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Public Trash Bin - <font color=red>Posts that have no use or purpose are here, particularly questions regarding 7.7-7.9, we have enough notices stating it's not supported so now they'll just get dumped here.</font>
Nuke Central, Prior Art and the Blackboard VLE patent
I am not sure where to ask this question. Is there any such thing as a central PHPNuke forum, or are there only regional communities? I suppose that the PHPNuke community may be so large that it has had to become distributed.
My question is at the bottom of this post
Preamble
In the year 2000 the educational software producer, Blackboard, copyrighted the concept of Virtual Learning Envornments (VLE) in education.
What is a VLE?
I am no expert, but perusing the patent, and from my understanding of the concept of a VLE it is almost indistuingishable from a CMS. Other names of similar concepts/products are Learning Management System (putting the emphasis on the managers), and Learning Content Managment System. As far as I am aware, all these concepts products are basically the same as that to which PHPNuke belongs: Content Management System, except that they are specifically geared towards learners and educators.
VLE "Prior Art"
Putting aside the issue as to wether software patents are a good idea or not, it seems to me that people had been using CMS's to create online education systems well before the year 2000. There is a wikipedia page here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virtual_learning_environments
On the subject of the history of VLE's. That may be sufficient to show that there is prior art.
My question:
In an attempt to uncover further and undeniable examples of prior art, I would like to hear from the PHPNuke community about the use of PHPNuke (one of the most successful and longstanding of CMS) in educational environments. So I would like to ask PHPNuke community members if they would be so kind as to share any referenced examples of the use of PHPNuke for creating course homepages, prior to the year 2000.
