GoingOn Social Media Platform is the Love Child of Blackboard + Facebook

The online education platform built by GoingOn, my old software company, gets a review from UPenn's student newspaper:

Open Learning Commons combines elements of Blackboard and Facebook

The love child of Blackboard and Facebook has a name - the Open Learning Commons.

The new platform prototype, launched by the College of Liberal and Professional Studies, allows interested people within and outside the Penn community to participate in classroom activities from the Web.

The first class covers global environmental sustainability and combines coursework with social networking.

Led by Political Science professor Donald Kettl, the course involves not only 14 Penn students, but also international university students and anyone interested in "a flavor of what's going on at Penn in the classroom," program developers Lisa Minetti and Jennifer Maden said.

"The students are doing a real-world, real-time project, focused on framing an American approach to the next round of climate change policy," Kettl wrote in an e-mail.

Marni Baker, the program director, originally conceived the idea after fruitlessly searching for an ideal platform to combine "private interactions with the students" with YouTube lectures, discussion forums and a blog, all open to "wider audiences."... (full article)

You can visit the Global Environmental Sustainability Collaborative site here.

"Love child of Blackboard + Facebook" is a good description for this vertical Dave, Jon and team are working hard at leading.

VIRGINIA TECH MASS MURDER... SEUNG-HUI CHO NAMED GUNMAN

Horrible story that is all over the press yesterday and today. May God be with the families and friends of the 30 people that were murdered and others affect by this disturbing act of violence.

CNN has more, "Police: Virginia Tech shooter an English major, 23"

Chicago Tribune has more information here and some insight into this disturbed person.

I will say it's weird that the authorities and most of the press were emphasizing that he was South Korean. They were also using the Korean format of placing his last name first. It's weird because he immigrated here 15 years ago, so I assume he would have considered himself American. Are they trying to place some distance between this act and their school or township? I guess it's understandable given the terrible actions by Cho.

CNET has an article on the impact of the blogosphere, "Journalists look to bloggers for Virginia Tech story"

UPDATE: ABC News, "Killer's Note: 'You Caused Me to Do This'"

UPDATE II: The Smoking Gun, "Virginia Killer's Violent Writings"
AND BBC NEWS, "University 'warned about gunman'"

virginia tech, cho seung-hui, massacre