e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Author: Michael Feldstein

  • Blackboard Now Suing USPTO

    Update: The Patently-O blog has a short post on this issue. There’s not a lot of new information here, but at least the reporting is done by actual patent lawyers.

    According to Desire2Learn’s patent blog, Blackboard has now filed suit against the USPTO (technically against the Director of the USPTO) to stop the inter partes re-exam from proceeding. Their argument is that the law states the USPTO cannot order a re-exam after a final judgment has been rendered by the courts upholding the patent. The point of the law is to prevent defendants from going to daddy (the USPTO) after mommy (the courts) say “no.” In the complaint, Blackboard argues that the USPTO is applying the law incorrectly by allowing a re-exam to go forward until all appeals are exhausted in the courts. Instead, Blackboard argues that the cutoff should be the judgment from the first court. Blackboard doesn’t cite any precedent for their argument, which strikes me as odd. I know that inter partes is relatively new, but I find it hard to believe that this has never been tested before.

    In their blog post, D2L raises two points in response to the suit. (D2L is not a party to this particular suit so, unless they file an amicus brief, they won’t have any say in court on this one.) First, they point out that Blackboard has previously said they welcomed the re-exam and expected it to strengthen their patent. While this point doesn’t have any legal implications, it does raise the question of how sincere Blackboard’s statements were in this regard. Clearly, they prefer their chances in the courts to their chances in the USPTO. The second point that D2L raises may have legal implications, although I don’t have the ability to properly assess that question as a non-lawyer. They note that Blackboard doesn’t mention in their filing that the USPTO had preliminarily invalidated all claims of the patent. Timing here may be important. If I recall correctly, the USPTO issued this ruling before the final judgment from the court. If so, that could complicate Blackboard’s argument significantly.

    Regardless of the legal merits, the fact that Blackboard continues to assert the patent heavily undermines their new marketing message of openness. I don’t understand why they still think this strategy is a winner.

  • Storytelling with Web 2.0

    From my college friend @SarahM, who has turned out to be vastly cooler than I am, comes a tip about storytlr, a new service that looks like it has some interesting potential for the classroom. Basically, it takes inputs from all kinds of Web 2.0 tools—Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Picasa, Facebook Random RSS feeds, etc.—and strings them together into a narrative. Basically, you choose the inputs, the date range, and the web page template, and the system puts out a storyboard with your pictures, videos, blog posts, tweets, etc., in chronological order that you can then edit. This would be fantastic for class projects or trips.

    Sweet!

  • Learning to Like Twitter

    In the recent past, I wrote about not really getting Twitter. Since then, I have to say that it has grown on me. I am not and never will be an addict. But it does add a nice social dimension to my day, particularly given that I work alone from my home office a lot of the time. It lets me feel a little more connected with friends and colleagues, and does so without taking up unacceptable amounts of time. So, for my former fellow Twitter skeptics, I have a few suggestions for how to get the most out of it:

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  • CSU Picks Moodle and ANGEL

    Cal State University, with its 23 campuses and 250,000 students, has signed contracts with Moodlerooms and ANGEL, according to Campus Technology. (I’ve known this was in the works for some time now, but I guess it just went official.) These are statewide pricing contracts; individual campuses still get to choose whatever system they choose. Still, it’s a big deal for both vendors, as well as for the Moodle community. Word on the street is that both Moodle and ANGEL got particularly high marks because of their strong accessibility; California has strict accessibility laws and regulations.

    I have been blogging a fair bit about the IMS LIS standard. I want to point out that LIS makes this sort of adoption more meaningful. Generally speaking, individual campuses tend to be reluctant to move off of whatever they have because of high migration costs. With LIS, one substantial portion of that migration cost—namely, integration—is very substantially reduced. It also becomes much more economically feasible for campuses to run more than one of these systems at the same time. Interoperability standards may not be thrilling from a pedagogical perspective, but if they lower the barriers for IT staff to provide alternatives to faculty and students then they have a strong impact on teaching and learning at the end of the day.

  • Why the Retention Early Warning Critics Are Wrong

    One criticism I consistently hear when talking about retention early warning systems is that they may provide value for the university but mostly don’t for the student. The university benefits by retaining the student because it gets more tuition. But, the argument goes, the student may have all kinds of valid reasons for dropping out of a course or a program. Furthermore, retention and learning have no necessary relationship, they argue. You can stay in school and still not get anything of value out of it. The (usually implicit) conclusion from these arguments is that retention systems are nothing more Big Brother tools for squeezing more money out of hapless students.

    There’s something a little odd about this argument even on the face of it. No early warning system is forcing students to stay in school. The students must somehow be complicit in any impact on retention. Even so, I have never been one to dismiss it out-of-hand. However, after spending a half day in an EDUCAUSE seminar by John Campbell and Kim Arnold about Purdue’s early warning system, I can say with great confidence that the critics are missing the boat—at least with respect to Purdue’s approach, and probably in general.

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  • We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties; Please Stand By

    I am aware that my RSS feed is wacked. I’m investigating. Please be patient.

    Sorry.

    Update: It appears that the latest version of my related posts plug-in went rogue on me. I have turned it off for the time being, and that seems to have solved the problem. If you have any more trouble in the near future, please let me know by posting a comment on this post.

  • Openness: Finally, We're Getting Somewhere

    Update: The Sannier vs. Wheeler smackdown is available on video here. Microsoft Silverlight is required.

    As I sit on the flight home from the EDUCAUSE conference thinking back on the themes of the week, it is clear to me that various flavors of openness have finally arrived in a big way in higher education, with more on the way. Certainly, a critical mass of universities are recognizing the value of open standards and accepting that open source is a viable and important approach. Open access and open educational resources are coming on too, although they are much earlier in their adoption cycle. Further down the road, open governance and open business practices are looming on the horizon.

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