My New favorite Internet Comedians: Rhett and Link

Ok, so this isn't very edu-tech heavy, but I have enjoyed their goofy music videos I just had to post a couple.

Blackboard this is ANGEL, ANGEL this is Blackboard

My world just got rocked!

I just found out that Blackboard will be acquiring ANGEL. If you have no idea what I am talking about- then you probably do not work in the education technology industry. Blackboard is the "Microsoft" of learning management systems (LMS). ANGEL is the "Apple" of LMS's. A learning management system makes it easy for faculty to create online learning experiences for their learners with tools such as discussion boards, live chats, document sharing, assessments, surveys and online grade-books.

A few years ago Westminster was a user of WebCT which was at the time only slightly smaller in market share than Blackboard. Blackboard purchased WebCT- thus becoming the largest LMS provider by a long shot. There were only a few small companies- that basically had to compete with Blackboard.

You would think these other small companies wouldn't stand a chance. We began to shop around and came across ANGEL and were blown away by the simplicity of their system, their customer service and their vision for where on-line-learning was heading. There were two factors that were very important to us:

1-Modern. ANGEL doesn't look like it was built in some dude's basement in 1997. Because of it being built with better technology it has stayed current better than WebCT/Blackboard.

2- Flexibility. ANGEL only had a small handful of clients. We liked that because we were a small school but got treated like we were a big school. We could make product recommendations and they actually listened to us. What made it even better was they could actually change their product every year and make it better. WebCT rarely made big changes that improved the product because there were too many big schools who couldn't deal with big changes every year.

It was an easy choice to drop WebCT/Blackboard and move to ANGEL- and although our transition wasn't perfect- it was surprisingly smooth. ANGEL is sooooo much easier for faculty to understand and use. I have been proud that I played a big role in moving Westminster to ANGEL.

I'm not sure how to react to the news of the merger- but I am certainly shocked. I feel like I did when Blackboard bought WebCT- "oh no- how can I get out of this?!?" My guess is that there is going to be at least 1-2 years before anything drastic happens with our version of ANGEL, but I would anticipate higher prices, a name change, and being asked lots of questions that I don't know the answer to yet.

It is clear to me that it is time to start looking at new solutions for LMS's- there are so many tools that do similar things but are much less expensive, more flexible, and easier to use. For example, I've found it very easy to do many of the same curriculum type things using a free wiki tool such as http://wik.is. Why pay for an LMS when a wiki does many of the same things, but better? If you are looking for an online gradebook/assessment tool- why not use a tool like Foliotek (http://foliotek.com). In fact- there are even some great open source LMS's available such as Moodle and Sakai.

Interesting enough- yesterday I already started my investigation into Moodle. I also signed up for a webinar from Blackboard on what they plan to do to support smaller institutions better.

I look forward to finding out more details and geek-ing out even more over the changes that are going to come.