Blackboard Inc. today updated its plan for supporting clients using the ANGEL learning management platform, extending support for the platform beyond its previously scheduled end date in 2014.

Blackboard Inc. today announced the launch of Blackboard Education Open Source Services, a new effort to support clients using open source education technologies. With the announcement, the company will continue to focus on its flagship Blackboard Learn ™ platform as well as ANGEL and Edline, while also helping institutions successfully manage open source learning management systems (LMS) including Moodle and Sakai.

Blackboard Inc. today announced the appointment of Charles Severance, a longtime leader and one of the founders of the Sakai community, to a senior role to lead the company’s initiative on the Sakai open source learning management system (LMS).

By Dian Schaffhauser 10/05/11 A day after its acquisition of Blackboard was completed, Providence Equity Partners has begun leveraging its multiple investments in education technology. Two of its companies–Blackboard and Edline–have announced an immediate merging. Edline will become another division in Blackboard’s portfolio. Both companies sell learning management and mass notification products to the K-12 [...]

Like Edline, Blackboard can also be used by parents to keep track of what’s going on in the school and the classroom. Depending on how well teachers embrace the technology, Blackboard and Edline can do a lot more than help parents keep track of whether their kids are turning in homework.

Multiple zero-day security vulnerabilities have been found in the world’s most popular educational software – holes that allow students to change grades and download unpublished exams, whilst allowing criminals to steal personal information. Vulnerabilities in the Blackboard Learn platform have the potential to affect millions of school and university students and thousands of institutions around the world.

Blackboard is expected to be merged with Edline LLC, another educational software firm. Providence purchased Edline in 2009.
Standard & Poor’s cut its corporate credit rating on Blackboard, to B+ from BB-, after the acquisition was announced.

Reactions about the Blackboard acquisition from students and recent graduates at the Gilfus Education Group’s Education Research Center at George Mason University were mostly positive. Lauren Heimburg, a recent graduate with bachelor’s degrees in both mathematics and psychology from the University of Virginia provided the following insights: “I think Blackboard’s acquisition will cause UVA to intensify its focus on online learning initiatives in order to remain competitive in coming years. Enterprise Education Platforms can improve colleges and universities by enabling them to provide more efficient systems and facilities to their students and faculty and by simplifying their internal operations.”

Blackboard Inc. (BBBB), a maker of online educational courseware, may lure buyout offers of as much as $65 a share from strategic bidders seeking to expand in Internet publishing, analysts at Stifel Nicolas said in a report today. Education publishers News Corp. (NWSA), Pearson Plc (PSON) and McGraw- Hill Cos. may consider making offers for [...]

The developer of Canvas, a cloud-based learning management system used by more than 30 educational institutions as an alternative to Blackboard, has raised a second round of funding from OpenView Venture Partners, EPIC Ventures, TomorrowVentures and Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, peHUB reports. Infrastructure was founded in 2008 at Brigham Young University. Instructure makes [...]

Blackboard (NASDAQ: BBBB) today announced that it has retained Barclays Capital as its financial advisor in response to receiving unsolicited, non-binding proposals to acquire the company.

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