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This is big news. I suppose the merger makes sense. To be honest, I haven’t used either Blackboard or WebCT recently, but I used to be a huge fan of Blackboard. It’s worth noting that Blackboard is acquiring WebCT and that the two companies will operate under the Blackboard name.
Also worth noting:

Blackboard plans to enhance and support the existing products of both
WebCT and Blackboard. New releases and ongoing software maintenance for WebCT
and Blackboard will continue to be a key focus of the combined company.  At
the same time, Blackboard will leverage the Blackboard Building Blocks(R)
architecture and WebCT’s PowerLinks framework as the joint foundation for
these enabling interfaces that will allow the existing product lines to
interoperate with one another and with other applications.  Over time,
Blackboard will incorporate the best features and usability characteristics
from the two product lines into a new, standards-based product set that will
incorporate a scalable, architecture, the use of Web services, unparalleled
ease of use, and flexible customization features.

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Podcasting is suddenly everywhere. With the release of iTunes 4.9, which allows you to both subscribe and publish podcasts, I thought I might briefly touch on the topic.

What is Podcasting?  From Wikipedia:

Podcasting is a method of publishing files via the Internet,
allowing users to subscribe to a feed to receive new files
automatically. It became popular in late 2004,
intended largely for downloading audio files onto a portable audio
player. However, listening to podcasts does not require a portable
device and it is not traditional "broadcasting" to a mass audience at a
fixed time.
The word "podcasting" is a portmanteau that was coined in February 2004 and combines "broadcasting" with the name of Apple Computer’s iPod audio player (although podcasting was not invented by Apple, nor do podcasts require a portable player or Apple software).
It is distinct from other types of online audio delivery because of its subscription model, which uses the RSS
2.0 XML format with an audio/mpeg enclosure. Podcasting enables
independent producers to create self-published, syndicated "radio
shows", and gives broadcast radio programs a new distribution method.
Listeners may subscribe to feeds using "podcatching" software (a type
of "aggregator"),
which periodically checks for and downloads new content automatically.
Some podcatching software is also able to synchronise (copy) podcasts
to portable music players. Any digital audio player or computer  with audio-playing software can play podcasts. The same technique can
deliver video files, and by 2005 some aggregators could play video as
well as audio.

In the not-too-distant past, you had to search for podcasts. My family and I often downloaded Podcasts of BBC Radio for instance, but they were broadcast late at night or had hard to find schedules. With the release of iTunes, that is changing.
Most of the time (at the current moment in time, that is), podcasts are free. Of course, I remember when music was also a free download. iTunes now makes it easy for you to search out a podcast or discover new ones. You can even publish your own!

Podcasting is just fun. More than that, podcasting may have a direct impact on eLearning and education. Think about the benefits, including a direct link to the employees’ ears, assistance for auditory learners, and more. A Learning Circuits article reviews the trends and lists some of the advantages in both education and corporate learning. The article also includes several great education-related podcast links.

Here are some great links on podcasting:

A Beginner’s Guide to Podcast Creation
Podcasting for Education (blog article)
Odeo: Odeo is similar to iTunes new podcasting service. Odeo provides a well-organized catalog of available podcasts for you to download to your player or computer.
Podshow: Helping produce and promote "shows" (similar to a radio show) as podcasts

Just got back from the JavaOne Conference in San Francisco. There’s a whole lot going on in the world of Java. However, I was struck by the Exhibitors Pavilion and in particular, the O’Reilly booth. While there were a lot of text book companies present, O’Reilly was the only one that seemed to be pushing it’s eLearning options.
At O’Reilly, an instructor/trainer can choose a customized book, arrange for that book to appear on O’Reilly’s SafariU, and use the SafariU LMS to teach the class online or in a blended learning environment.
This is great for many reasons:
1. The book is customized, meaning that students need only buy one book instead of several. The instructor can mix and match from the O’Reilly titles.
2. The book is then available in a PDF format, for the students to view online or print portions (or in its entirety).
3. There is no fee to the Instructor. O’Reilly’s model is to charge the students, just as if they were buying a paper-based textbook.

