In my last post, I announced that I will be taking a new job at Oracle and explained that the move will not affect my blogging. Now I’d like to take a moment to talk about why I’m so excited about this new opportunity to make a difference in the world of online learning.
Tag: edunomics
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FAS's Kay Howell on the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust Act
Federation of American Scientists’ Kay Howell, who authored the research roadmap for the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust Act, has a column in eLearn explaining why passage of the act is so critical:
Today’s students are not only comfortable with technology-they know how to use it effectively to solve problems, find resources, and build networks of people with shared interests. So why do we send them to places of learning and ask them to leave their technology tools at home? Why do the cookies on my ten-year old daughter’s computer know more about what she likes to read and how she likes to locate information than does her teacher?
The answer, unfortunately, is fairly simple: As a nation we’ve been unwilling to make the investments necessary to give our kids and their teachers the same productivity tools used in the computer, pharmaceutical, energy, and other industries. The federal government funds substantial research and development (R&D) initiatives that translate into advancements in key US industries-and those investments pay off handsomely. Federally funded R&D, performed mostly in US colleges and universities, leads to improved productivity through better processes, products, and services, and the graduate students that participate in the R&D eventually end up as workers in the related industries. It’s a great model that has served our country well.
Unfortunately, there is no such R&D model for the education sector.
It’s a good read. And once again, I urge you to write your congresspeople in support of the bill and get your friends and colleagues to do the same.
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The Economic Impact of the Blackboard Patent Suit
One of the topics that I’ve been meaning to get to since EDUCAUSE is the likely impact of the patent suit on the financial health of Blackboard, Desire2Learn, and the other LMS players. I got to talk to a number of university decision-makers and observe the activity at the booths of various LMS vendors. My conclusion? In the short term, both Blackboard and D2L are likely to do just fine. However, a slowdown 9-12 months out is likely.
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Oracle, Sakai, and the LMOS–Part 1
It’s been a while since I’ve written a post about the notion of a Learning Management Operating System (LMOS). There’s some news out of the Sakai world that’s as good an excuse as any for doing returning to it.
Apparently Oracle, with the help of Unicon, is going to do quite a bit of work on Sakai in the form of something they call their “Academic Enterprise Initiative” (AEI). According to Oracle’s white paper on the topic, the work includes (but is not limited to) the following elements:
- Building batch and real-time integration between Sakai and Oracle’s student information system (SIS)
- Creating flexible integration between Sakai and Oracle’s teaching-related products (most notably their portfolio and gradebook).
- Making it possible to swap in Oracle collaboration applications (e.g., their discussion forum, calendar, chat, etc.) to replace the analogous Sakai tools
- Presenting the whole thing through Oracle portal or any other JSR-168-compliant portal (like uPortal, for example)
- Creating a student data hub that allows for disparate applications to share data while providing a single “source of truth” to avoid duplicate and conflicting content versions
There’s a lot here to unpack. In this post I’m going to look at some of the specifics of what Oracle has in mind and why this advances the LMOS cause significantly–even for those institutions that will never use a single Oracle product. In a follow-up post, I’ll drill down into some of the specifics of Oracle’s approach and their implications for teaching and learning.
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Once Again, IBM Sets a Good Example for Blackboard on Patents
The New York Times has a piece out today on IBM’s latest responsibility in patenting initiative. It seems that Big Blue will advertise its pending patents. Some details:
The policy, being announced today, includes standards like clearly identifying the corporate ownership of patents, to avoid filings that cloak authorship under the name of an individual or dummy company. It also asserts that so-called business methods alone – broad descriptions of ideas, without technical specifics – should not be patentable.
No blind-siding competitors with surprise lawsuits from submarine patents? No trying to own broad ideas (like…oh, I don’t know…multi-role, multi-class educational groupware, for instance)? How refreshing!
Note that IBM is taking this step despite the fact that it will cost the company:
Patents typically take three or four years after filing to be approved by the patent office. Companies often try to keep patent applications private for as long as possible, to try to hide their technical intentions from rivals.
“Competitors will know years ahead in some cases what fields we’re working on,” said John Kelly, senior vice president for technology and intellectual property at I.B.M. “We’ve decided we’ll take that risk and seek our competitive advantage elsewhere.”
Nobody can claim that this is a throw-away for IBM–that it is donating patents that it has already written off as worthless. This policy goes for all their patent applications. Why are they doing this? Because they have come to believe the current environment of patent litigation damages innovation:
“The larger picture here is that intellectual property is the crucial capital in a global knowledge economy,” said Samuel J. Palmisano, I.B.M.’s chief executive. “If you need a dozen lawyers involved every time you want to do something, it’s going to be a huge barrier. We need to make sure that intellectual property is not used as a barrier to growth in the future.”
That’s it in a nutshell. That’s the problem with the Blackboard patent. If you need a dozen lawyers involved every time you want to develop educational software, it’s going to be a huge barrier. IBM has it right.
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Blackboard Conference Call, Part II
As I said in my previous post, I was allowed to ask quite a few questions of Matthew Small in Blackboard’s patent Q&A webinar tonight. I chose not to ask any regarding the scope or validity of the patent, since I saw no benefit in crossing swords on those issues. Instead, I focused my questions on the potential for broader harm to the industry. Matthew Small took great pains to emphasize that Blackboard’s intentions are narrowly focused on D2L and that this patent is not, in his words, “a game changer.” I wanted to find out if he really believed that, if he can defend it, and if he knows how strong or weak his defense is. My conclusion? My gut is that he believes it. I’m confident that he can’t defend it. And I think on some levels, at least, he knows that his defense is weak.
In fairness, all of what follows is paraphrase. I don’t have a recording or transcript of the conversation. I invite other participants (including Mr. Small) to correct the record if I get anything wrong or out of context.
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Even Microsoft Disagrees with Blackboard
I recently noted that, contrary to Blackboard General Counsel Matthew Small’s assertion that no patent holder can say for certain what they will or will not do with a patent, IBM has done exactly that by providing royalty-free licenses to linux on hundreds of their patents. But hey, that’s IBM. They’re into all that crazy hippy Open Source linux stuff. Surely a normal software company wouldn’t do that…right?
If IBM is too radical for you, then let’s look at Microsoft. Surprise, surprise, even that bastion of voracious techno-capitalism has announced that they promise–promise!!–not to assert patents that they hold on web services against anyone. And once again, that promise comes in the form of a legally binding license.
The next time any of you has the opportunity to speak with Matt Small, ask him why Blackboard is unwilling to do what all of the software industry leaders are doing with increasing frequency. Ask him why Blackboard will not provide a royalty-free license to whomever they claim that they will not sue. If you are a Blackboard customer, ask him why he won’t offer you a royalty free license to indemnify you. He clearly can. His only other truthful answer would be that it would reduce the value of the patent for him to do so. Because, you know, somebody someday may buy the patent from Blackboard, and if that somebody can’t sue you with it then Blackboard will get less money from the sale.
Nice, huh?