RE: RSS, Blogs,and MERLOT in Blackboard
Vidya sums up my feelings about Blackboard’s licensing scheme in which basic license subscribers get a greatly diminished product while the cost-prohibitive high-level licenses get a few extra goodies.
What frustrates me is the fact that clearly Blackboard recognizes the fact that educational institutions, K-12 as well as higher-ed are rapidly leveraging these technologies and incorporating them into their curriculums. Then why are they reserved for the elite few who can afford an Academic or Learning Management license with Blackboard. Does Blackboard think Basic users are any less enthusiastic in their desire to incorporate such technologies? Or do they think those of us whose responsibility it is to increase faculty adoption across campus, to motivate, exhort, and encourage them that this is a good thing, have an easier job of it because of the limited functionality available to us?
Granted Blackboard needs to consider it’s bottomline, but surely a viable tradeoff can be found between making technology tools that directly impact pedagogy be it RSS, blogs, or searching MERLOT. Speaking from an instructional technology support perspective, features that directly impact learning and pedagogy should be available in all licenses of Blackboard. Putting a price on it just isn’t fair!
Do you want RSS in your Blackboard? That’ll be another $12,000 a year. Uhh, no thanks, I’ll just teach faculty to use feed2js.
[Via EDUCAUSE Community Blogs]
April 26th, 2005 - 5:21 am
Hey,
I have never used blackboard, but have heard others on some of the OSS forums talk about its shortcomings. Considering the limited budgets that most school districts are burdened with, I don’t know why they don’t use more OSS. A couple of alternatives to blackboard might be Mombo, Drupal, etc. There is a site (I forget the url) that lists over 40 oss content management systems. Good luck.
Jim
April 29th, 2005 - 10:54 am
Try moodle (moodle.org). Once you get into it, you’ll never look back.