Ingram VitalSource and Blackboard announce Platform and Content Deal

Last year Blackboard announced several high profile content deals with publishers however this deal with Ingram Vitalsource could be more significant if it encourages faculty to really engage with content creation and aggregation on the Blackboard site.   Question is: Is this an exclusive deal for Ingram?

Ingram and Blackboard announced an integration of the Ingram Vital Source platform onto the Blackboard learning management system. From their press release:

Blackboard Inc. and Vital Source Technologies, Inc., an Ingram Content Group company, have launched pilot programs with a number of colleges and universities to test-drive an integrated offering that makes the VitalSource Bookshelf® platform and its hundreds of thousands of e-Textbooks available directly within Blackboard Learn™, the company's flagship learning management system (LMS).

Indiana University—Fort Wayne, University of Alaska Anchorage, and Fayetteville Technical Community College are among the institutions participating in the field trial. With the integration instructors can preview and select e-textbooks, content and learning objects from the VitalSource Bookshelf platform that students can then access through a single sign-on.

Participants in the field trial will provide ongoing feedback to the companies about their experience to strengthen the offering. Participating instructors have expressed satisfaction with the ability to annotate e-textbooks, link to content from anywhere within a course or assignment and assess how students are progressing through content. Students have been enthusiastic about using e-textbooks on mobile devices through native iOS® and Android™ applications, including deep linking that makes pages and features such as notes, highlights and annotations look the same on e-textbooks as they do in printed textbooks.

"My students read more because with this technology, you can assign the reading, and they'll know that I'm checking closely on whether they've read it or not," said Minnie Wagner, business and healthcare management program chair at Minnesota School of Business-Lakeville. "So it has helped students to be more proactive and make sure that they're prepared for the class."

The integrated solution, expected to be available this summer, would offer two purchase models. Institutions that include textbooks as part of tuition could place e-textbooks directly into Blackboard Learn courses for immediate student access. Alternatively, a student-purchase option would give instructors the opportunity to make e-textbooks available for students to purchase or rent from within their Blackboard Learn course environment.

MediaWeek (Vol 5, No 33 ) The Cost of Higher Education in the US - Chronicle, Economist, Bain + More

The problem with the cost of education in the US (Economist):

A crisis in higher education has been brewing for years. Universities have been spending like students in a bar who think a Rockefeller will pick up the tab. In the past two years the University of Chicago has built a spiffy new library (where the books are cleverly retrieved by robots), a new arts centre and a ten-storey hospital building. It has also opened a new campus in Beijing.

And it is not alone. Universities hope that vast investments will help them attract the best staff and students, draw in research grants and donations, and ultimately boost their ranking in league tables, drawing in yet more talent and money. They have also increased the proportion of outlays gobbled up by administrators (see chart 2).

To pay for all this, universities have been enrolling more students and jacking up their fees. The average cost of college per student has risen by three times the rate of inflation since 1983. The cost of tuition alone has soared from 23% of median annual earnings in 2001 to 38% in 2010. Such increases plainly cannot continue.

And The Chronicle also takes a look at the sober truth exacerbated by the slow economy (Chron):

This anecdotal evidence seems to be supported by reports in the past several weeks on the financial state of higher education. An analysis by Bain & Company and the private-equity firm Sterling Partners found that one-third of all colleges and universities in the United States face financial statements that are significantly weaker than before the recession and find themselves on an unsustainable fiscal path. Another quarter of colleges are at serious risk of joining them.

Meanwhile, two major credit-rating agencies, Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service, released warnings that put a negative outlook on all but the name-brand market leaders in higher education. “We’re seeing prolonged, serious stress,” Karen Kedem, a vice president and senior analyst at Moody’s, told me.⁠ What is significant about the move by Moody’s is that it typically rates only colleges with strong balance sheets to begin with.

