Big noise about WebCt - Blackboard merge

It's hard for me to get all that excited about this acquisition. I almost titled this "Big noise about nothing" except of course if you are an educator using WebCT, it's not "nothing." However, these two companies between them had a grand total of, what, five or six thousand customers? If you are a corporate e-Learning practitioner, neither Blackboard nor WebCT was ever a concern for you. 

In the long run, open source is going to split this space with the "roll your own" approach to learning management systems. In the much longer run, our understanding of learning is evolving and will eventually make the current style of learning management (and approaches to authoring systems) completely irrelevant.

WebCT and Blackboard.

Big news in the elearning space: WebCT and Blackboard merge I've put together a pocast of my views: My Take: WebCT and Blackboard. Slashdot dissects the merger as well.

Update: Stephen posts a list of blogger reactions to the merger.

11:40:26 PM    

I'm too much of an idealist. I would love to see learning begin with connections, not content...and for LMS' to be banished only for the most basic forms of knowledge transfer (compliance training, for example)...and for designers to create a dynamic environment (not course!) in which learning would occur. However, reality sets in. Most often, life doesn't permit ideals. Instead, we need to balance technology, resources, needs, work conditions, etc. So in that spirit, here's a short article on Best Practices for Hosted Learning Solutions.

11:40:00 PM