Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Blackboard and MERLOT Broaden Learning Network

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community
MERLOT is at it again, this time signing a deal with Blackboard. The good bit is this: "The first Blackboard Building Block to be released will be a portal module that uses RSS content syndication to aggregate news about and links to the learning resources most recently added to MERLOT." The less good (but not surprising) bit is this: "MERLOT will develop a Blackboard taxonomy within the MERLOT learning directory, making it easier for MERLOT users to identify Blackboard-specific training materials." Didn't we learn during the browser wars that vendor specific tags are a bad idea? Still, overall, what I am really liking is this bit: "Blackboard's announcement of a Learning Object Catalog feature recently made available in the Blackboard Content System(TM) (Release 2.0)." Now if someone from Blackboard could tell me that this is an open specification that can be used by other products or services, I'd be elated. While digging around Google looking for this item, I also found coverage of the release of the Blackboard enterprise repository system in late August. Of course, all this was covered in the Edu_RSS listings for Blackboard so if you were watching this page (or subscribed to the RSS feed) you would have known it even sooner.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Dec 22, 2024 07:33 a.m.

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