This is just a quick post to note the fact of two pretty big announcements coming out of Blackboard. First, the acquisition of the company by Providence Equity has been completed. Second, Providence immediately turned around and executed a merger between Blackboard and Edline, makers of an LMS-like product aimed at the K12 market. I haven’t had time to look into the details of this latest move, but it may suggest that Providence believes the K12 market is ready to experience a growth spurt.
Author: Michael Feldstein
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I Need Your Input: What’s Up at e-Literate
I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’ve been bringing in more featured bloggers to the site. While I am committed to continuing my own blogging, it has become clear to me that I will not be able to return to my previous pace of writing any time in the foreseeable future. Over the years, e-Literate has built up a significant loyal readership. I don’t want to squander that attention and good will. I want to continue to use this blog to share what I’m learning and help spread the word about good work and other things people should know about in the field of educational technology. As a result, I am strongly considering making e-Literate explicitly and permanently a multi-author publication. I haven’t made up my mind for certain about it yet, but based on the experiment with featured bloggers so far, I am strongly inclined to do it. I would like to use this post to explain what I have in mind and request your direct and honest feedback.
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Please Welcome Featured Blogger David White
Since I am bringing on some bloggers for relatively sustained participation in e-Literate as part of an experiment that I’ll write about more in a future post, I have decided to call these folks “featured bloggers” to distinguish them from one-time or occasional “guest bloggers.” I’m proud to announce our newest featured blogger will be David White from the department of Technology Assisted Lifelong Learning (TALL) at Oxford University. I have previously written admiringly about his digital visitors/digital residents idea, and I am pleased to have him blog about that idea and other topics of interest here. David already writes for the TALL blog, so he will be syndicating some of that content here for your convenience, but I encourage you also to read him and his colleagues directly at their site.
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Amazon’s Kindle Fire: A Different Take
e-Literate featured blogger Audrey Watters has a really good write-up of the issues she has found with the Kindle Fire for education on her own blog. I share her concerns.
And…
I’d like to offer a perspective on some of the upside potential of the device.
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Yummy, Yummy Data
EDUCAUSE is just a few weeks away, which means that the release of the annual Campus Computing survey is also just a few weeks away. It’s pretty much the only decent source of data we have on LMS trends (among many other things) in higher education. Since we are arguably midway through a four-year LMS market transition as WebCT and ANGEL get end-of-lifed, I look forward to this year’s survey results with great anticipation. And, of course, we’ll analyze the implications of it here on e-Literate.
In the meantime, if you are one of the people responsible for filling out the survey at your institution, make sure you get it done!
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Hawaii Dept. of Education Moving from Moodle to Blackboard
Blackboard just put out a press release announcing that the Hawaii Department of Education is moving their Hawaii Virtual Learning Network (HVLN) from an open source LMS to Blackboard. The press release doesn’t name the platform, but HVLN is currently running Moodle. This is notable because it’s the first move I have heard of away from open source to Blackboard in the United States and one of a very few that I’ve heard of globally. One data point does not make a trend, but this does bear watching.
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Please Welcome Audrey Watters
It gives me great pleasure to announce that Audrey Watters will be guest blogging on e-Literate. Audrey’s Hack Education blog is one of the smartest ed tech blogs that I know of and one of the few that I read religiously. I am delighted to have her perspective and professionalism added to the mix of voices here, and I am confident that you will be too.