Depressing Course Management Software Merger

Yesterday, it was announced that Blackboard had bought out WebCT for $180 million. I guess this was inevitable since I don't think either company was getting enough business by itself to turn a real profit. Still, I'm not a fan of this merger. First, I worry that WebCT, which has been the more comprehensive (yet not as user-friendly) course management program will be simplified as Blackboard is. Second, less competition can't be a good thing for education institutions who will now have to pay whatever this new bigger company wants. Yes, there's some smaller course management software programs out there, but how realistic is it for large colleges to actually go with one of these companies? Third, to what extent will current WebCT users have to now learn a new program? Right now, Blackboard's site says that the WebCT product line will remain "intact and supported," but I'm sure eventually in some future version WebCT will be dropped entirely as a name. More information on the mergers can be found here:

• The Chronicle of Higher Education (password required)
• The corporate spin
• An analysis from Inside Higher Education

Innovate, an journal devoted to online education, has an entire issue devoted to video games and education. Some of the essays in the issue:

• What Would a State of Art Instructional Video Game Look Like?
  
• Epistemic Games
  
• What can K-12 School Leaders Learn from Video Games and Gaming?
  
• Simschool: The Game of Teaching
  
• Changing the game: What Happens When Video Games Enter the Classroom?
  
• Game-Informed Learning: Applying Computer Game Processes to Higher Education
  

Comp 1 Class: Take a look at this report on a "green" school in Chicago. How does it help to explain a "concept" as you want to do for essay 1? Mark areas where you find information about the characteristics of this school. Mark areas that discuss the implications of this school.

Attention Comp 1 Students: Ideas for new entertainment or media phenomena concepts. (Some of these -- video games -- are too broad, so they would need to be narrowed a bit. Video games would probably be better as role playing games, for example.)

• Emo Music -
  
• Transportable Entertainment
  
• Reality TV hero
  
• Tabloid journalism
  
• Blogging
  
• Video games
  
• Music downloading
  
• Internet gaming
  
• Fantasy children's literature
  
• The Michael Bay action film
  
• Nerd films and TV
  
• Blue Collar Comedy

Community topics:

• Progressive cities
  
• Green living
  
• Volunteerism
  
• Community development
  
• Evangelism (for church community)
  
• Employee-Centered Workplace (skim down and look at the table titled "The New Workplace")

This topic doesn't really have to do with writing directly, but since I use the Internet all day long to access my online courses, it does relate. After several months of using and enjoying Firefox as a browser, I've decided to go back to using IE Explorer. I really liked the tabbed browsing, the RSS feeds and the search box at the bottom of the screen, but as time went on, I just found that the browser got slower and slower. It took longer to open and would lock up frequently. The big thing, though, was that one day it just stopped working in WebCT, the course management software that I use to access student work. When I logged into WebCT, I would just get a white screen. I'm now using Explorer again. It's not as exciting, but it's not crashing and the pages load more quickly.

Research work begins this week in Composition 2. Over the next coming entries, I'll link to good research web sites. Here's a start:

For hundreds of research ideas, check out CQ Researcher's index

For a great search engine try A9

For a quick reference page on evaluating web sites see this page from Cornell University.

Now that the college has changed servers, my old web pages no longer work. At first I just considered moving all the material to the new server and keeping things as is, but I decided to use this as an opportunity to completely re-do the entire site. That will keep me busy for awhile if I can ever get the opportunity to devote some time to it that is. The college is in the midst improving itself by tackling the Baldrige award. I've been working on part of the Process Management section for three years now. It's like math was for me in high school - it makes sense when I read over the stuff and then when I actually start writing it, the questions just seem to get very cloudy.

Some important links in this evaluation process:

• AQIP
• Education Criteria for the Baldrige