Here is that link to the Bain report:

Despite this success, talk of a higher education “bubble” has reached a fever pitch in the last year. The numbers are very familiar by now: Annual tuition increases several times the rate of inflation have become commonplace. The volume of student loan debt has surpassed $1 trillion and is now greater than credit card debt. Most college and university presidents, as well as their boards, executive teams and faculty members, are well aware that a host of factors have made innovation and change necessary.

Last month Blackboard held their annual get together and Inside Higher have a podcast of the highlights

In this month's edition of The Pulse podcast, Rod Murray discusses highlights from the annual Blackboard World 2012 gathering, including information on its new products, services and applications.

From FT writer Simon Schama a contrasting views of the US and UK popular reaction to the games (FT):

At a time when the gap between rich and poor is growing wider, the educational prospects for minorities are loaded with prohibitive debt, when democracy has become the catspaw of plutocrats; what the American people want from the strength, grace and resolution of their athletics is one place where the founding promise of upward social mobility, that Dream thing, is not a sick joke. In the republic of exertion the dream comes true. You have your gift, you work it to the max; you bring it to the day; you breast the tape, touch the lip of the pool, you let yourself weep as the Star Spangled Banner plays and you fold it about your shoulders – and it feels still that there is a place for young Americans, against whom the odds have never been more brutally stacked, to be winners.

If anything, there’s even more at stake for the British. The economy is flatlining; the coalition seems to have lost the plot. Yet from Danny Boyle’s Fabian extravaganza to the sudden cascade of golds that began with Heather and Helen sitting in their boat looking as ecstatically amazed as all the rest of us, a startled, almost embarrassed, suspicion, that the British could actually be world beaters by being themselves, began to dawn.

Coelho has a go at James Joyce and The Economist's Prospero takes exception:

The above two quotes neatly show the dividing line in this latest literary skirmish. Mr Coelho and Salman Rushdie are the same age, are widely read and employ magical realism in their work. Both authors have received prestigious international prizes, and find inspiration in the Bible and "One Thousand and One Nights". But only one of them credits his sources, writes literature, and worships James Joyce.

Another line worth quoting is Mr Coelho’s dictum that a writer has “a duty and an obligation never to be understood by his own generation.” Let’s see here…hmmm...Joyce was the very picture of a starving artist, a virtual exile from his own country, accused of pornography and reviled in his lifetime (and occasionally since) as a writer of unreadable books. Mr Rushdie is similarly big in Tehran. The impossibly avuncular Mr Coelho, on the other hand, may be the Most Understood Author on the planet. Every Coelho bookcover trumpets his success, wooing potential buyers with the promise that he has sold hundreds of millions of copies in over a 160 nations, translated into over 72 languages—the most by a living writer, Guinness confirmed. One wonders if his business card touts: “Over 150 Million Served.

From my twitter feed this week:

Amazon Stops Processing Payments For Crowdfunding Platform For Creative Commons Books http://dlvr.it/1zQPpr

Adam Gopnik remembers Robert Hughes: "One of the indispensable mavericks of modern humanism." New Yorker

Amazing: 'History Man' - the front page of tomorrow's Sunday Telegraph Telegraph

Blackboard Expands Content Play into K-12: Adds The Learning Company

Blackboard is in the run up to their annual user conference next month so expect more announcements to come but this one is significant.  Blackboard and The Learning Company have announced a partnership to integrate TLC content within the Blackboard platform which will, they hope, enable K-12 teachers to create high quality content for their courses quickly and easily within the Blackboard Learn platform.  This partnership should bolster the Blackboard presence in the K-12 space and the agreement could be interpreted as a major play into the K-12 segment. More about the integration is explained on their website here.

From their press release:

The integration, which is currently being piloted by a number of K-12 institutions and will be generally available soon, lets teachers and administrators find, use and manage more than 200,000 digital learning resources from the Learning.com catalog seamlessly in the course platform, rather than having to move between systems. The Learning.com catalog includes both free and fee-based resources from leading education publishers and individual educators that are aligned to academic standards.

