(2010-08-10) Blackboard Buys Elluminate Wimba

BlackBoard bought Elluminate and Wimba.

George Siemens considers the LMS market. Some universities are beginning to focus on a big-picture view of technology: making learning resources available in multimedia, integrating technology from design to delivery, using mobile technologies, and increased focus on network pedagogy. BlackBoard (and LMS’ in general) have been able to present the message that “you need an LMS to do blended and online learning”. To counter this view, the EduPunk/DIY approach to learning has produced an emphasis on personal learning environments (PLE) and networks. To date, this movement has generated a following from a small passionate group of educators, but has not really made much of an impact on traditional education. I don’t suspect it will until, sadly, it can be commoditized and scaled to fit into existing systemic models of education.... Integration, not the platform itself, is now the critical focus. LMS companies have for years formed partnerships with content producers and with synchronous tools – I believe both BB and Desire2 Learn had partnerships with Elluminate and Wimba. To be effective in the long term, large LMS companies will need to pull more and more of the education experience under their umbrella. That's the traditional Enterprise software mentality. It will probably work as long as Blackboard's customers (College Education) remain dumb customers.

George Atwell has a different view of EduPunk's position. I have never seen edupunk being a movement which would move in and takeover the traditional education system. What edupunk does provide is an alternative to traditional pedagogy as well as showing there are other routes than commercialisation of education through technology. I don’t expect any institutional manager to announce a new policy based on edupunk? But what we are seeing is increasing numbers of teachers using social software for teaching and learning. The impact of that is far harder to measure than the number of VLEs adopted by different educational institutions. It will also probably have a far more profound impact of tecahing and learning and pedagogic approaches to using technology. The second impact of PLEs, edupunk and Social Software is in the developing ideas and practice around Open Learning. Knowledge and learning is escaping from the institution. And long term that will be the greatest impact of all.

• Mc Morgan comments: The tool shapes the pedagogy, sometimes overtly, sometimes insidiously. Bb and the like suggest there is pedagogical value in managing students, testing them by particular means, that the basic unit of learning is the private course, that students don’t need to share the production space with teachers, that text is the primary means of educational exchanges...