No getting away from this kind of intellectual laziness I suspect, Rick. But having said that, I might be just as bad. My license expires at the end of the year and I am just not sure I want to continue in the current "Look at Me" atmosphere that has developed here so I'm really not looking any more. But you never know....
Colin, I wasn't sure from your reply. Do you mean that you have a license for "Blackboard 9" that will be expiring at the end of this year? One can explore Blackboard Ultra for free, from what I can see from Blackboard's "coursesites" website.
As I read about Blackboard's $1 Billion debt, and see their difficulties, this really makes me think back to "Lotus 1-2-3," the PC-based spreadsheet that probably had about 80% of the spreadsheet market around 1989, or so. What happened to Lotus 1-2-3?
It is easy for companies who have a significant share of a market to get lazy about product improvement and innovation. We all know that Blackboard's historical approach was to purchase competitors, then kill the product. Yep, they always talked about integrating the "best features" from the products that they bought, but this never happened. (WebCT, Angel)
So, my guess is that their debt is due to legal issues, and marketing expenses, but not due to product development (and programmers.)
Time will tell.
Sorry, for not being clear Rick. Here, all teachers are registered by the State for a period of three years. My registration expires January 2020, and I am seriously considering not renewing, dealing with so many precious princesses is wearing - and I am not talking about students. I suspect I am already extracting myself from a number of areas, and further investigations of things like Canvas, don't seem to hold the same attraction they did just a few months ago. I am vastly more cynical about motivations than I was and am assigning most decisions and changes to either to the self-promotional "Look at me! I did this!" or the intellectual barrenness of "We must do something, this is something, therefore we will do this." (Gawd, I am starting to sound like my father!... ) I suspect this is also a form of intellectual laziness, in its own way, the same as what I am complaining about.... But, I still have things I would like to do here so this will keep me going, just cutting out some of the extraneous nonsense and concentrate a bit more on Moodle.
And how about those who sing the music they learned in (from) the lobby?