With access to the rich collection of material from Learning.com—including curriculum and textbook content, multimedia, assignments, quizzes and more—teachers can design a more engaging and intuitive learning experience. For example, teachers would build a lesson plan with material from Learning.com, and make it available to students through Blackboard Learn with a "single sign on," eliminating the time and access barriers from multiple Web sites, logins and passwords. Assignments would appear directly in the Blackboard Learn gradebook so teachers can easily track student progress.

"Students are demanding new types of content to support personalized learning and, as a result, teachers need smart ways to locate and manage rich material," said Matthew Small, Blackboard's Chief Business Officer. "By partnering with Learning.com, we plan to provide our clients with access to high-quality learning tools that help students succeed – whether a district curriculum, an innovative learning tool from a trusted provider or a unique activity designed by a peer."

"Our teachers love to incorporate third party content into coursework; however, up until now, materials were dispersed across multiple sites requiring a tremendous amount of time to find appropriate resources," said Alisa Jones, supervisor of instructional resources at Clay Virtual Academy. "The Learning.com and Blackboard partnership would allow our teachers to focus on leveraging the content in their classrooms rather than figuring out access issues."

The Learning.com catalog includes a growing collection of content from premier providers like USA Today, NASA, the Smithsonian, Waterford Institute, Adaptive Curriculum, and over 10,000 learning objects created and peer-reviewed by educators. Available content covers critical educational areas including language arts, library media, math, science, technology and professional development for teachers. All of the content can be searched by subject, grade level, academic standard, and keyword.

MediaWeek (Vol 5, No14): Frontline Video on NI Hacking, Blackboard Thinking, Taking the SAT (again), Book Awards + more

Frontline on PBS has spent an hour looking at how the Murdoch/News International phone hacking scandal has evolved from the start.  As you watch this just remember that The Guardian did not get newspaper of the year in the UK this year.  (Frontline);

Watch Murdoch's Scandal on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

People are still digesting the news about Blackboard's acquisition of Moodle.  Here is an interesting view from Audrey Watters at Inside Higher Ed.  I happen to agree that LMS providers could gain access to very significant data that many in the education supply chain would find useful and worth paying for (IHEd):

But I think the value's elsewhere. Or rather the value is in the customer, but not in terms of licenses or sign-ups or enrollment numbers per se. I think the value's in the data:
What are students reading? What are they buying at the bookstore? What are they checking out of the library? How much time are they spending on course materials? How often do they interact with other students? What does that interaction entail? How often do they interact with faculty? What does that interaction entail? How do students respond to feedback? How's attendance? How are grades -- not just at the end of the term, but in an ongoing and real-time basis? What classes do students want to take? What classes should they take? What classes should the university offer? Can it build a recommendation engine to help make suggestions to students? What faculty should it hire? And what are those faculty doing?
These are the sorts of questions that big data promises to answer for universities, as well as (I'd hope) for leaners. That's both a frightening and a thrilling prospect, I think, when we consider its implications. But learning analytics is still a largely open field right now, I'd say, even though there are pockets of early incumbants: companies who've built adaptive engines, companies who hold massive amounts of user data, companies who sell products and services to universities/professors/students.

Ever think of taking the SAT over again? Me either, but Drew Magary at Deadspin thought he would give it a try and hilarity ensues.  Parents, this is what you are putting your kids through. (Deadspin)

I mean seriously, HOLY FUCK. My mind exploded when I looked at this. You may as well have asked me to climb Everest using a fork. It took me five minutes just to try to understand the QUESTION. Once I had figured it out, time was up. I finished most of the verbal sections of the test under the time allotted. I had no such luck with the math sections. Even when I got the question right, the mental strain it took to try and dig through the piles of shit-encrusted mildew in my brain to retrieve the information needed to solve any given equation was brutal. How do you divide fractions again? Don't you flip the top number and the bottom number or something? And what's the top number called? The Ruminator? The Kilometer? OH FUCK IT.
Many times, I had to skip a question because I couldn't figure out the answer, and then I got that paranoia that's unique to someone taking a standardized test. I became fearful that I had failed to skip over the question on my answer sheet. So every five seconds, I'd double-check my sheet to make sure I didn't fill out my answers in the wrong slots. One time I did this, and so I had to erase the answers and move them all forward. Only I had a shitty eraser, which failed to erase my mark and instead smeared the mark all over the rest of my sheet. FUCK YOU, TRICK ERASER. I HATE YOU.

