In a recent article in the Windsor Star, everyone’s favorite plain talker, Blackboard General Counsel Matthew Small, made the following statement:
“No patent holder can definitely say, ‘I will not do X with my patent.’ However, I can say very confidently that we are focusing on the commercial sector.”
The first half of this statement is absolutely false and Small should (and probably does) know better. Which perhaps tells us something about the second half of his statement as well. (more…)
Stuart Sim has live-blogged the IMS Q&A session with Blackboard regarding their patent. For those of you who don’t know him, Stuart is no wild-eyed long-haired academic commie pinko. He’s the Chief Architect at Sun Microsystems’ Global Education and Research Group. Although there doesn’t appear to be much news out of the conversation, I think you’ll find his analysis interesting.
Lisa Neal and I have an in-depth tutorial up on eLearn about how to do usability testing for self-paced e-learning courses (although the methods would work for collaborative courses as well). It was originally written as a stand-alone guide and I’m not sure how well it reads in article format. In any case, you may find some of the information useful.
After promising to wait for Al’s analysis before publishing mine, I mistook his initial post for his final word and jumped the gun. Al’s own blow-by-blow analysis is up now. As you’ll see, we’re in pretty close agreement on it.
I’ll be interviewed next week on the subject of e-Learning usability for a Truth in e-Learning webcast hosted by a company called Scribe Studio. Unfortunately, the event is non-free; $145 (including the $50 discount) for access to 12 episodes. I think the conversation will be fun, though, and I’ll be interested to see how they manage to produce online videos with pretty high production values.
This week, Blackboard issued another FAQ which “is the result of numerous discussions with those interested in better understanding the Blackboard patent.” Do their answers make the topic clearer? Let’s do a question-by-question analysis and see. (more…)
Thanks to Al Essa for discovering Blackboard’s latest FAQ on the patent. I am thrilled that they have now put these statements out in public (as opposed to just whispering them in their clients’ ears privately) because it finally gives us an opportunity to address them head-on. The truth is that their claims about the scope of the patent, while literally true, are highly misleading.
I will wait for Al to post his forthcoming debunking of the FAQ before adding my own 2 cents.
