{"id":287,"date":"2010-07-08T14:15:23","date_gmt":"2010-07-08T14:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/copyright.lboro.ac.uk\/elearning\/?p=287"},"modified":"2014-11-19T16:26:15","modified_gmt":"2014-11-19T16:26:15","slug":"breaking-news-elluminate-wimba-and-blackboard-join-forces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/2010\/07\/08\/breaking-news-elluminate-wimba-and-blackboard-join-forces\/","title":{"rendered":"BREAKING NEWS: Elluminate, Wimba, and Blackboard join forces"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Logo<\/a>Received the following e-newsletter last night from Elluminate:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today, we\u2019ve announced that Elluminate, Wimba, and Blackboard will join forces to bring together the leading technology products for synchronous learning and collaboration \u2013 and the minds that created them \u2013 in what we hope will be a major step forward to pursue new innovation. \u00a0<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve heard directly from you, our clients, that these products are rapidly growing in importance as formal and informal collaboration \u2013 in a variety of settings within and beyond the delivery of online courses \u2013 becomes increasingly fundamental to the learning process.\u00a0 But you\u2019ve also told us much more is needed to realize the full potential of these solutions for impacting education. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Our combination is a union of like-minded, education-focused organizations to invest in and pursue this greater potential.\u00a0 Working together to form a new and independent Blackboard Collaborate platform group, we believe we can accelerate innovation in technology for collaboration within and across educational institutions, as well as add great value to the interactions between these systems and asynchronous learning platforms.\u00a0 And we can do so at a rate faster, and to an end much more impactful for educators, than any of our organizations could have achieved alone.\u00a0 The new platform group will operate under the strategic guidance of Ray Henderson, who oversees Blackboard’s overall teaching and learning strategy, and will be led by Elluminate’s Maurice Heiblum, who will assume the role of President, Blackboard Collaborate.<\/p>\n

As excited as we are about the longer term promise of working together in this way, we realize that as clients of Elluminate and Wimba you will naturally be concerned about the short-term impacts of this news.\u00a0 Our pledge to you is to make our first focus sustaining the positive experience that both of these communities currently enjoy.\u00a0 Further, we will also sustain the goal of improving collaboration broadly, rather than exclusively, for those using Blackboard learning management products.\u00a0 In that regard, we will continue current Elluminate and Wimba integration work for open source products, and it is our strategy to sustain those bridges with other commercial LMS providers as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once we\u2019ve ensured that a smooth transition is underway, we\u2019ll begin the work of shaping a combined vision for Collaborate by working in combination with members of both client communities.\u00a0 In the meantime, we\u2019re actively seeking to learn about specific questions or concerns you may have and hear any early ideas for how we can improve your current experience with our products or better integrate them with whatever learning management technology your institution prefers. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Please feel free to channel your thoughts directly to our executive team at <\/em>collaborateleadership@blackboard.com<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 We\u2019ve also established an information resource with anticipated <\/em>FAQs<\/em><\/a> that we\u2019ll update with your input.\u00a0 We\u2019re very optimistic about the benefit that our collective investment in, and passion for, education collaboration can produce for clients.\u00a0 We\u2019re looking forward to digging in together.<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, that came as a bombshell, just a few weeks after we went ahead with purchasing an Elluminate licence! Still, if we take the press release at face value, the announcement won’t change too much over the next year. Ultimately, though, as we’ve already seen with Blackboard’s takeover of WebCT, the merged company will have to choose between web conferencing platforms. And will Bb *really* want to continue supporting Moodle integration…?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Received the following e-newsletter last night from Elluminate:\u00a0 Today, we\u2019ve announced that Elluminate, Wimba, and Blackboard will join forces to bring together the leading technology products for synchronous learning and collaboration \u2013 and the minds that created them \u2013 in what we hope will be a major step forward to pursue new innovation. \u00a0 We\u2019veRead more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-webconferencing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3022,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions\/3022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/teaching-learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}