The core thesis of the company was that online programs could drive a similar quality to campus programs and that the company’s scale and unique platform characteristics would build a competitive moat around the business over time. Today, the online education market is evolving. Secular forces are pushing more schools online. Indeed, it’s becoming obvious that all schools are going online. We’re calling it the mainstreaming of online education. More...
Amazon’s Text-To-Speech AI Service Sounds More Natural And Realistic
Thanks to the advancements in AI, text-to-speech has evolved to become more natural and realistic to an extent that it may be hard to distinguish it from a human voice. Already, the output from voice-based services such as Alexa and Siri sounds natural. More...
Alt talk to Blackboard's General Legal Council Matthew Small
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Paul Bacsich[Edit][Delete]: Alt talk to Blackboard's General Legal Council Matthew Small, ALT [Edit][Delete] August 31, 2006
Morten Flate Paulsen writes in, "Your blog readers, following the BlackBoard discussion, may be interested in reading my article Two Decades of Online Sustainability. The article describes NKI Distance Education's development and use of LMS systems from the early start in 1985."
The one-sided Associated Press article about the Blackboard lawsuit has hit mainstream with its belated publication USA Today.
Additional coverage is provided in CNet News.com, where executive editor Mike Yamamoto blames the government bureaucrats for the problem.
I guess the old saw about not talking about things that are pending before the courts doesn't apply to Blackboard. Good thing, because Matthew Small says a bunch of things that should be noted in this interview with Britain's Association for Learning Technology (ALT) ( via Leon Cych).
"Therefore prior art after 30/6/1998, i.e. 12 months before the provisional filing date, is not relevant.... It [Blackboard] sees the Wikipedia History of VLEs as a great compendium, but not as a threat....
"Blackboard cannot speculate as to what the DOJ considered in its review.... Nor is it the case that the first public mention by Blackboard of the patent was the issue of its 27 July press release. For example, Blackboard had already begun to mark its products as being patented, from earlier in 2006 (see for example the footer of the press release of 1 March 2006 ); and knowledge of the patent was 'out in the wild' several months before the press release, for example on a Moodle discussion board.
"I do not know the specifics of what Blackboard did for IMS in the late 1990s, but the inventions embodied in the patent were derived entirely by Blackboard inventors. The patent and the IMS work had nothing to do with one another. Did Blackboard notify IMS of its intention to make a patent application in 1999? I do not know. That would have been proprietary information, so I doubt it....
"We do not see this development as in any way 'game changing". We are not trying to put anyone out of business; reasonable royalties are all we want. We have a stated business policy of not going after individual universities, nor are we focusing on Open Source initiatives."
Eww. All slimy! I have to go wash my hands off now. More...
Libra, Hydra ou Activa ? Les enjeux mondiaux de la cryptomonnaie imaginée par Facebook
Le 18 juin, l’association de droit suisse "Libra Association" présentait un projet de cryptomonnaie destiné à offrir au monde dès 2020 "une monnaie digitale sûre et stable", le Libra, pour en faire "l’internet de la monnaie". L’annonce serait passée inaperçue, si l’association n’incluait pas Calibra, filiale ad hoc de Facebook et une trentaine d’organisations allant d’entreprises comme Mastercard, Visa, Paypal, Booking, Uber, Spotify, Iliad ou Vodaphone, à des investisseurs en capital-risque comme Union Square Ventures, et même des ONG comme Women’s World Banking. Plus...
« Le business model de Coursera a beaucoup évolué »
Blog Headway - Olivier Rollot. Coursera, récemment valorisée à plus d’1 milliard de dollars, est l’un des acteurs majeurs des cours en ligne et des MOOCs. La plateforme compte aujourd’hui plus de 40 millions d’inscrits, 160 universités partenaires et 3500 cours. Plus...
Google Offerings
If you're heading for university, which account can you bank on?
Heading to university in September? HSBC has been named as the best bank for students by MoneySavingExpert, with Nationwide and Santander following closely behind. More...
Pearson shifts to Netflix-style subscription model for textbooks
Academic publisher hopes to convince students to pay to access online materials. More...
5 Reasons Why BU's $24K MBA Is A Big Deal
By Joshua Kim. Why I’m intrigued.
The newly announced $24K BU MBA, created in partnership with edX, is a big deal. More...
Moody's Maintains Negative Outlook for Higher Ed
By Rick Seltzer. The higher education sector will be stabilized for the next 12 months by state funding and investment returns, even as hypercompetition and an intense focus on affordability limit revenue growth, according to a midyear evaluation published Monday by Moody’s Investors Service. More...