Fortnightly Mailing

JISC's £5m call: "Institutional Approaches to Curriculum Design"

UK HE Institutions, and FE Institutions with more than 400 full time equivalents of higher education students, are eligible to apply for medium term funding for large-scale course redesign projects. Expect Carol Twigg's National Center for Academic Transformation to get a major boost in traffic, and for good reason. Excerpt:

"JISC invites proposals for projects to review course design and validation processes, and the ways these are supported and informed by technology, in order to transform learning opportunities to address an identified issue or challenge of strategic importance to the institution involved.

Funding of up to £400,000 per project is available with projects expected to last for just under four years. JISC has committed £5 million to this work and expects to funds up to 12 projects. Because of the need for institutions to identity issues or challenges relevant to their own context only one project per institution will be funded. Institutions are encouraged to ensure that the most appropriate bid from their institution is submitted.

JISC is holding a community briefing event where potential bidders will be given information about the background to the call, its objectives and the bidding process. Attendees will also have an opportunity to ask questions about the call. This meeting will take place on 21 May in Birmingham and registration will be open on Friday 2 May 2008.

The deadline for receipt of proposals is no later than 12.00 noon on Thursday 19 June 2008.  Projects should start in 1 September 2008."

Marc Andreessen's "If Microsoft goes fully hostile on Yahoo"

Long and interesting 28 April 2008 piece by Marc Andreessen (who founded Netscape, and is a successful serial entrepreneur in the US), analysing, with the help of expert analysis commissioned (?) by Marc from two corporate attorneys, about how a fully hostile takeover by Microsoft of Yahoo might play out.

Graphene used to create "the world's smallest transistor"

Graphene transistor - image from the University of Manchester

Impression of graphene by Jannik Meyer

Within the next 10-15 years, say, Moore's Law will cease to hold for chips made from silicon, because individual transistors will get so small that silicon ceases to function as a semiconductor. Science Daily reports on work published on 17 April 2008 in the peer-reviewed journal Science - abstract - by Ponomarenko, Schedin, Katsnelson, Yang, Hill, Novoselov, and Geim , a team based mainly at the University of Manchester's Centre for Mesoscience and Nanotechnology that proves that transistors one atom thick and 10 atoms wide can be made using graphene, a hexagonal mesh of carbon atoms that is one atom thick. 

For more on graphene, see the frequently updated Wikipedia article, and this 10 April 2007 Scientific American article by JR Minkel, who also comments  in the Scientific American on 18 April 2008 about the "smallest transistor" claim.

(With thanks to Dick Moore for the nudge.)

UK National Archive of Educational Computing

Richard Millwood is maintaining a National Archive of Educational Computing web site:

"This is the (emerging) web site for the UK National Archive of Educational Computing, documenting the development of learning technology through its invention, application, policies, practices, organisations and people over the last half century."

Richard is looking for sponsorship, and is organising a conference in London on 9 July at the Institute for Education - A one day conference sharing hindsight about learning with technology to provide insight for now and the future. He is also looking for volunteers. Here is Richard's list of options for volunteers:

• 1 SAY WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT - identify your own interest / experience strengths and perhaps join a relevant 'decade' team;
• 2 TELL A STORY OR TWO - create personal, descriptive, narrative and interpretive material about the history of educational computing - there is a form for submitting your story on the website in the Stories section ( http://www.naec.org.uk/stories )
• 3 CONTRIBUTE STUFF - add text, photos, sounds, movies and links to other stuff on the net - contact me if you wish to add to this web site directly;
• 4 EDIT THE MATERIAL - contribute by searching, scanning, writing, reviewing and organising the team effort;
• 5 ADVISE ON CURATION - tell us how we should organise material, describe good practice for all the above;
• 6 ORGANISE MEETINGS - help support events to enjoy doing this work together;
• 7 FIND SUPPORT - formulate further plans, seek funding and sustain the effort.

A4 leaflet about NAEC [60 kB PDF].  Flyer about 9 July conference [60 kB PDF]. Link to volunteering form.