This year's Booker came under fire for being too low brow and this post on a scifi award shows that complaining about book award efforts is alive and well, but that hasn't stopped the Observer from launching a new award program to name the best book from 1962.  Why? Well, just because it was 50 years ago which I don't need reminding (Observer).

The Observer is sponsoring a new annual prize to decide which book of ideas from the crop published 50 years ago has had the most lasting influence on society's thinking. So, taking the class of 1962, the Bristol festival's Best Book of Ideas prize will come from this shortlist of 10:
1) Another Country James Baldwin
2) Capitalism and Freedom Milton Friedman
3) A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
4) Day (originally published as The Accident) Elie Wiesel
5) My Land and My People: The Original Autobiography of His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet Dalai Lama XIV
6) The Other America Michael Harrington
7) Sex and the Single Girl Helen Gurley Brown
8) Silent Spring Rachel Carson
9) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thomas S Kuhn
10) Toward a Psychology of Being Abraham Harold Maslow

The winner, chosen by the festival board, will be announced on 21 May.

Speaking of which, Christopher Hitchens is one of 18 authors selected for the Orwell Prize for political writing.(Telegraph)

From Twitter:

Blackboard's Open Source Pivot | Inside Higher Ed: InsideHigherEd No one really knows what to make of it.

Presentation from BlackBoard User meeting on important trends impacting Higher Ed Catalano 

Great Potter round-up from Porter Anderson JaneFriedman

Bertelsmann Weighs I.P.O. For Expansion NYTimes

BBC News - Amazon boss Jeff Bezos 'finds Apollo 11 Moon engines' BBCNews And they weren't in his warehouse.

UK Publishers Assoc Outraged It Wasn't Consulted Ahead Of The Public Over Open Access To Publicly-Funded Research Techdirt

Blackboard Acquires Moodlerooms, NetSpot

Very interesting development in the world of learning management systems with the announcement that Blackboard has acquired open source solution providers MoodleRooms and NetSpot.  From the press release:

WASHINGTON, March 26, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Blackboard Inc. announced a major investment in open source today with news that it has acquired Moodlerooms and NetSpot, two leading providers of open source online learning solutions to the education industry. Both organizations will continue to operate independently to support their clients.

Moodlerooms and NetSpot are official Moodle Partners, and each will continue their current programs to support clients with no changes to their leadership or their support and service models.

In addition, each team will also become part of Blackboard's new Education Open Source Services group, dedicated to supporting the use and development of open source learning technologies globally.

Leaders from each company recently traveled to Perth, Australia to meet with Martin Dougiamas, founder of Moodle and Managing Director of Moodle Pty Ltd, and present their plans. The meeting included Blackboard CEO Michael Chasen and Chief Technology Officer Ray Henderson, Moodlerooms CEO Lou Pugliese and Chief Architect Tom Murdock, and NetSpot Managing Director Allan Christie.

"The decision of Moodlerooms and NetSpot to work under Blackboard may sound very strange at first to anyone in this industry," said Dougiamas, "but it's my understanding that these three companies have some good plans and synergies. I'm happy to say that Moodlerooms and NetSpot will remain Moodle Partners, and have promised to continue providing Moodle services, participating in the community, and contributing financially to Moodle exactly as they always have."

Both companies provide hosting, support, and consulting services and products to clients using open source systems including the Moodle learning management system (LMS) and the Mahara e-portfolio product. NetSpot is also an authorized reseller and service provider for Blackboard Collaborate(TM). Moodlerooms primarily serves clients in North America, while NetSpot serves a client base in Australia, New Zealand and the Asia Pacific region.

