Blackboard’s patent on learning management system technologies has been overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The court ruled Monday in favor of Desire2Learn and invalidated some claims in patent No. 6,988,138, also known as the “Alcorn patent” or the “138 patent.”

[...] Blackboard made concessions to the open source community, releasing a legally binding pledge that it would never assert its patent claims against an open source developer, among other things. The pledge fell short of the SFLC’s demand for Blackboard to renounce the patent, however, and the move was greeted with a mixture of relief and continued outrage at Blackboard’s unwillingness to drop its suit against Desire2learn and unwillingness to renounce the patent claims.

Glad to see that an appellate court overturned Blackboard’s patent of Learning Management Systems. It will be interesting to see how Blackboard’s patent for “technology used for Internet-based education support systems and methods” is finally resolved.

Read the full Campus Technology article by David Nagel

I made a note about Omeka and other tools from the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University in February of this year and ran into it again while reading an article by Penelope Coutas on using the iPhone as Method/s.  I posted her interesting use of new technology for ethnographic fieldwork on my Research Methods in Expressive Culture Course Blog. Her post prompted me to review Omeka in more depth. I plan on installing it in the near future on my own space and giving it a go.  I’ll let you know what comes of it.

For now,  I am providing an excerpt from the Omeka website.

What is it?

Omeka is a free and open source collections based web-based publishing platform for scholars, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, and educators.  It brings Web 2.0 technologies and approaches to academic and cultural websites to foster user interaction and participation.

How would you use it?

Scholars:

• Use Omeka to publish an essay or digital dissertation, share primary source collections, and collaborate with others in the creation of digital scholarship.
• Features you might like: design themes, exhibit builder, tagging, dropbox plugin, iPaper plugin, geolocation plugin.
• Examples: Digital Worcester, Euclid Cooridor, Experiencing Medieval Places

Museum Professionals:

• Use Omeka to share collections and build online exhibits with objects you cannot display in the museum. Invite your visitors to tag and mark items as favorites, or to contribute content. Start a blog to publish museum news and podcasts.
• Features you might like: Dublin Core metadata standards, W3C and 508 compliant, design themes, exhibit builder plugin, MyOmeka plugin, contribution plugin, dropbox, data migration tools (coming soon).
• Examples: Object of History, Catawba River Docs, Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives

Librarians:

• Use Omeka as the publishing tool to complement your online catalog or launch a digital exhibit.
• Features you might like: Dublin Core metadata standards, W3C and 508 compliant, extensible and customizable item fields, RSS/Atom syndication, MyOmeka plugin, data migration tools (coming soon).
• Examples: Photographs by Homer L. Shantz, Eminent Domain, Upper Ringwood Library Collection.

Archivists:

• Use Omeka to share your collections, display documents and oral histories, or create digital archives with user-generated content.
• Features you might like: Dublin Core metadata standards, W3C and 508 compliant, exhibit builder plugin, extensible and customizable item fields, iPaper plugin, tagging, data migration tools (coming soon).
• Examples: Bracero History Archive, Hurricane Digital Memory Bank

Educators:

• Use Omeka to build inquiry-based tasks for students, to create lesson plans with accompanying primary sources, or build learning modules with your team.
• Features you might like: design themes, exhibit builder, MyOmeka plugin, blogging plugin, iPaper plugin, tagging.
• Examples: Laurel Grove School Teachers Workshop, Making the History of 1989.

Enthusiasts:

• Use Omeka to share you personal research or collections with the world, build exhibits and write essays that showcase your expertise.
• Features you might like: design themes, exhibit builder, contribution plugin, live directory (coming soon), blogging, tagging.

Wal-Mart’s $200 PC – sold out by ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes — About two weeks ago, Wal-Mart began selling $200 Linux-based PC. The initial run was around 10,000 units. Now Wal-Mart is sold out. Has Linux now found a niche?

If Wal-Mart’s recently released $200 PC sounds like a potentially great deal but you’re not sure about ditching your current operating system for the inexpensive, Linux-based Ubuntu box, head over to the developer’s web site and download the bootable gOS LiveCD (or rather DVD, at 728MB). The gOS operating system sports an emphasis on web applications, with desktop shortcuts to tons of Google Apps, Facebook, Wikipedia, and other webapps built directly into the desktop.

To download gOS and burn it to CD visit: http://www.thinkgos.com/downloads.html

Trying to make sense of all the new tools available to use in the classroom? Do all the new Web 2.0 applications sound like a foreign language?

The Learning Toolbox categories the TOP 100 TOOLS FOR LEARNING (selected by 109 LEARNING PROFESSIONALS) by type of tool The Learning Toolbox consists of two parts:

1 – Personal Tools: tools to access and view content as well as communicate with
others (for your own personal learning/working)

2 – Producer Tools: tools to develop and deliver content and other learning solutions (for yourself and others)

The Recommendations are the highest ranked tools in The Top 100 Tools list in each category. Other suggestions are other tools that appear in the Top 100 Tools and Extra 50 Tools list in the same category.

See also

• REVIEWS of Top 10/100
  Tools activity
• ANALYSIS OF TOP 100
  TOOLS LIST – our preliminary analysis of the list
• SUMMARY INFORMATION AS
  A FREE PDF - your own personal copy
• 10 MOST VISITED TOOLS PAGES
  - what tools are people finding interesting

The Learning Toolbox

Aug 22. 2007 |plusmo.com
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OpenProj is a free, open source project management solution and is intended as a complete replacement of Microsoft Project and other commercial project solutions. Unlike Project, it’s compatible with Linux and Mac OS X as well as Windows so it may prove attractive to users of those platforms.

OpenProj is ideal for desktop project management and is available on Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows even opening existing Microsoft or Primavera files. OpenProj an advanced scheduling engine with Project-ON-Demand and has Gantt Charts, Network Diagrams (PERT Charts), WBS and RBS charts, Earned Value costing and more.

A free download of OpenProj is available at: http://openproj.org/?q=node/21

OpenPlanning Lite can be download for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows and can also be used via a web browser. It’s the free version of their business solution OpenPlanning and ProPlanning, which come with a rangle of individual and workgroup licenseing bundles, and you can upgrade to these at any time.

OpenPlanning Lite consists of…

• A basic project management client application (projects are limited to 20 tasks).
• A public online repository to exchange plan expertise with professional peers.
• Community support through the online forum.

OpenPlanning Lite projects are accessible on all platforms (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux) and may also be read by ProPlanning.

There’s a fairly large number of public project plans and templates available for you to use. e.g. building a house, software development, moving house or starting a new business. Of course, if you create a really useful project, then you can post it up for use by the rest of the community.

A free download of OpenPlanning Lite is available at: http://www.sharedplan.com/openplanninglite.html