CALIopolis

I am always looking for sources of interesting podcasts and one of my staff pointed me to this collection of gems.

Hamline's Conversations in Law.

Lots of intersting topics relating to law, society, culture and even Malcom Gladwell, author of Blink and the Tipping Point.

Professor Garrett Power has spent 30 years writing his casebook which is titled: Constitutional Limitations on Land Use Controls, Environmental Regulations and Governmental Exactions.

He has posted the 704 page PDF to SSRN and the University of Maryland's Digital Commons website.

In this 24 minute conversation, we talk about his motivations and expectations for the casebook and open-access content.

Click here to listen or right-click to download - GarretPower2.mp3

The Harvard Business Review list of breakthrough ideas for 2007 has so many intriguing and insightful ideas that I don't know where to begin ... and so I won't.

Instead, follow the link and read grow smarter.

Or listen to the podcast here.

News of BlackBoard’s pledge is still pinballing around the blogpsphere. I subscribe to a stored search for the term ‘blackboard patent’ and it retrieves dozens of blog posts every day since they made the Pledge. The great majority of these posts have not been positive or grateful to BlackBoard.

I have really been trying to get my head around this whole quagmire that BlackBoard is in. Clearly they did not expect the storm of response that they got from the patent. Perhaps they were hoping for a quick settlement with Desire2Learn? If not, then Plan B surely has to be making them re-think this strategy.

On the plus side, they have a patent. It took them 6 years and probably a hundred thousand dollars in legal costs, but they got it.

On the minus side, they have a whole bunch of people - many of them their customers - real upset with them.

They have the largest consortium of higher education institutions telling them to just drop it.

They have a lawsuit that is going to cost 7 figures before its over and it might result in an invalidated patent. Imagine the blogstorm after that! I gotta believe that the accountants weren’t consulted on this one.

They have emboldened a competitor and given them untold free, positive press. Before this lawsuit, I had hardly ever heard of Desire2Learn.

They have poked a stick at the larger open source community and woken the GPL giant in the manifestation of Professor Eben Moglen. Take a listen to Eben’s lunchtime remarks and you realize that he is not going to back down one iota. He cannot be bluffed or bought. He is your worst legal nightmare - a lawyer with a cause and a law professor with all the time in the world to devote to it.

Let’s say they win this patent suit.

They either put D2L out of business or they force a hefty payment/royalty. If they make it too hefty, D2L will declare bankruptcy and all of their customers will rush into BlackBoard’s loving arms .... uh .... I don’t think so.

An now the Pledge which is the biggest boon to open source LMSes since the Internet. BlackBoard doesn’t just want to go out of business themselves, they want to kill the commercial LMS market for everyone. If the Pledge wasn’t such a lawyered-up, weasly-worded, condescending piece of crap, I would almost thank them. Did it clear the air or straighten things out? Ohhhhh, NOW we understand, all is forgiven? Not according to EDUCAUSE and Sakai. And BlackBoard's careful and misleading excerpting of the Sakai response didn't win them any friends either. Did they think we wouldn't read it for ourselves?

Open Source is where all D2L customers are going if they are forced into bankruptcy, methinks. With all the money saved by not purchasing a commercial/proprietary system like BlackBoard’s, schools can hire more programmers to contribute to Moodle, Sakai, et al.

This is NOT rocket science.

There is an old joke that I first read in an Archie comic where Jughead is up on the roof of the school on his hands and knees looking for something. The principle, Mr. Weatherbee asks him what he is doing.

"I'm looking for a book I lost yesterday in the cafeteria", Jughead replies.

"If you lost the book in the cafeteria, why are you looking up here on the roof?" inquires Mr. Weatherbee.

"Because the light is better up here." Jughead answers.

What's my point?

There is a new report soon to be published about a study at Winona State University that purports that laptops in the lecture hall hurt student's grades.

There is some good reporting and discussion about the report, here, at the Chronicle of Higher Education website.

The first sentence of the Chronicle article says this...

"...Most professors can vouch for the fact that students with laptops sometimes seem a bit distracted in the lecture hall..."

This is my point. It is not that students with laptops are distracted, it's that before laptops, faculty could not really tell if students were distracted.

Prior to having laptops to hide behind, clever students developed the "attentive and interested" facial expression (at least the polite ones) that is worn at all times in class. It prevents the instructor from calling on you to see if you are listening.

Students have always found ways to be distracted, but laptops are literally "in your face" to the faculty. They are a literal barrier between the faculty and the students.

I have not searched the literature, because I am not sure how I would conduct such a search, but I am reasonably sure that prior to laptops in the classroom, there was not a whole bunch of articles about distracted students.

So does that mean that in the past, students were not distracted? I doubt that. The issue is that laptops have brought to the surface the polite fiction that occurs in classrooms all the time. Faculty teach and students listen or pretend to listen. Now, that pretension is manifest in the student's averted gaze to the laptop screen and faculty cannot ignore that.

Not everyone with a laptop is distracted or ignoring the instructor, but it seems that way just like the Chronicle writer says in the first sentence of the article that I excerpted above.

So, how do we deal with this misconception that laptops are always distracting (not true) and get to the real discussion which is "How do I keep my students from being distracted by anything?"

Read all about here.

I'm still digesting, but a couple of things pop out.

Last week, after the news that the USPTO had agreed to re-examine the '138 patent, the number of blogs and news sources that ran the story was huge and noisy.

They want to own the commercial CMS market. I haven't read the other patent applications that they list, but it seems like it would be hard to be a commercial LMS vendor and not deal with Bb on their terms.

They miss the point about "Free" in Free Software. It's not the price, it's the freedom to do what you want.

EDUCAUSE's and Sakai Foundations endorsement of this action did not exactly say "All is forgiven" and I am a little disheartened with the response by these two organizations. Updated: BlackBoard's selective quoting from the Sakai/EDUCAUSE response was misleading ...

"...As a result, the Sakai Foundation and EDUCAUSE find it difficult to give the wholehearted endorsement we had hoped might be possible..."

I feel better.

The FAQ is long and detailed, but I think you can drive trucks through the loopholes and since they reserve the right to litigate if they think you are in violation of the pledge, there is a segment of the community that is chilled.

Some people will be satisfied with this, others will not and the litigation will continue on its merits.

It's still a bad patent, IMHO.

More later.