In addition the company also published an open letter to the education community on their website where they detailed the reasoning behind their acquisition:

Two reasons. First, this shift is the result of the broader perspective that has come over the past few years as we have updated our vision and mission. Rather than focusing just on the LMS market, we're looking at the entire student lifecycle within the education institutions we serve. That broader vision led us to add complementary platforms like Blackboard Collaborate, Blackboard Mobile and Blackboard Analytics. And it led us to extend our services reach with Blackboard Student Services and the development of our online program management offering. Only when one takes the institution-wide perspective do the largest problems in education come into view. In that position, we've seen first-hand how much the value of the foundational LMS is expanded when it connects with and empowers other systems with core impact for the education experience – mobility, real time collaboration, analytics, campus life and student services, and more. So, we wanted to pursue a strategy that gets us more involved in leveraging the power of these intersections for institutions, whatever LMS choice they make based on their particular needs.
Second, online learning continues to grow all around the world, applied to increasingly diverse learning challenges every year. As usage deepens, needs not only expand, they also become more specialized. The result for education institutions is the need for increased choice among systems with different strengths and deployment models to best suit their particular situation. We believe that Blackboard Learn is one of the most capable and versatile platforms available today. But we also understand that that no single technology platform provides all the answers for online learning in its varied forms. At the same time, we've developed robust consulting, support and hosting expertise that today's mission critical online education programs require. So today's news is about bringing that expertise to more institutions, whether they choose technology platforms we develop or other well accepted alternatives.

Is the college bookstore doomed?

Rehash originally published August 30th, 2006:

Some recent examples suggest that print books continue to be the format of choice for college students but is this because they like the format or because the tangible item can be resold at the end of the semester? Is the problem really that no demonstrably better alternatives yet exist to replace the print version; i.e., electronic titles that offer a better learning experience? Clearly, e-books garner a lot of attention and investment from publishers and as I have discussed in an earlier post the opportunities in e-Content for publishers, students and administrators are potentially significant yet no one appears to have cracked the content code.

Electronic delivery of content will materially change the business model for students, institutions and publishers. In my view, the main reason this has not happened yet is that publishers and institutions are dealing with legacy issues that preclude a (willing) change in their business practices. Content creation in all but a few subject areas is an iterative process; meaning that few titles are created from scratch for each new edition. Indeed for some subject areas many have suggested that new editions are only created to mitigate the used book issue. While publishers recognize that the creation of e-books is critical, with few exceptions, they are not willing to start over and create a true e-book course product but are satisfied to convert existing titles to e-book format.

The institution on the other hand receives revenues from the sale of textbooks either directly or via trade agreements with store managers such as Follett and Barnes & Noble. As such, they have remained paradoxically disassociated from the annual chorus of criticism regarding textbook pricing. Assuming e-books become fundamental to course content, where will the bookstore fit in the relationship between publisher and institution?

Any number of publishers and vendors have or are developing models for direct delivery of content to students. Two vendors, Missouri Book Service (MBS) and Vitalsource have developed platforms which involve publishers and bookstores in the process. Intuitively, as a publisher, you might be encouraged to engage students directly and publishers are doing just that via services such as SafariX and Primus+ (McGraw Hill). MBS has been testing their program which integrates the sale of e-books into the retail bookstore for the past three seasons and has seen steady increases in the number of publishers and the amount of adoption of the content. In working with MBS, a publisher will not have to deal with certain college store issues such as returns and exchanges, campus debit cards and student financial aid. Centralized order process operations at publishers would find these issues difficult to deal with. E-Content in the MBS Universal Digital Textbook program is discounted 30% below the print price. The restrictions associated with this content have drawn some negative reactions particularly because the password expires at the end of the semester and the student has nothing of value to resell or reuse. As suggested above, the additional value for the user in this example may be more related to ease of use (weight) than much else because the e-content is a replica of the print version.

