In my last post, I said that I thought Blackboard’s announcement of making it easy to add a Creative Commons license to a Common Cartridge export is significant. One day later, we have some evidence of just how significant. e-Literate featured blogger Audrey Watters has a post up on her own blog about a big announcement […]
Blackboard-Inc.
Perhaps ‘Open’ Is a Flag of My Disposition…
Anyone who went to EDUCAUSE this year had to come away with the impression that Open is the new black. This product now comes with 50% more openness! That one’s openness is 99.44% pure! It’s easy to get jaded about all of this and cry “openwashing,” as Anya Kamenetz did, among others (including me, at […]
Analysis of Blackboard Response to Recent Disclosure of Security Vulnerabilities
There’s been an interesting set of public relations based on the recent news of Blackboard security vulnerabilities. SC Magazine’s Australian edition broke a story on September 16 about an investigation by two or more anonymous Australian universities working with a security firm, Securus Global. In conjunction with the magazine, this investigation exposed a number of security […]
Blackboard Mergers and Acquisitions
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 […]
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 […]
SunGard HE and Blackboard Acquisitions: Compare and Contrast
UPDATE: In the section on ‘Cash Cow vs. Growth Potential’, my choice of words could have caused misunderstanding. I did not mean to equate Operating Income with Cash Flow, and my choice of the word ‘cash’ in this section should really have been ‘income’, as my analysis was obviously based on Operating Income. I have […]
On Innovation and Commodification
I had a wonderful time at the Moodle Moot two weeks ago. Conferences for different LMSs tend to have very similar presentation types (how to migrate, tricks for making the grade book usable, great Web 2.0 tools that integrate with the platform, ways to improve training and help, etc.), but the crowds are different. Moodle […]