Author: grabe

One of the bigger educational tech stories of the past couple weeks (IMHO) is Blackboard’s attempt to patent the LMS. I am making the effort to attempt to remember what I wrote about this issue because I want to have these comments and links for future reference. There is a local connection in this topic for me. A group at my institution (UND) has been developing a commercial LMS (HTMLeZ) and this group like larger players (e.g., desire2learn) and open projects (moodle) now must wait to see how this plays out.

What makes the approval of a patent of this nature scary is that it covers so much ground and this space has already been populated by many companies offering similar products. It is unclear what if anything will be demanded of these other companies and how the general nature of the patent language will influence future developments in this area. It seems to me that attempting to claim a patent on a product that has already been made available by many companies and can be associated with existing categories of sofware (ILSs) is a high stakes move (note Blackboard acquired WebCT recently). Dominating this space would be very lucrative. However, there will be a backlash because of the many existing products and concern for continued efficient advances in products of this type. If the patent is interpreted in a way that allows for continued competition, the Blackboard name will likely be tarnished because of the claims the company has made.

Text of the patent

“The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for the exchange of information between instructors and students in an educational context. More specifically, the present invention relates to systems and methods in which an educational instructor interacts with one or more non-collocated students by transmitting course lectures, textbooks, literature, and other course materials, receiving student questions and input, and conducting participatory class discussions using an electronic network such as the Internet and World Wide Web. The present invention also relates to the provision of an infrastructure that allows for on-line registration and tuition payment of educational courses.”
etc.

Blog post from elearning2.0 sharing the diagrams from the patent request.

You may notice the lack of posts since July 20 or so. You may also know that I have added a number of posts since then. For some reason, all of my posts disappeared from my database. Now you know just how frequently I backup. Maybe I made someone mad.

I resolve to backup more frequently.

David Warlick’s new web service is HitchHikr – an aggregator for participant generated summaries of conference experiences and related resources (flikr images). I suppose HitchHikr implies you get to go along without paying for the plane ticket (I tried HitchHiker and someone else evidently got that address first).

This is an interesting idea and I wonder how frequently and how the site will eventually be used. My first reaction was – I would rather be there than read about someone else’s experiences. Then I decided I would likely use the service even while attending. This is sort of a “smart mob” type of thinking – connecting with others linked to a location while in that location. I took some time to review the NECC information – it was a way to process my own NECC experiences in a little different way and to note some things I missed.

I am beginning to think I need an aggregator for the aggregators. Seriously, I don’t see myself combing this site to locate interesting tidbits within the large number of conferences I cannot possibly attend. However, perhaps some of the bloggers I follow will note interesting posts from unique conferences and I will make an attempt to explore.

Kudos to David for coding this site.

I was listening to podcasts this afternoon while I drove to the lake for a little R&R. The podcasts orignated at NECC. One speaker expressed a familiar concern regarding the development of student “information literacy skills’, related these concerns to the variability in quality of what students encounter on the Internet, used the bogus Martin Luther King site as an example, and offered some familiar solutions. For some reason, perhaps because the words were coming from someone else, I thought about what was being described and decided I was not impressed. This is a personal insight because I have written things that were very similar to what was said. I am not impressed because the concerns are typically described in terms of issues I am not certain are serious problems and because the solutions provided deal with superficial techniques.

The description of the problem:

Perhaps you have seen the Martin Luther King site that was used as an example. It looks good, but further analysis reveals it originates from a white hate group and has a tainted message.

The solution:

Check the URL to determine where the site orignates.

My concern:

I am trying to imagine the reaction of a typical middle school student when encountering this site in order to complete a class assignment. I cannot seriously reach the conclusion that the student would select this site as the source for his report and ignore other sites that had been encountered. It occurs to me that the student may be infuenced by the site and identify some of the stereotypic themes promoted. If disposed by personal history, the student may agree with the comments unlikely to be discussed in the classroom. If more mainstream, the site may raise a certain curiousity because it demonstrates to the reader that there really are people out there who believe such things. I do not think recognizing the perspective/bias of the authors would be the problem.

Consider the type of things we ask students to do when selecting web information for careful consideration and use. What organization does the author work for? Was the author paid in one way or another for producting the site? Are the links out of date? Are there spelling and grammatical errors in the resource (supposedly as a sign of uneducated thinking, lack of review)?

I think my concern is that this checklist addresses the obvious and the issues of real concern are more about subtle bias. Maybe bias is not even the correct way to think about the real issues. We all are biased by what we already know and believe. This is a fundamental principle of constructivism or cognitive psychology. We understand in terms of what we already know. Simply put – how do you tell someone to think carefully about what you encounter in the world and about what you already believe?

A first step may be the use of some new examples. The bogus Martin Luther King web site is not what we should worry about. I am much more worried that a student might sit down beside his father who happens to be watching Bill O’Reilly and accept this as a model of how adults educate themselves about the world. Perhaps we should develop a checklist for the “No Spin Zone” or whatever a comparable CNN program might be (I don’t want to offend Bill). Perhaps instead of assuming learners should avoid slanted sites or television programs we should send students to several of these locations with different perspectives, ask them to identify key ideas in the information, and identify inconsistencies in what they encounter.

Remember, if you should find yourself in the no spin zone, think carefully and keep one foot on the floor.

Blogged with Flock

This issue was raised on the evening news so I had to find the online source. Hitwise has just published some stats attempting to document the most popular Internet sites. These data indicate that MySpace.com is the most popular U.S. destination accounting for an astounding 4.5% of web visits. Last year at this time myspace was in 12th position. This shows you what a little bad publicity will do.

Other popular destinations (Google, Yahoo) have been quick to indicate that they are really a collection of services and not a single destination. Probably so. While these data have generated some skepticism and there may be some issues regarding the methodology that was employed to generate these rankings, the fact that nearly any procedure would position MySpace at this rank should be some type of wake up. Either many of us are really rotten people or MySpace has found a way to tap a need in a large number of people.

Time for me and many of you to get a MySpace account. By the way, I find MySpace clunky, messy and very slow. Such complaints obviously are not concerns to those who spend a great deal of time within this environment.