a lawyer in every chair. I'm totally perplexed by all the negativity being expressed by various members of the education community. I even heard a few people remark that Michael Chasen appears to be a complete slimeball in this video ...

In the previous post I wrote about the second round of discussions by the rulemaking committee that took place this week at the Department of Education in Washington D.C. This is the group that will decide how the distance learning student authentication issue in the Higher Education Opportunities Act will play out. Thanks to Chris M, the Executive Director of the ITC, I can provide you with a sense of how those conversations have gone so far. The third and final meeting for this group will occur on May 18-20, at which time we expect to have clear language about how accrediting bodies should apply the law as handed down for the HEOA. Based on the conversations late yesterday afternoon, this is how we expect (best guess?) the language will be handled: (expected changes to the proposed language in red) 602.17 Application of standards in reaching an accreditation decision. (g) Requires institutions that offer distance education or correspondence education to have processes in place ...

The second round of discussions by the rulemaking committee occurs at the Department of Education in Washington D.C. on Tuesday through Thursday, April 21 - 23. It is this group that will decide whether the final resolution of the distance student authentication issue goes beyond the clarifying language attached to the Higher Education Opportunity Act . You can read the draft language ( PDF submitted by the Department of Education ) for the second round of discussions by Team III - Accreditation. Of primary importance to distance educators is Issue #1: Definitions of correspondence and distance education and Issue #10: Authentication of distance ed and correspondence ed students. Issue #1: The lesser of the two issues, this one is an attempt to determine definitions for correspondence courses and distance education. The draft language defines various features of correspondence courses and then states that "Correspondence education may not be considered distance education." (...

... but of course, we already knew that. Now, the USPTO seems to have figured it out as well. Today they released their Action Closing Prosecution (nonfinal) . decision ( announced at D2L Patent blog ) Rather than write a long blog post, I'll share my initial thoughts (from Twitter) as I first heard about this and as I was reading the USPTO report (read from bottom up). Basically, the USPTO agrees that prior art renders the Blackboard patent baseless. However, we're still not done with this mess. What next? More Blackboard shenanigans, without any doubt.