1/22/10

NOTE:
This will be my new virtual home. Why?

1. For those familiar with technology and blogging, you have been shaking your head at me for far too long -- and I don't blame you.
   You know that (in addition to numerous other reasons), using something like WordPress to set up and run a blog is much more time efficient than running a website such as this one. With more things continually trying to make their way onto my job/time plate, I need -- no scratch that -- I have to do this.
   
   
2. RSS feeds are not supported on Calvin's personal websites. I have appreciated your patience in continually having to return/check-in here on this site, but it's time to move on to a better way of doing things.
   
   

I will keep this site up for reference sake -- as I've worked hard to obtain the information on the various topics located herein. Thankfully, some of this site has been helpful to other people.

Archives of my postings related to CMS's/LMS's are listed below.
For up-to-date postings, I'll see you over at my new "Learning Ecosystems" blog!

1/21/10

Oakland Univ. and the benefits of moving to Moodle -- from moodlemonthly.com
Recently posted at the Center for Technology – Enhanced Learning blog of the University of Southern Maine is a link to a great presentation by Nic Bongers and Shaun Moore, staff at Oakland University in Michigan. The presentation covers the “Benefits of Moving to Moodle” as OU learned from experience–transitioning from WebCT to Moodle–recently.

1/20/10

iMoot 2010 – it’s global! -- from synergy-learning.com
The world’s first iMoot runs from Thursday 4th to Sunday 7th February and it’s going to be global!  Operating 24 hours a day, iMoot will be run as an online e-conference bringing together Moodle practitioners and administrators from across the world.

-- my thanks to Caleb Kuntz (T&L Digital Studio)
for this resource

1/19/10

Integrating Microsoft with Moodle -- from news.zdnet.co.uk
The software maker is building bridges between its products and the open-source e-learning platform, according to Microsoft's Ray Fleming

First look at Moodle 2.0: html editor -- from Moodle Monthly

-- my thanks to Caleb Kuntz, T&L Digital Studio for this resource

-- my thanks to Jessica Overbeeke,
T&L Digital Studio for this resource

1/18/10

1/16/10

My "Moodle!" Bundle -- from The Global Classroom blog

1/15/10

Moodle Q’s? -- by joel.kerr

Yesterday was my first experience of BETT 2010.  Whao! Education has come a long way. There were a number of Moodle questions from interested eLearners that I want to tackle in upcoming posts.  In the meantime if there is a Moodle question that has been troubling you please leave a comment on this post or email me at joel.kerr@synergy-learning.com.

Also, I was impressed by all the enthusiasm Moodle inspired.  People were just stopping by to say how much they loved Moodle!  If you love Moodle please leave your comments or email me, it would be great to hear your opinions.

Welcome to e-Socrates.org, the free Moodle hosting with ethic in mind.

What does e-Socrates.org do? e-Socrates.org aims to create the best free Moodle hosting service for everyone who wants to do e-learning activities. If you want to create a course, login or create a new account and fill a course request, you'll have the full moodle power in your hands, without restrictions of any kind! You'll also be able track your students subscriptions setting a password for the course enrolment.

And what about ethics? This is THE question, as you may know we strongly believe that knowledge is a whole humanity's heritage (that's why we created the e-Socrates.org community). When you create a course within e-Socrates you always allow website visitors the right to read your contents, you can prevent them from subscribing as students but you can't prevent them from accessing the material. This is the only "fee" we ask teachers in change of the free hosting service.

1/14/10

Themes for Moodle

NOTE:
The cornerstone of Moodle themes is the 'Standard' theme. Every other theme (should) simply describe the differences from the Standard theme. This makes theme development relatively simple as you only have to identify the elements of the Standard theme that you wish to change. Often there are very few.

Find, Change, and Install New Moodle Themes -- by Dave Mozealous

 

Kineo showcases e-learning and Moodle at Learning Technologies

Kineo is proud to be sponsoring the 2010 Learning Technologies event to be held on 27-28 January at London Olympia 2. Kineo will also be unveiling the latest developments in bespoke e-learning design and its Enterprise Moodle LMS solution.

Learning Technologies 2010 is the premier UK event for everyone involved in e-learning and blended learning. Kineo will be running a series of seminars specifically to showcase:

• The latest in award winning e-learning design with examples from Nikon, HSBC and many others.
  
• Kineo's Enterprise Moodle LMS solution which includes new Moodle modules from 360 degree appraisals to classroom management and user reporting.

Kineo Partner Steve Rayson commented: "We are very pleased to sponsor Learning Technologies this year. The show and the exhibition is without question the leading e-learning event of the year. It is a great opportunity for anyone interested in e-learning and blended learning to see the latest developments and it is also a great place to see real case studies of e-learning practice."

"Kineo will once again be on stand 64 but with a new and bigger stand so that we can run a series of presentations throughout the event to showcase our bespoke e-learning, our rapid e-learning approaches with tools like Articulate and our latest Moodle LMS developments. We are really looking forward to meeting new and existing clients at the event."

