Why Blackboard's Plan to Buy a Rival Sparked a Campus Uproar
1–10 of 16 posts
Re: Why Blackboard's Plan to Buy a Rival Sparked a Campus Uproar
#2You can stitch together most of Blackboard out of Google's services. All Google really needs is some secure site for posting grades, but in reality, the old "web site with student ID number instead of name" is more widely used at my school than Blackboard anyway, so perhaps not.
Re: Why Blackboard's Plan to Buy a Rival Sparked a Campus Uproar
#3Hmm. One of my startups Classleaf (http://classleaf.com/) is a semi-Blackboard competitor, which is based on the idea of a lighter learning management system. Since those that read this article might be familiar with the learning management scene, what could schools want to give them the push to use Classleaf's product? I'm going to side with the fact that many schools have existing grade management systems, and perhaps a monolithic "all-in-one" app isn't the best idea.
Re: Why Blackboard's Plan to Buy a Rival Sparked a Campus Uproar
#4Hmm. One of my startups Classleaf ( http://classleaf.com/ ) is a semi-Blackboard competitor, which is based on the idea of a lighter learning management system. Since those that read this article might be familiar with the learning management scene, what could schools want to give them the push to use Classleaf's product? I'm going to side with the fact that many schools have existing grade management systems, and pe…
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Re: Why Blackboard's Plan to Buy a Rival Sparked a Campus Uproar
#5Haven't read the article, but just a general observation about Blackboard: from the perspective of a student and someone who is interested in education, Blackboard's products are garbage. An introductory computer science course could put something comparable together at the end of the term, and a competent Rails/Django developer could blow them out of the water. Blackboard is like the Internet Explorer of the education world.
Re: Why Blackboard's Plan to Buy a Rival Sparked a Campus Uproar
#6I've taken a couple of classes that used Blackboard. It's terrible software. I'm not surprised that they resort to suing competitors to gain an advantage. They certainly seem incapable of coming up with a decent product.
I would participate in an open source project competitor to them just because of my dislike for their product.
Re: Why Blackboard's Plan to Buy a Rival Sparked a Campus Uproar
#7Blackboard started as two separate companies, one of which was called CourseInfo. This is the part that forms the core of Blackboard's software offering.
One of my professors at Cornell told us a bit about how CourseInfo came about; if I remember correctly, it started as work one student was doing for a particular professor to keep said professor's class website organized, and it grew from there. At some point, Cornell's administrators deliberately chose not to employ the student who was building what was evolving into CourseInfo in order for him to legally keep all the rights to his creation. It's really kind of a heartwarming story of higher education fostering entrepreneurship right on its own campus.
Flash forward about a decade and my professor was telling us they were concerned Blackboard was considering suing not just its competitors, but universities who built their own educational software in-house for patent infringement. Well, it was almost a heartwarming tale of student entrepreneurship.
I would like to point out that the leadership of Blackboard now came from the Blackboard side, not the CourseInfo side. Still, the Blackboard software really is horrible. I used to complain all the time that our top rate CS department students could definitely build a vastly superior system, and then I found out that we actually did build the god damned thing. Oops.
At least the CS department at Cornell doesn't use Blackboard though; http://cornellsun.com/node/21160 We have something called CMS instead that's worked on by Cornell undergrads and graduate students.
Re: Why Blackboard's Plan to Buy a Rival Sparked a Campus Uproar
#8Hmm. One of my startups Classleaf ( http://classleaf.com/ ) is a semi-Blackboard competitor, which is based on the idea of a lighter learning management system. Since those that read this article might be familiar with the learning management scene, what could schools want to give them the push to use Classleaf's product? I'm going to side with the fact that many schools have existing grade management systems, and pe…
Mark,
I just clicked on your profile and took a look at your work. I would have put you in 35-55 age bracket, considering what you have done and the image you have successfully projected. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw you were 16.
Take this from me; you're destined to great things my friend. The sky is the limit. But don't let this get into your head; someone like you is obviously driven and very competent, try to keep yourself grounded on the side. Discover spirituality or philosophy just to keep your sanity. On behalf of the rest of humanity, let me say that "We" want you to do Good, since whatever you do you will do it to perfection. You have the golden-touch, and with great power .. comes great responsibility.
Regards.
Re: Why Blackboard's Plan to Buy a Rival Sparked a Campus Uproar
#9Hmm. One of my startups Classleaf ( http://classleaf.com/ ) is a semi-Blackboard competitor, which is based on the idea of a lighter learning management system. Since those that read this article might be familiar with the learning management scene, what could schools want to give them the push to use Classleaf's product? I'm going to side with the fact that many schools have existing grade management systems, and pe…
All I have to base my opinion on is some familiarity with Blackboard/CourseInfo and a few friendships with schoolteachers, but I think you would need to approach marketing to high schools and colleges differently. Most high schools, even fairly good ones, are going to have a dearth of technical knowledge present in the administrative staff, so lightweight is good. They need software that is as easy to set up as possible, and they need be assured that it's reliable--schoolteachers and administrators are deathly afraid of parents and lawsuits, and something that loses grades is anathema.
(And I second what mahmud said above; the accomplishments in your profile make my head spin)
Re: Why Blackboard's Plan to Buy a Rival Sparked a Campus Uproar
#10Hmm. One of my startups Classleaf ( http://classleaf.com/ ) is a semi-Blackboard competitor, which is based on the idea of a lighter learning management system. Since those that read this article might be familiar with the learning management scene, what could schools want to give them the push to use Classleaf's product? I'm going to side with the fact that many schools have existing grade management systems, and pe…
You'll never get them to switch with something small. You need something that's uniquely better than the competition.