This is a great model, I believe, and I wish more publishing houses would see the advantages of the customized books.

It can be done. You can implement a Learning Management System and not spend millions of dollars. You are not forced to turn to NetG, WebCT, or other large systems that perhaps your company can’t quite afford. You can just use an open source LMS. The open source LMS that I have heard the most about – all pleasant, mind you – is Moodle.

What is Open Source?
First off, you should understand that open source means that the application is free. It also means that various programmers are constantly developing the application, improving it.  If, in your use of the product, you improve the product, you are expected to share that with the entire product user base.
Surprisingly to many, open source applications tend to have better than average support. Perhaps this is because the programmers have a lot of heart and soul invested in their creations. Open source apps also tend to have a large user community that communicates via forums or other means, providing an endless offering of ideas, support, and suggestions.
That said, go ahead and take a look at Moodle.  You may appreciate what it has to offer.

eLearning with No Budget
A recent "report" from the Australian Flexible Learning Framework takes a look at creating eLearning using open source software and readily available hardware.  It explores everything from MP3 Players to cell phones as additional tools in eLearning.  It covers several open source products, including Moodle, as well as open source assessment development software, such as Hot Potato.  While the report/white paper is written in a very conversational style, complete with happy faces and cute graphics, it also exposes some valuable information.

You don’t have to have a huge budget to create effective eLearning.  You just have to know where to look.

Moodle
Australian Flexible Learning Framework: eLearning on a Shoestring -  Developing a Solution (PDF file)
Hot Potato: assessment development

Blogmeister is a blogging tool created specifically for the education market.  The biggest difference between blogmeister and any other blogging tool is the ability for the teacher to review the student blog entries before the entries are published.

But blogging is also showing up in schools, where teachers have known for a long time that students  develop better communication skills when they are authentically communicating. A number of educators are helping their students developing their writing skills by having them publish their work as blogs, and then invite comments from people in the outside.

There are many freely available tools that facilitate blogging, but none seem especially suited for the classroom. That is the reason for BlogMeister. This online blogging tool is explicitly designed with teachers and students in mind, where the teacher can evaluate, comment on, and finally publish students’ blog articles in a controlled environment.

I have long been an advocate on the use of blogs in education – especially in creative writing classes.  For a teacher to be able to control what is then published to the outside world, as well as provide private comments and guidance, is the next step in an emerging and useful technology.

Blogmeister

Another great item from the R&D team at Google: Google Scholar.  It’s a search of scholarly papers, journals, and so forth.  Here’s what Google has to say:

Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.

Just as with Google Web Search, Google Scholar orders your search results by how relevant they are to your query, so the most useful references should appear at the top of the page. This relevance ranking takes into account the full text of each article as well as the article’s author, the publication in which the article appeared and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature. Google Scholar also
automatically analyzes and extracts citations and presents them as separate results, even if the  documents they refer to are not online. This means your search results may include citations of older works and seminal articles that appear only in books or other offline publications.

Please let us know if you have suggestions, questions or comments about Google Scholar. We recognize the debt we owe to all those in academia whose work has made Google itself a reality and we hope to make Google Scholar as useful to this community as possible. We believe everyone should have a chance to stand on the shoulders of giants.

This looks like a great tool, especially for college level students and professors.  There are instructions on how to get your scholarly articles listed within the index as well. I like how you can click on the "Cited" link and view the articles that reference your original query.

Here are some sample citations:

I received this from the Masie Center today. I was wary of posting it at first, but I have faith in Elliott Masie, so I’m going forward with posting it, assuming it is legit. If I discover it is incorrect in any way, I’ll amend this post accordingly:

Dear Learning & Training Colleagues:

I am appealing to you for immediate help to stop a disruptive set of lawsuits that threaten the heart and soul of the e-Learning innovation process.

In a nutshell, one small company has applied for and received a number of patents that they claim stake out their ownership of a wide range of the processes underlying e-Learning. For example, they claim to have patented the process of tracking learning based on jobs or test performance. In addition, they claim to own the patents that break documents into learning objects; and even to use one computer to access learning data from another computer via a network.

