41 figures From the BlackBoard Patent

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Mike Malloch[Edit][Delete]: 41 figures From the BlackBoard Patent, eLearning 2.0 [Edit][Delete] August 4, 2006
For full coverage of the Blackboard patent story, please see this Special Section of OLDaily.
Mike Malloch has performed a valuble service, extracting the 41 figures in the Blackboard patent and posting them on Flickr.
He adds, "let me just say that having spent the summer of 1998 in BlackBoard's DC offices (seconded there from the UK to do some IMS work on metadata), and having spent a lot of that time interacting with the architects of BlackBoards subsequent systems, I know that these guys did not 'invent' the VLE, and that they knew they weren't 'inventing' the VLE."
I should point out, in response to his comments, that it's not simply the learning management system that needs to be defended here. Yes, some of us don't care about the LMS - I am among them. More...