Me: Blackboard has an imaginary spinmeister! Oh NO!
Spinmeister: Oh, that guy. I wouldn’t worry too much about him. He was Joe Lieberman’s imaginary spinmeister. He’s not exactly the sharpest imaginary pencil in the imaginary box, if you know what I mean.
Me: But…their imaginary spinmeister said that this will all just blow over if they wait it out.
Spinmeister: And that strategy worked soooo well for Lieberman. Listen, this thing is just getting started. It’s only two weeks old. And already there are grumblings among the Blackboard building blocks community that they shouldn’t be contributing code and ideas to a company that is just going to turn around and patent them. Word is getting out. You have to give your efforts time to have their effect.
Me: So we shouldn’t care that Blackboard’s CEO isn’t answering questions about the specific nature of the patent?
Spinmeister: Oh, you should care. You should continue to turn that against him. Keep educating people about what the patent actually says. Keep circulating the plain English translations. The more people know, the more concerned that they will be about the non-answers they get from Blackboard, and the more Chasen looks like a sleazy politician.
Me: Well…OK…but…he has a mantra and everything!
Spinmeister: Chill. You have a mantra too. Repeat after me: “Chilling innovation…chilling innovation…chilling innovation”…”anti-competitive…anti-competitive…anti-competitive”. The people that Blackboard is trying to spin mostly have PhD’s. They’re not stupid. And they understand how innovation happens through a collegial environment of collaborative research. If you can connect the dots for them so that they don’t have to do a lot of their own digging to understand the basic issues, they will do the right thing.
Me: What about his point that “no institutions or organizations with any clout has taken a stand” on the issue yet? Shouldn’t we be concerned about that?
Spinmeister: That may be the only accurate statement that my imaginary colleague made. Yes, institutions will need to step up. But he’s wrong to think that it won’t happen. The New York Times didn’t rush in to endorse Ned Lamont the first day. The fact of the matter is that institutions move in a different time stream than bloggers. The fact that no big players have jumped in two weeks into the conflict doesn’t mean that they are going to sit on the sidelines. Trust me, help is on the way. You just need to hang in there and keep getting your message out.
Me: Well, I admit this is all very comforting. But are you sure you’re right?
Spinmeister: Have I ever steered you wrong?
Me: Um…actually, we’ve never spoken before. Plus, you’re a figment of my imagination.
Spinmeister: You have a point there. But really, you’re OK. The community is on the right track and will prevail. Just take a deep breath, have a beer, and keep steady.
Me: You’re right. We’ll hang in there. Thanks.
Spinmeister: Hey, that’s why you pay me the big imaginary bucks.
Full disclosure: I’m a former employee of Blackboard. I own stock in the company. And while I would like my investment to appreciate with time, I have significant reservations about Blackboard’s decision to pursue litigation against a competitor.
All that said, I think fear is running slightly amuck here. Granted, Blackboard’s patent claims may be unfounded, and so too the lawsuit against D2L. But the idea that Blackboard, or any company, can stifle the will of dedicated, creative people strikes me as defeatist.
Yes, I want Blackboard to prosper for my own personal reasons. At the same time, I think Blackboard’s aggressive patent stance might not only *NOT* stifle innovation, it might actually spur it. Because, let’s be honest, e-learning platforms, as currently designed, are fairly simple beasts. Perhaps the Blackboard threat will inspire a new generation of online learning enthusiasts/entrepreneurs to approach online learning in an entirely different way. Sometimes opportunity arrives by way of disaster. If nothing else, Blackboard’s stance is going to shake up the industry, and that might be a good thing for everyone.
Again, my fervent hope is that Blackboard conducts itself honorably, continues to grow, and provides leadership to the online learning industry. But if it chooses not to, it does so at considerable risk. Because when smart dedicated people get smacked in the face, they tend to come back with a vengeance. Perhaps 10 years from now we’ll view this patent imbroglio as the precise moment when Blackboard ceded the high ground and a whole new e-learning paradigm arose in its place.
E-learning, in my opinion, is still in the first inning. Maybe even the top of the first. When I worked at Blackboard, I once collaborated with my boss (who was at that time the director of software development) on a vision document in which we schemed around 12 different paradigms for an e-learning environment. There were some promising, progressive ideas in that document. But Blackboard had neither the vision nor the resources to pursue them, and the document went into a drawer and was never seen again.
My point: Blackboard may have a patent on the basic elements of today’s e-learning environments, but e-learning will ultimately become much more dynamic and useful–and as a consequence, evolve beyond the reach of this patent. I fully believe that document we shelved six years ago included ideas that, in theory, could today provide the seeds for a whole new approach to online learning.
Whatever happens with this patent and lawsuit, I think Blackboard’s detractors should expend as much energy in looking for the opportunity as they currently are in “fighting the beast.”
George Bernard Shaw once said, “Progress depends on the unreasonable man.” Be unreasonable, I say. View this moment in time as the opportunity to steer online learning in a new and better direction. Blackboard is but a single–albeit large–player on the e-learning stage. And the script has only begun to be written. Pick up that script, start writing, make change. Now.
That might be a fine strategy if Blackboard only had one patent. But they have a whole slew of others in the pipeline. And they are not the only ones. The real issue isn’t this particular patent. It’s edupatents in general. And yes, they absolutely will stifle innovation. If I can’t develop a new system without confidence that I won’t be sued, then I won’t develop a new system.
Fitz, I think you have a noble sentiment, however a problem is that:
Blackboard may have a patent on the basic elements of today’s e-learning environments
It seems to me that today’s e-learning environments mostly provide an online means of conducting education in as similar a fashion as possible to the way it has been conducted in the classroom for some time (with different teacher/student roles, differential access to learning materials, ability to grade assignments, etc.). So a problem I see is that the processes Blackboard has patented were invented by education institutions over the past few thousand years; BB has patented the implementation of these inventions in the online environment.
So it does seem to me that if the patent stands, even systems seen as innovative today would have a hard time not infringing (how are you going to create an e-Portfolio system without differing teacher/student roles and ability of teachers to assess student work, for instance?).
People have compared BB’s patent to Amazon’s one click, however it seems to me it is really different, as there was no way to ‘one click’ purchase an item before the web, while there were ways to provide different roles for teachers and students (and even for allowing a teacher in one class to be a student in another class8-o) before the advent of the web.
So it seems to me that coming up with a new paradigm for e-learning (one without different roles for teachers and students, without assignments, etc.) is much more than a software problem, it would entail some pretty large changes in education in general, in accreditation, in how grades are given, etc.