I am glad that I don't have to worry about the LMS that I use, Moodle, being swallowed in a merger by another company. Also, I wanted to use the term BlackAngel.
The Chronicle of Higher Education:
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3755/blackboard-plans-to-buy-another-rival-angel-learning
and Blackboard's press release:
http://www.blackboard.com/Company/Media-Center/Press-Releases.aspx?releaseid=1285265
But for those of us on Angel, Moodle now has a tremendous opportunity.
We switched away from BB three years ago and Angel has been a great success for us. We're not going back to BB under any circumstances, and our contract runs out next year. We'll be doing evals over the next year to decide where to move- Moodle and Sakai are top contenders since I'm not sure of the long term viability of any of the commercial vendors anymore.
Has there been any work at all on Angel->Moodle transition tools? The Angel user community is utterly furious here- most are like us, refugees from BB. The one thread I can find on these boards doesn't look promising, but if there's someone out there with ways to make this transition successful (or knows what needs to be coded to do it) I suspect Moodle can pick up a huge chunk of the Angel userbase.
Please feel free to message me directly if you have any information.
We switched away from BB three years ago and Angel has been a great success for us. We're not going back to BB under any circumstances, and our contract runs out next year. We'll be doing evals over the next year to decide where to move- Moodle and Sakai are top contenders since I'm not sure of the long term viability of any of the commercial vendors anymore.
Has there been any work at all on Angel->Moodle transition tools? The Angel user community is utterly furious here- most are like us, refugees from BB. The one thread I can find on these boards doesn't look promising, but if there's someone out there with ways to make this transition successful (or knows what needs to be coded to do it) I suspect Moodle can pick up a huge chunk of the Angel userbase.
Please feel free to message me directly if you have any information.
Well, all it takes is a group of disgruntled Angel users to get together, and either collaborate on developing an Angel course import script, or just pool resources and collectively commission a Moodle Partner to develop an import script.
Since the importer will almost certainly be released under the GNU GPL, you (and everyone) will then have the 4 essential freedoms that free software guarantees. That means that no one can take it away from you/stop you using it/sell it to Blackboard. The most you will have to pay is for the days a developer actually works creating the importer code for you.
A lot of the time the politics/philosophy surrounding open source software does not seem that important. But every so often a closed source business does something evil and reminds us why the GPL and Free Software is important. How kind of them
Since the importer will almost certainly be released under the GNU GPL, you (and everyone) will then have the 4 essential freedoms that free software guarantees. That means that no one can take it away from you/stop you using it/sell it to Blackboard. The most you will have to pay is for the days a developer actually works creating the importer code for you.
A lot of the time the politics/philosophy surrounding open source software does not seem that important. But every so often a closed source business does something evil and reminds us why the GPL and Free Software is important. How kind of them
Blackboard clearly has a problem with the way it is perceived by at least some LMS users. I am posting this image for "comic relief" and hope that the humor value outweighs any offense that might be taken.
The "borg" theme was suggested by others. I took their ideas, snagged other people's artwork, and reworked them into this image - enjoy.
The "borg" theme was suggested by others. I took their ideas, snagged other people's artwork, and reworked them into this image - enjoy.
