Facebook and Blackboard – a matter of time

It was inevitable really, and just a matter of time before somebody tried this. Mashable reports on CourseFeeds, a Facebook application that connects to your Blackboard course with your Facebook profile

This is, of course, in part to Facebook’s decision to open the development of applications and allowing integrations to other web apps.

Of course, this sent me off digging to see what else I could find regarding Facebook apps linked to Education Technology. A quick scout of the main VLE vendors and other educational technology didn’t yield any results but then at present some view Facebook as the cafe/bar on the campus where all the informal learning and chit chat takes place.

I do, however, think this could be an interesting development. It would be worth watching the take up of the CourseFeeds app. Do students want to engage with their learning and teaching in this way? Will this initiate a trend in using the likes of Facebook as a PLE (which some students may be doing anyway)? With Facebook’s present take-up and Blackboard’s large presence, particularly in the US, whatever your personal views on these particular applications, the connection between the two could provide some interesting data.

Bodington Next Gen

Sometimes, I wonder at coincidence…

I was just about to post about an email that was sent to several JISCmail lists about an announcement from several major UK universities join up to form the Tetra collaboration (see the announcement here) and the work that their going to do in consortium with Sakai when, via Stephen Downes, I came across this interesting post from Alfred Elssa regarding where Sakai sits in relation to the broader e-learning community and the Blackboard patents.

Presumably, in light of the FUD surrounding the BB patents, both Sakai and Bodington are quite happy that their collaboration will not be perceived as a threat to BB. Or that they in anyway impinge on those patents (regardless of whether Desire2Learn can show that patents are groundless)…