Desire2Learn‘s challenge of Blackboard‘s e-learning patents have resulted in an initial action by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that invalidated all 44 of the Blackboard patents questioned. The action is not final, yet, and both parties have 60 days to respond. But, as eSchool News points out, the ruling raises questions about the validity [...]

Note: Education Futures is on winter break and will return on January 7. 2007 has been a banner year for Education Futures, with expansions in the range of content and participation. First and foremost, I would like to thank the guest bloggers and other contributors that shared their thoughts and expertise this year: Cristóbal Cobo [...]

I received a call this afternoon from a third-party developer who confirmed the Blackboard Beyond Initiative is working aggressively on a fix for the critical flaw in its SafeAssign product reported at EF on Tuesday. The good news is that student data is no longer being distributed into the wild. This is a huge gain [...]

After reading yesterday’s post on SafeAssign at least 31 times today, Blackboard Beyond Initiative product director Greg Ritter (who also blogs) called me to voice Blackboard’s objections over sharing information on the software flaw that broadcasts submitted students’ papers across the Internet. I thought a personal call from the company was much better than receiving [...]

The cheerfulness among undergraduates at my institution has transformed suddenly into overt displays of despair and depression. This can only signal one thing: midterm grades are coming in. Another sign midterms are being graded: the Education Futures access.log has been receiving many referral hits from websites claiming to thwart plagiarism. Students, please note that submitting [...]