In the MBS solution, they protect their franchise and maintain a revenue stream for the bookstores. MBS is also creating a digital platform so that many publishers can make their titles available to students which in turn could create a competitive advantage for MBS in the provision of e-Content to students. Assuming a competitor wanted to challenge MBS for a store contract the challenger would have to match the platform capability and the content.

Vitalsource has taken a different approach to distributing e-Content to students and offer content creation through distribution help to reach students. They have had some success and are working with Wiley, Thomson West, Elsevier and others to deliver content. Their tools allow integration of ‘local’ content, unbundling of content and linking to related reference products. It isn’t clear what their relationships with bookstores is in the institutions where the product is sold; however, MBS recently added the Vitalsource format to their delivery platform.

MBS, Vitalsource, SafariX and others are generally offering discounts for the purchase of e-Content versions of the course material. There is tremendous hesitation to offer unlimited use of the e-Content because publishers believe they will create a problem greater than the used book issue. Not surprisingly, students have been slow to adopt these offerings. In my view a risk to publishers is that new entrants to the market will create new and innovate publishing products that rely on new but dynamic content that creates a profoundly different experience for students than an e-Content version of a textbook. Some of these new approaches are starting to find their way into general use and it is services like Blackboard/webCT that have created a platform for delivery of some of this content. Blackboard has an agreement with Merlot where you can find some interesting course material.

In the long run, publishers and or e-Content platform providers will have to pay to gain access to students at Higher Ed institutions. Institutions will either create their own open platforms or license from a vendor but this platform will become the store front. There may be a physical store on campus but it will not be the focus of textbook sales. As much as gaining knowledge of student purchasers is important to publishers in their drive to form long term learning relationships, institutions also realize the value of this information and will not be interested in stepping out of the chain.

MediaWeek (Vol 4, No 43): Tom Waits, Children's Books, The Booker, "Close the Libraries", Textbooks & Education + More

Interview with Tom Waits in the Observer:

"Music has generally involved a lot of awkward contraptions, a certain amount of heavy lifting," he says. "The idea that it will just be a sort of vapour that you listen to out of speakers the size of a dime alarms me. It's like injecting yourself. Or eating alone."

He is, he says, equally wary of the ease of search and shuffle. "They have removed the struggle to find anything. And therefore there is no genuine sense of discovery. Struggle is the first thing we know getting along the birth canal, out in the world. It's pretty basic. Book store owners and record store owners used to be oracles, in that way; you'd go in this dusty old place and they might point you toward something that would change your life. All that's gone."

Does he ever stray online?

"No," he says. "But then I'm one of those guys that is still a bit afraid of the telephone, its implications for conversation. I still wonder if the jukebox might be the death of live music."

In Observer, there is a section devoted to reading with kids and here an essay on asking why young adults are so interested in dystopian fiction (Observer):

A new wave of dystopian fiction at this particular time shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. It's the zeitgeist. Adults write books for teenagers. So anxious adults – worried about the planet, the degradation of civil society and the bitter inheritance we're leaving for the young – write dystopian books.

We create harsh, violent worlds. These are dark, sometimes bleak stories, but that doesn't mean they are hopeless. Those of us who write for young people are reluctant to leave our readers without hope. It wouldn't be right. We always leave a candle burning in the darkness.

And we write good stories. That's why teenagers read them.

Gaby Wood reflecting on the Booker prize (Telegraph):

But when our shortlist became the fastest-selling since records began, all hell broke loose. Clearly, our choices must be too “commercial” and not “literary” enough. Significantly, none of this discussion was a response to the actual books on the list.

Of the people who have scoffed, asked me if I’m embarrassed, or who pronounced the prize to be on its last legs, not a single one has read The Sisters Brothers or Half-Blood Blues or Pigeon English, all shortlisted and all quite sophisticated exercises in voice-throwing or genre-bending. There is something magnificent about this: that books which in another year would be classed as too odd or offbeat or even experimental have been derided as too commercial. Readers, we have slipped you some truly wonderful, surprising stuff in the inadvertent guise of the mass market.

