Blackboard officially launched EduGarage on October 23rd. This is a site that brings together all the developers working on Powerlinks for the assorted Blackboard products. It’s set up as a wiki, with forums etc.
What I find particularly interesting is that they’ve announced it on the Blackboard blog, which is rather more feature rich (essentially a “bog standard blog”) than the blogging tool built into WebCT Vista. I’ve not seen Blackboard’s blogging tool, but from what I’ve read, it’s pretty much like WebCT’s. In the Web2.0 category there are a number of useful tools, such as Scholar – a social bookmarking tool, the work that is being done to link Blackboard with SecondLife and other Virtual worlds, and a few other ideas.
It looks like Blackboard are starting to realise that a closed monolith isn’t the way that the education world wants to work any more. I hope that they are going to really make good use of the ideas, not a “sort of” one that really isn’t what can be done with other tools. (At present, the blogging tool in WebCT Vista is a “sort of”)
Via: Stephen Downes