Blackboard acquires Elluminate and Wimba: the end of LMSs?

Kolowich, S. (2010) Blackboard’s big buy Inside Higher Education, July 8

This article leaves me as depressed as a Netherlands soccer supporter. Elluminate follows another Canadian product (WebCT) into Blackboard’s maws, and Wimba as well.

I’ve deliberately waited a few days before commenting on this, because my immediate reaction was unprintable. At the end [...]

Canadian corporate innovation in e-learning

Galt, V. (2010) How to bake agility into corporate DNA Globe and Mail, May 20

In my blog on Six Priorities for Canadian e-learning in 2010 I wrote:

Canada is a leader in mobile technology (Research in Motion, Nortel’s merger with Avaya, etc.), the Canadian mobile networks have just been opened up [...]

Preliminary book review: An Introduction to Distance Education

Cleveland-Innes, M. and Garrison, R. (eds.) 2010 An Introduction to Distance Education: Understanding Teaching and Learning in a New Era New York/Abingdon UK: Routledge

This book is essentially a collection of essays by mainly Canadian authors, although there are also authors from the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Spain.

Chapters

The book is organized [...]

Open source LMSs for small colleges: 3 cases

Briggs, L. (2010) Moving to an Open Source LMS: 3 Stories Campus Technology, April 7

This article describes how three small colleges migrated to either Sakai or Moodle from WebCT.

What do instructors need to know about teaching with technology?

I believe that we will see no real innovation, no fundamental change, in post-secondary education, at least from within, unless all instructors have basic training in teaching at a post-secondary level.

I was involved in developing a post-graduate certificate in technology-based distributed learning which later morphed into a full Master in Educational Technology at [...]