Of course, The Sense of an Ending in any case makes these arguments instantly out of date, since its author is not a controversial or “unliterary” choice, and the book is a masterpiece by any measure. Most of the judges loved it as soon as we read it, all of us have read it several times, and no one doubts that it improves with every reading.

We should close the libraries says John McTernan who has an MA in librarianship and has 280 comments - so far. (Telegraph):

The final defence of the public library is that it is a place for the pupil who has nowhere else to study and revise. Once again, this is the 21st century. Virtually every kid has a desk at home – even if it often has a games console on it. And libraries at secondary schools are, in my experience, uniformly good and open places for young people.

Few institutions are timeless. Most reflect the period when they were created, and have to change as society changes if they are to survive. The crisis in our libraries is not because of the “cuts” – it’s because they are needed less.

And there are currently 280 comments including this one from "billfanshel"

"Google a subject and you can become ridiculously well-informed ridiculously quickly."

No, Google a subject and you can become ridiculously misinformed ridiculously quickly, with the result being an increasing susceptibility to demagoguery. A

major job of a librarian is to help patrons distinguish good information from bad. Having apparently been out of the profession for 17 years, the author has become out of touch with the modern library and the evolving role of librarians. That is, of course, assuming that he ever was in touch with those things.

As a librarian in the U.S., my philosophy regarding online resources is "supplement not supplant." In other words, the Internet should add to what is available in print and not replace it. It is sad to see that public officials in Britain are as ill-informed and anti-intellectual as those in the United States. However, based on this comment thread, it is encouraging to see that the British populace is as supportive of its public libraries as the U.S. populace and will fight attempts to eliminate them.

A few years ago, as part of austerity measures, the mayor of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, wanted to close down 11 of the city's 54 public library branches. The people balked at that prospect, and the library branches remain open. Do the same in Great Britain!

Is this war? In wake of Pearson's unveiling of a free LMS, Blackboard announces moves to promote sharing of open course content. (InsideHigherEd):

The company plans to unveil both of these moves at its corporate session here today. Ray Henderson, the president of Blackboard’s LMS product line and chief technology officer at the company, discussed them with Inside Higher Ed here at Educause on Tuesday.

“We look at the market and we see there’s a real curiosity in trying to extend the mission that the institutions have and who they serve,” Henderson said. “And there are a lot that take inspiration from, say, the MIT OpenCourseWare project, where they would really like to have their catalog of courses, and the course materials that they’re creating -- they’d like to contribute those more openly.”

Under the partnership with Creative Commons, Blackboard instructors will be invited to tag their course content with different licenses that indicate exactly how others can use it. Instructors will then have the option of sharing the course on Twitter or Facebook.

The company is also working to make the licensed course content more visible to public search engines, so that it can be discovered more easily by instructors searching the Web for free course content.

Under proposed legislation government grant money will be denied to developers of open access educational content (Inside HigherEd)

The move is a boon to publishers, who have feared that government support for the freely available, modifiable course materials, known as “open educational resources,” or OERs, would eat into their profits and give the free programs an unfair advantage. If effective programs are already for sale, they argue, the federal government shouldn’t spend extra money to reinvent the wheel.

Advocates for community colleges and online education argued that the provision, if enacted, would stifle innovation and restrict colleges to the publishers’ more expensive programs.

“We hear any concerns that the subcommittee might have about duplications of efforts and resources,” said James Hermes, director of government relations for the American Association of Community Colleges. “If there really is truly an alternative already in existence, you don’t want to duplicate that and create something from scratch that’s already there.”

From the twitter:

Philip Pullman: Using the internet is like looking at a landscape through a keyhole - Telegraph

Editing Wikipedia at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: NYTimes

An Indiana School System Goes Digital: NYTimes

Cengage will partner with Moodlerooms: Journal