The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It

 

Source: Yale University Press

Updated 4/5/2008

My copy of Jonathan Zittrain's The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It arrived yesterday. Zittrain, whose talk What would you install on one laptop per child? talk Steve Ryan summarised in Fortnightly Mailing in August 2006, argues that the Internet is on a path to lock-down, "ending its cycle of innovation, and facilitating new kinds of control". As locked appliances like iPhones and Tivo recorders eclipse the PC, and if Net neutrality ends, then the Internet and the devices we use to access it are in danger of losing their "generativity": that is, their capacity for being tinkered with, openly innovated with, and used generally in ways not envisaged by their suppliers.

Though this is a scholarly book by the Oxford University Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation, it is also a gripping one, if Chapters One to Three  are anything to go by (I was less taken with the Conclusion, partly because of its already dated references to OLPC ). It gives a much less naïvely glowing and optimistic perspective on the Web than you sometimes get from Internet commentators; for which reason it ought to be widely read by IT and non-IT policy people.

The whole of the book is available on line and for comment, though rather slowly, with access to already commented-on sections seemingly slowed further by the use of a third party captcha system; and a Creative Commons licensed version is promised on Zittrain's web site at http://www.jz.org/.

Notes - 4/5/2008

• Piece by Jonathan Zittrain in the 4/5/2008 Times Online
• Unsatisfactory review by Tom Standage in the 27/4/2008 Times Online

Google Docs - available offline

Updated 26/4/2008

Around this time last year I wrote about Google Gears, which enables browser-based applications (like Google Reader) to work when you are off-line.  From April this year Google has begun (for individual users of Google Docs) to switch on the ability to use Google Docs when off-line. My guess is that the roll-out is being done geographically: with UK users some way down the queue, and I noticed that my access had been enabled on 26/4/2008. But If you have not got access, Google's own help pages give you a feel for what is envisaged (note the security warning....) , as does this 31/3/2008 explanation and video by Google's Phillip Tucker.

Barry Dahl interviews patent lawyer Michael C Smith to make a podcast about Blackboard vs. Desire2Learn

Hats off to Barry Dahl (CIO in a Canadian college using Desire2Learn) for interviewing Michael C Smith (interesting and funny blogging patent lawyer who covers the patent beat in the Eastern District of Texas) and turning the interview into quite an informative ~30 minute podcast. Meanwhile, Campus Technology and THE Journal today published a long (and also informative) interview by Dave Nagel with an upbeat Matthew Small, Blackboard's Chief Legal Officer.

Blackboard Patent provisionally rejected in its entirety by the US Patent and Trademark Office - first stage in a long process

Source: The use of inter partes and ex parte re-examination in patent litigation, 2006, by David M. O'Dell and David L. McCombs

Updated 29 March 2008

I reported that on 14 March 2008 the US Patent and Trade Mark Office had decided to merge the till now apparently dormant inter partes and ex parte re-examinations of Blackboard Inc.'s US Patent Number 6988138. On 25 March 2008 USPTO issued a non-final decision [1.7 MB PDF]. The net result is that all 44 of the claims made in the Blackboard Patent have been provisionally rejected, with Blackboard given 2 months to respond. The rejection is on the basis of several examples of prior art cited by Desire2Learn and by the Software Freedom Law Centre in their respective re-examination requests. (Particularly relevant, it seems, were the 29 April 1998 EDUCOM/NLII Instructional Management Systems Specifications Document Version 0.5, University of Nottingham's Ceilidh system, and the Irish Top Class system.) 30/3/2008. The provisional rejections sits alongside the previous invalidation of parts of the 6988138 patent by the US courts in the course of Blackboard's current infringement case.

Does this mean that the Blackboard Patent is dead in the water? The short  "I am no lawyer" answer is "not yet", because:

• the decision may well not stand (today's Blackboard "community update" via Stephen Downes shows that Blackboard does not expect the decision to stand, though note the "PR" rather than "rigorous" tone of the statement; nor is Desire2Learn counting its chickens);
• the patent re-examination process is slow, as the flow-chart above shows (be aware that in this case it has taken 16 months to get from "File Request" to "Office Action" rather than the more normal three to five);
• Blackboard has just prevailed in its patent infringement claim against Desire2Learn, and, as Michael Feldstein indicates, the impact of this development on that case is uncertain.

