As you may have heard by now, Blackboard has acquired ANGEL. There will be plenty of time for analysis in the days ahead. For now, I just have a personal message.
To my friends at ANGEL, I wish you well. You all have done great work advancing the causes of interoperability and ease of use, and in providing top-notch customer service. I fervently hope that this acquisition will give you all opportunities to continue your great work.
To my friends at Blackboard (and yes, I do have friends at Blackboard), I hope that you gain all that ANGEL has to offer. In addition to some great colleagues, you are getting a company with a reputation for leading the charge on open standards, supporting independent open source projects, and being superb partners and community members.
Trust me when I say that many ANGEL customers will never go to the dark side (Blackboard) nor do I think Blackboard will incorporate the many wonderful features of ANGEL. What other LMS has a way to truely personalize the learning space for students with easy to use variables and actions. This is a very sad day!!!!!
Alan Shapiro
St. Petersburg College
I can’t agree more Alan. And no, I’m not intentionally following you around the web. I have spent the last 6 months becoming and agents and actions master. I will be presenting a dead tech walking next week. In fact I was in the middle of a practice presentation to our faculty when I got the news.
ANGEL is a great LMS and I am sure that we will be forced back into the linear and clunky Blackboard environment. A key reason that so many of our schools chose ANGEL was because we were unable to endure the random price increases and lack of communication or caring for what we do and those we serve.
This is an absolute shame and has been allowed to happen despite promises that ANGEL would never consider such a betrayal.
You are right Alan, it is a sad day.