I’ve been avoiding discussion of the patent issue. This is partly because I don’t know enough about it, and partly because I am terribly annoyed by it. Yes, yes, I blog about stuff that annoys me all the time, but these are topics that I’m professionally engaged in, so the annoyance is not personally as troubling.The basic idea is this: The US patent office has apparently gone nuts, or is being well paid off, and is accepting or approving patents on things that really should not be patented. The result is that a corporation with lots of money can patent something, and the next day sue their competitors into oblivian.Yesterday morning I started the process of developing an on line course. But, the very first thing I did was to check to see if I would have the option of using Open Source software. Were that not the case, I would, frankly, simply not do it. Let other people develop the on line courses. Fortunately, here at The U, we have the option of using Moodle. Good.But then, this morning, I encountered a rash of information about Blackboard (which, I believe, now owns Vista) … these are all Content/Content Management System programs to use in classes, both regular and on line.Blackboard has patented one or more things, such as the idea of having a single human play more than one roll in a CMS system. So Blackboard is the only company that can have the option of a teacher also being a student. This means that teachers can’t see the view that students see when signing on to the class (by changing their “role”) unless Blackboard gets paid something. Continue reading Patents Patently Absurd: The End of Innovation in Education Will Come at the Hands of The Corporate Business Model →
