Blackboard patents the LMS, but does it matter?
Via Stephen Downes, is this post by Michael Feldstein that Blackboard (aka BlackWeb) has been granted a US patent on the learning management system (LMS). My initial reaction was indignation that a greedy corporation was once again trying to stifle innovation in education. Then I read Brent Schlenker’s reaction to my post on the lack of open source learning applications, and Brent correctly noted that there are a lot of learning applications, just not that many “educational” ones;
My point is that we don’t need any specific open source learning applications. That would be just another thing that people need to learn…another interface to learn…another login id and password to remember. We are at our best when we evaluate the existing technologies and leverage them for the purpose of learning. We are at our worst when we try to create our own little system and call it the Learning thingy.
The Blackboard patent may become a defining moment for learning technologies. Let’s use this as an opportunity to cast off the classroom and course metaphors:
In yet another aspect of the invention, provided is a method for providing online education, which includes the steps of establishing a course to be offered online, offering the course to be taken online to a group of student users; and providing access over the network to the course files to a student user who has enrolled in the course. The establishment of the course includes an instructor user generating a set of course files for use with teaching the course, then transferring the course files to a server computer for storage thereat, and then making access to the course files available to a predefined community of student users having access to the server computer over a network.
Let’s use all those wonderful Web 2.0 tools for learning, not schooling. Blackboard spent a lot of time and money filing for this patent and they can have it, because it has no value. It’s no longer about online courses, it’s about learning and performing.
LMS? We don’t need no stinking LMS!
Filed under: Learning, Technology
Phew…I’m glad you agree. I’m not sure why, but I was concerned about writing that post. The big LMS players have been able to capitalize on the evolution of the current educational system with tools like Blackboard, and others. But what they fail to see (or maybe just fail to monetize at this point) is the revolution that is occuring. Its not about the technology…really. It’s about people: People connecting, people creating, people sharing, people searching for meaning.
I wonder if we simply called a gathering of people coming together to share ideas a “Group”. And if someone in the group was elected to be the “leader” and another scheduled times for the group to meet. Then we created a simple database that tracked attendance and connected each individual’s identity to the group identity. Would that database infringe upon the patent?
The true revolution has begun and most people are part of it and don’t even realize it.
Is that a Pink Floyd or a Cheech & Chong reference?!? ;->
And maybe you might want to look at Nuvvo – http://www.nuvvo.com/ (although I’m happy with a wiki and an Elgg Community blog for my courses).
Joan, that’s a Treasure of the Sierra Madre and/or Blazing Saddles reference
I wonder if Nuvvo’s technology infringes on the Blackboard patent too?
You are absolutely right — we don’t need no stinking lms.
A distributed learning network, on the other hand, would be a very useful thing indeed.
Toward that end, we recently launched http://openacademic.org, an open source project integrating Elgg, Drupal, Moodle, and Mediawiki.
We (FunnyMonkey) and the team leads from Elgg are partnering to make this happen. Should be interesting…
Very interesting business model, Bill. We’ll have to discuss it in detail.
I had a similar reaction, both the anger and then thinking about how to do it differently. The problem then becomes organizational change and adoption. Getting teachers used to the idea of a non ‘course’ based system when so many are resistant to the current LMS approach is a daunting task. Us techies find it cool and interesting, but a learning 2.0 approach would be hard for most academics.
[...] In the span of a couple of weeks the educational landscape we’ve all come to know and care about has taken an awful beating. It seems that DOPA is taking away our open ed-web and blackweb is taking away our walled gardens. For DOPA discussions check out will richardson and for blackweb Harold Jarche and the post on the moodle forums (sign in required… but if you’re not signed up, sign up now, the more the merrier) The important thing to draw from that discussion is that Blackweb has already filed for patent infringement (desire2learn). So here’s the thing. Individually we’re just a bunch of bloggers/educators/interested folks looking at a bunch of rapid fire legislation and going… wait. you can’t do this. What we really need is some kind of united response… we need to react in a way that is focused. We need to gather the experience and intelligence of the community and decide what needs to be done. [...]
To add to Brent’s comments, there are a couple of places in Diana Oblinger’s Educause publication, Educating the Net Generation (http://www.educause.edu/EducatingtheNetGeneration/5989), that say LMS solutions are used more for administrative purposes than learning purposes.
Jason Cole is right (see his 31 July 2006 comment above) that, overall, we face a huge task of convincing faculty and students that the change is warranted, that it will lead to greater learning success, etc., when we have had a hard time doing it until now. However, that doesn’t mean that it is impossible. My metaphor is that I am a tugboat on the side of the Titanic, only able to push a little bit. (Large organizations tend to react slowly!) More importantly than just my pushing, though, is communicating with the tugboats on the other side that are pushing the other way.
This is why I am going back to study org change!
[...] I blogged some analysis on the recent Bb patent application in several countries, including European Union, China, Japan, Canada, India, Israel, Mexico, South Korea, Hong Kong and Brazil, and how the patents were being granted in the US, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. Some clever people are writing about it after reflecting. Harold Jarche has a blog with comments and they are suggesting that educational institutions should embrace opportunity to change their model. [...]
[...] Die Meldung hat eingeschlagen wie eine Bombe: “Blackboard Awarded Patent on e-Learning Technology”. Bill Fitzgerald hat es als Erster aufgedeckt. Stephen Downes hat bereits eine Super-Zusammenfassung geschrieben. Harold Jarche trifft es meiner Ansicht nach auf den Punkt: “Blackboard patents the LMS, but does it matter?”, ich würde sagen ja und nein. Es zeigt einerseits wieder wie unsinnig Patente auf ganze Abläufe sind (in Deutschland üblicherweise “Gebrauchsmuster” genannt und nur sehr beschränkt schützbar), also “ja”, es macht etwas aus. Aber wenn man sich anschaut, was da angeblich patentiert wurde, würde man sagen “Das ist alles e-Learning 1.0″ von daher “nein”, es wird vermutlich wenig Auswirkungen haben. Die Blackboard-Software wird keinen Deut besser werden durch das Patent. Vermutlich wird Bb andere Firmen weiterhin aufkaufen und dies war nur das Instrument um dies zu beschleunigen. It’s just Business! [...]
[...] http://www.jarche.com/?p=839 [...]
Blackboard and Software Patents…
Blackboard a “Thought Leader” I don’t think so… This Inquirer piece has a quote from the CEO of Blackboard: ” Michael Chasen said his firm has been a “thought leader” in the e-learning industry.” The old adage of great thinkers and inventors s…
[...] As I mentioned in my initial post on this patent, my view is that Blackboard’s patent is for an “education” system, not a learning system. Elgg is a learning system. [...]
[...] The granting of the patent has drawn concern and ire from a number of sources. A filing at this web site said the Blackboard patent could become “a defining moment for learning technologiesâ€. Academic Commons says here that the patent threatens open source initiatives like Moodle and Sakai, and also schools using blogs or wikis for courses. … [...]
[...] I’ve heard a handful of suggestions from different sources recently about ways in which the Blackboard patent could be circumvented. There are almost always ways to avoid infringing if one tries hard enough. For example, the LMOS probably wouldn’t violate Blackboard’s patent because it wouldn’t have to come configured in the way that Blackboard’s patent suggests out-of-the-box. Users would add applications to it in whatever combination and configuration they choose. Likewise, the much-vaunted PLE probably wouldn’t infringe either. [...]
[...] has been a lot of buzz around the net about Blackboard’s recent lawsuit against Desire2Learn. Blackboard has played [...]