Subject: LearnCentral Important Announcement
Following the
acquisition of Elluminate and Wimba by Blackboard we have been working
hard to meet our commitments to our combined user communities including
exceptional customer service, a unified team, and a collective product
roadmap. In July, we were excited to deliver to you Blackboard
Collaborate 11, a product that inherited the best from both the
Elluminate and Wimba platforms but which was simpler, easier to use and
truly designed by the educators that use it.
Over the past
year, we have also looked closely at our community networking project,
LearnCentral, and have decided to close LearnCentral on December 31,
2011.
While LearnCentral
held much promise as a general social networking platform for
educators, we recognize that it never became the preferred destination
for educators, and we don't believe that continued development would
provide significant benefits that aren't available to educators through
other services. In addition, we have learned from our clients that they
prefer us to focus on the web conferencing, instant messaging, and voice
authoring products which are our core capability.
We are making this
announcement at this time to make sure that those of you using
LearnCentral have ample time to make plans for using another service, a
number of which are listed below and that also offer features similar to
LearnCentral. These are free, established social networking projects,
and should serve you well.
If you are sharing or delivering instructional content, please take a look at the Blackboard CourseSites platform,
where you can create interactive websites to support learning and
collaboration. While typically geared toward delivering instruction, it
can also be used to share, discuss and develop curriculum and teaching
best practices. In addition, CourseSites offers access to a 50-seat
Collaborate room.
We know there are
likely to be questions about the transition, some of which are answered
below. We have also opened up a discussion thread at http://www.learncentral.org/forums/site-announcements/learncentral-sunset-discussion for you to ask about anything that is not covered here.
vRooms: The
free, 3-person vRoom program will continue, but with a modified entry
point. Your existing vRooms will be available until December 31, 2011.
Before that date we will send an email to all LearnCentral users with
specific information on how to sign up for a new vRoom through the main Blackboard Collaborate site.
Elluminate or Blackboard Collaborate Recordings: All
recordings that you may have added as resource links in LearnCentral
will continue to be available, however, the links to access them will
change. The recording links on LearnCentral actually point to the native
recording files stored elsewhere. If you launch a recording, you’ll
notice the true URL in the browser address bar which starts with https://sas.elluminate.com/ - After, 12/31/2011, you will need to access these recordings with the https://sas.elluminate.com/ links, so please ensure you separately save the URLs for those recordings if you have not already done so.
Uploaded Content: All
uploaded content in LearnCentral portfolios will be unavailable after
December 31st. Please make sure that you download any content in your
portfolios that is important to you.
Host-Your-Own-Webinar Program: The
host-your-own-webinar program will be discontinued. Any
already-scheduled events can be held up until December 31, 2011, but the
regular weekly email promotion will stop this week. If you’d like
continued access to recordings of past events, please follow the process
listed in the “Elluminate Recordings” section above. Again, we
recommend looking at CourseSites as a free alternative that may serve as
a replacement for users of this program by using the free 50-seat
Collaborate room in CourseSites.
We want to thank
you for choosing to be a valued member of the LearnCentral public
community for educators. We hope you've been able to connect with your
colleagues and make new ones, to share and discover valuable relevant
resources, and to participate in online discussions and live
webinars. We have enjoyed working alongside you for the past three
years, and we appreciate all that you have done to support education.
Sincerely,
Maurice Heiblum
President
Blackboard Collaborate