They have gotten the patents and have filed multi-million dollar suits against several of the e-Learning companies. A few of the e-Learning companies have settled to avoid the huge cost of litigation and the fear of losing in a trial. In conversations with the CEO’s of Learning and Technology companies, it is clear that these lawsuits are going to add increased costs that will be passed along to the customers, as well as have a chilling effect on the e-Learning innovation process.
Continued after the jump.

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This article makes some good points on things to take into account when implementing a new LMS.

There are four common issues that companies face again and again. These pitfalls will seem obvious to those folks who have already been through a system integration project, but they may surprise some of you who are knee-deep implementing your LMS.
1. Where is the data and can you access it?
2. Extensive LMS customization
3. Length of the project (The longer the project takes, the more likely the business will change during the implementation.)
4. Conflicting requirements and trying to please everyone

How to Avoid the Pitfalls of LMS Implementation: ASTD Learning Circuits, July

The Masie Center delivers again. This time they have released a large yet free e-book, available for download, that covers 701 Tips for eLearning. Tips include:

#57: Business Issues Need Only Apply Make sure there is a clear business issue that e-Learning will address. Too many projects are started that do not have executive sponsorship or clearly address a business issue that needs to be resolved. The result is failure to continue once the budget comes into question.
#139: Adapt, Don’t Just Copy Put thought into the creation of the e-Learning module. Follow instructional design principles. E-learning is NOT just a conversion of Word or PowerPoint documents. E-Learning is a different medium – adapt your content accordingly.
#219: Chunk Your Training Keep you lessons at 30 minutes or less but if training on a new application, 60 minutes or less is best. Online recordings? 20 minutes or less.
#271: Respect Copyrights It’s easy to borrow content from other sites on the Internet. Most people are flattered if you want to borrow an image or some text, provided they receive appropriate credit. But if you’re using someone else’s materials, be sure to find out if the content is copyrighted. The Internet is filled with pirated images so even if it appears that something isn’t marked, it could be stolen already.

And a lot more! These tips are all provided by readers of Elliot Masie’s TRENDS eNewsletter and eLearning Consortium members. (Tip #271 is provided by a friend and colleague of mine: Jeff Harris from Trivantis, Cincinnati, OH.)
Download the free PDF or order a (free) CD

ASTD’s Learning Circuits online mag interviewed Michael Allen, CEO of Allen Interactions and author of Michael Allen’s Guide to e-Learning: Building Interactive, Fun, and Effective Learning Programs for Any Company. Oh yeah, he was also the principal architect behind Authorware, in the beginning.

Here’s an excerpt:

Learning Circuits: You often talk about your frustration with current e-learning efforts. Indeed, I saw that your session at ASTD 2004 was called, “No More Boring E-Learning.” Why/how do you find most e-learning to be boring? What isn’t working? Pet Peeves?

Allen: E-learning is often boring for the same reasons much traditional instruction is boring. It focuses on content presentation rather than the learning experience. In fact, I find that 99 percent of it all follows the “tell-and-test” paradigm: convey a block of content through lecture, books, screens, movies, bullet slides, and so forth. Then, give a quiz. All the boring stuff generally overlooks my three primary criteria (the 3Ms):

Meaningful. What’s more boring than content you don’t understand? Not much, except content you’ve already mastered. If you’re set on the content you’re going to present, regardless of who you’re training and the differences among your learners, then you’re set on boring at least some of them—quite possibly all of them. Learning experiences need to be tailored with focus on the learner: Does the learner see the value in learning this? Are learners fearful, impatient, confused? What are their goals and how do they relate to the goals you have for them?

Memorable. What value is learning material you won’t remember even a day or two past the posttest? Good posttest scores aren’t the reason for learning. It’s the ability, confidence, and readiness to perform valued tasks. We need to create learning experiences that stick with our learners so that they are able to perform at the right times.

Motivational. You can’t learn for your learners. They have to do the learning themselves. That means they have to be paying attention, thinking, and doing those things that create knowledge and skills within them. It’s as important to inspire (read energize) learners as it is to present content to them, because, with insufficient motivation, all that content is going to evaporate, leaving scant residue.

The full article is here.