LMS changes - Blackboard did integrate a building block for Facebook, and with BB Connect, there has been some appreciation for the social element of student

blackboard may now occasionally be an interactive whiteboard but the principles of rigid, scheduled and formal learning still underpin the

Many of you know that IT Toolbox is a very rich and active IT-oriented community site. Among the many groups there is one devoted to eLearning, e-learning-select . This group has many interesting discussions on it, for example, development product comparisons such as Blackboard vs. Moodle . Also, this group is in the Knowledge Management area of IT Toolbox - if KM interests you, there are a lot of other KM-oriented groups that you can join!

Wow, consolidation is running rampart in the eLearning space as everyone continues to merge or acquire. Look to your left and look to your right; easily one of those will not be around in six months . Today BlackBoard announced plans to merge with WebCT; the two leading providers in the higher education eLearning space (BlackBoard alone forecasts US$150M+ for their fiscal year). Now having gone through a "merger" myself (SkillSoft and SmartForce) it sounds like BlackBoard is really acquiring WebCT and it doesn't bode well for WebCT given that there is a tremendous amount of product overlap. ?

This comes from eSchool News The implication from D2L is that the fight is not over by a long shot. But from Blackboard's perspective, the verdict vindicates its argument that the methodology of its software--allowing individual users to access multiple courses through a single log-in procedure--constitutes a unique invention whose patent its smaller competitor improperly violated. Wow! I'm certainly shocked as well. Not sure what else to say about it.

I think everyone is commenting on this issue, but I want to just add my $.02 by adding George Siemens' $.02 . I'm totally with him on this statement: "What's the impact? I can't say I'm really worried. I have moved away from LMS' to a certain degree. In a perfect world, I would get a chunk of funding and create a tool that is much less like an LMS...and much more like a social network/portfolio/blog/wiki /tagging/user-generated/search tool (some call them personal learning environments). What we really need are new tools that do new things. Not tools that duplicate the classroom experience.

Harold Jarche provides a concise yet powerful defense of the Elgg learning environment against the 44 provisions of the Blackboard LMS Patent in his post Elgg and the LMS Patent .  His analysis from a learning professional's viewpoint is critical. This post is a call to action to any learning professional who wants to preserve open and complete competition amongst vendors (for profit or open source) seeking to assist in the learning process.  Please write a post on your blog (feel free to copy this post if you'd like) with a link to Harold's post and create a trackback to it as.   Let's make sure that any attorney who searches for information regarding this case finds Harold's post.