:TeachTech

Some of you might still be following the patent lawsuit filed by Blackboard against Desire2Learn several years ago.
The initial court decisions were for Blackboard but the US Patent Office also opened the patent claims for more investigation.
Yesterday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in favor of Desire2Learn which basically overturned the lower court’s ruling. John Baker, Desire2Learn’s President, announced it on Twitter and the news spread pretty quickly.

As you can imagine, reaction from Blackboard is that of disappointment. Reaction from Desire2Learn is, well, happy.

There are still lawsuits in action here and in Canada but this is a major development in the saga. Steven Downes has a pretty complete history of the lawsuit at his site.

Reactions by others:
News: Blackboard Loses on Appeal – Inside Higher Ed

BohrerED – notes about academic technology: Great news for Desire2Learn

The Financial Impact of the Patent Loss on Blackboard

Patnt Law Blog (Patently-O): Blackboard: Federal Circuit Again Find Software-Related Means-Plus-Function Claims Invalid for Failing to Disclose Sufficient Structure

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I presented a session on the Pellissippi 2.0 and Pellissippi 2.1 experiences at the NISOD conference in Austin, TX and will be presenting a variation of it at the FUSION 2009 Desire2Learn Users Conference in St. Paul, MN.

NISOD -The presentation is at 1:30 pm on Monday, May 26.

FUSION – The presentation is at 10:45 am on Wednesday, July 15

Here is the handout – embedded from Scribd.
Pellissippi 2.0 – NISOD 2009

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If you are using Twitter, be sure to follow our new account to get announcements, campus news and other information.

  http://www.twitter.com/pellissippist

If you want to know more about Twitter, you can read what we said about it way back in the Fall of 2007 during our Web Wednesday talk on Microblogging.

Need something more current? Probably! Twitter has changed a lot. Check out these resources:
Why Everyone’s Talking about Twitter – TIME

tweeternet – What is Twitter?

7 Things You Should Know About Twitter | EDUCAUSE

Or, just watch this “Twitter in Common English” video to get things rolling. See you on Twitter!

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Looking over the 100 new works that have been added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary this week, it is interesting to note that about 20 or so are related to some kind of technology and many of the other words relate to the environment and popular culture.

So, you can now peruse the dictionary and find the official definitions of such words are (with my short definitions after):

Vlog: a video based blog (you could also call it a vodcast, I bet)

Webisode: An episode of a television series (or other video series, I suppose) that is viewed online

And, my favorite for this year: flash mob: when a group of folks organize, usually online via SMS texting or Twitter or something similar, to meet at a common spot at a certain time for some action and then they quickly dissolve away. For an example, check out the “silent rave” flash mob in London back in February 2009.

Maybe while you take your staycation this year, you can learn more about these words. We wonder when they will be entered into the spellcheck of our favorite word processors!

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