And even if, as I personally believe it will, US Patent 6988138 is finally ruled to be invalid, the twin problems of the patentability (in some jurisdictions) of software (e-learning or otherwise)*, and of universities using the patent system privately to exploit student innovation and the outcome of publicly funded research, are untouched by this particular case.

* 30/3/2008

1. Blackboard holds an equivalent patent in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, which have neither been whittled down in the process of an infringement claim, nor has its validity been challenged (?), as in the US. Furthermore, a number of other e-learning patents exist - see for example the Pearson Education patents listed some way down this August 2006 post by Michael Feldstein (or have been applied for), some of which are probably rather stronger, and most of which are far less in the public eye, than 6988138.
2. For a long article, with informative quotes from key protagonists, including Software Freedom Law Centre's Eben Moglen, who does not mince his words, see this 28 March 2008 piece by Dave Nagel in THE Journal.

Big changes afoot in how FE is funded and overseen in England

Here is an extract from a long statement made on 17 March 2008 by Mark Haysom, Chief Executive of the Learning and Skills Council about the winding up of the LSC over the next couple of years, possibly prejudging somewhat the outcome of a consultation that has been launched on the Department for Schools, Children, and Families web site, which does not close till 9 June 2008:

"In summary, there will be two new bodies that will continue to drive ahead the huge agenda that we have been charged with since 2001. For young people there will be a new national Non Departmental Public Body, with some regional capacity, which will support local authorities in their new role in commissioning and funding 14-19 provision. Local capacity on 14-19 will therefore, as expected, be with Local Authorities. For adults there will be a new Skills Funding Agency, again with some regional capacity, which will oversee the distribution of funds to the sector and manage the performance of FE colleges. The Agency will also house the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS), the National Employer Service, and the Adult Careers and Advancement Agency. As has already been announced, the Train to Gain brokerage service will transfer to Regional Development Agencies in April 2009.

Although there is still a great deal of work to be done to flesh out the detail of the proposals, what we now know is that in 2010 some of our staff will transfer to local authorities and some will move across to the two new organisations. Even before that, some staff will move over within the LSC to work for the NAS which is aiming to be up and running by April 2009 at the latest. Throughout the transition period we will work with and support all our staff as we move to the new arrangements."

If anything it looks as if things will finish being at least as complicated as at present - eloquently described by Frank Coffield in The Impact of Policy on Learning and Inclusion in the New Learning and Skills Sector. Diagrams [130 kB PDF].

US Patent and Trademark Office merges re-examinations of Blackboard Inc.'s Patent Number 6988138

25/3/2008

Most of this post is over 12 months old, included as background to the fact that the US Patent and Trade Mark Office decided on 14 March 2008 to merge [284 kB PDF] the so far apparently dormant inter partes and ex parte re-examinations of Blackboard Inc.'s US Patent Number 6988138. It remains to be seen if this means that the re-examination is now imminent, or whether the merger itself will cause the Software Freedom Law Centre, which made the ex parte application, and Desire2Learn, which made the inter partes re-examination application, to work with each other in the process.

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Updated 26/2/2007; 27/2/2007

On 24 February 2007, the US Patent and Trade Mark Office agreed to Desire2Learn's  inter partes application for a re-examination of Blackboard's "Internet-based education support system and methods" patent. So US Patent Number 6988138 is to be re-examined from two directions: firstly as a result of the ex parte application by the Software Freedom Law Centre;  and secondly as a result of Desire2Learn's inter partes application. (26/2/2007 - Before you assume that this is necessarily a decision of major significance, remember that since 1999 over 90% of all inter partes re-examination requests have been granted, as this USP&TO document makes clear. For more on this read what US patent attorney David L McCombs has to say - and the report to which there is a link - in his comment on this Fortnightly Mailing posting from December 2006.) You would expect both Blackboard's and Desire2Learn's patent information sites to carry commentary on this in the next few days, and (27/2/2007 - Michael Feldstein now links to and comments on the Patent Office's published determination, which you can also access directly as a 1 MB ~ 40 page PDF), but from a common sense point of view