 

Moodle themes from Synergy Learning

 

 

1/11/10

The Blackboard Learn Toolbar -- by John Fontaine
A recent report of the top searches in many parts of the country showed that many students get to their local Blackboard system server by typing the name into their favorite search engine rather than typing in the URL. This got me thinking about how we can make the web browser and search experience more optimal for users.

Announcing the Blackboard Learn Toolbar for Internet Explorer® and Firefox® on Windows® -- from Blackboard
Get notifications directly from your Blackboard Learn system with an easy-to-use browser toolbar. You’ll receive regular updates of new content items, grades, discussions and announcements. And you’ll save time and energy with an automatically generated set of links that give you one-click access to all of your courses.

Attend a Moodle Moot…. Online!
Just a quick reminder to register for iMoot 2010! What’s iMoot 2010, you ask? iMoot2010 is the first time the Moot has been brought together on a gobal scale. In the past localised Moots have been held all around the world with brilliant speakers from each region. iMoot will bring them together for the first time in one event for an online e-conference with a difference.

1/7/10

1/5/10

The Decade Ahead in Higher EdTech -- by Mark Smithers
Having said all that I think we are likely to see the rise of a simple, free, open global LMS that will mashup open education resources, social learning and real time and asynchronous discussions [emphasis DSC] between 2012 and 2015. Think of it as an open, searchable combination of user contributed content and social networking, using Twitter, Facebook and open educational resources.

Moodle 4 Teachers -- from Integrating Technology

12/31/09

Examples of Good Practice Courses using Moodle -- from moodlegoodpractice.wikispaces.com

2009 - Moodling the Nation -- from Mark Drechsler’s Blog

Open for Learning: The CMS and the Open Learning Network -- from ineducation.ca by Jon Mott and David Wiley
Abstract: The course management system (CMS) reinforces the status quo and hinders substantial teaching and learning innovation in higher education. It does so by imposing artificial time limits on learner access to course content and other learners, privileging the role of the instructor at the expense of the learner, and limiting the power of the network effect in the learning process. The open learning network (OLN)—a hybrid of the CMS and the personal learning environment (PLE)—is proposed as an alternative learning technology environment with the potential to leverage the affordances of the Web to dramatically improve learning.

Why reinvent the wheel? -- from Moodle Girl's Blog -- which links to Moodle Monthly

Items concerning Moodle from Miguel Guhlin:

• Moodle Pedagogy, at Online Educa 2009 – from Martin Dougiamas, Moodle Founder and Lead Developer
• Moodle Good Practice WIki
  
• Moodle To The Rescue
• Moodle Add On - Progress Report
• DiigoNotes - Moodle and Course Management Systems

12/28/09

Support for External Blogs in Moodle 2.0 -- from TechTicker.com

12/22/09

Schools and Universities Usine Second Life, Virtual Reality, and/or Sloodle (A Combination of Second Life and Moodle) -- from E-learning Practice and Research

Tip: Allow HTML Tags in Activity and Resource Names -- from moodlerific.org
Our district just upgraded from Moodle version 1.9.1 to version 1.9.7. One of the many changes I was excited about was the option to use HTML tags in activity and resource names. This means you can bold, make fonts bigger or change the color of fields that do not have the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor.

12/21/09

Moodle Wikis - as document lockers -- from Moodle Girl's Blog
I came across this excellent jing video which explains how to use a Moodle Wiki activity as a means of students uploading documents/file repository. It is well worth watching! Yes there are many ways you can set up a file repository system on Moodle but I particularly liked this method. I believe the video was created by Digidoug whom I have since located on twitter. So if you enjoy his video you may want to go follow him and thank him for such a neat idea and well presented how-to vidcast.

Vancouver Community College’s online moves -- from Tony Bates, on December 18th, 2009
Robin Popow wrote this report for the BC Educational Technology Users Group:
Vancouver Community College has entered what appears to be its next phase of life with regards to educational technology. Over the past four years, we have gone from less than a dozen programs utilizing online environments to a robust Moodle environment in use by over 300 faculty members. Phase two comes as many using Moodle over the past few years become more comfortable with the environment and the constructivist paradigm shift it quietly encourages. In a general way, we have reached the E in the ADDIE model and the Centre for Instructional Development (CID) has been actively evaluating offerings on a voluntary basis based on established best practices and evaluation criteria. A focus now is on the redevelopment of courses at a program level with many areas collaborating to create a layout to offer their common students consistency across courses. These templates have been well received by faculty and students.

12/18/09

Revisiting Moodle -- from Susan Smith Nash

It is often difficult for learning management systems to keep up with social networking and collaborative technologies. Their architectures are a bit clunky, and even when they allow embedded html to link into social networking, it's often difficult to incorporate them in an outcomes-based way. Further, they are not dynamic and it is difficult to integrate mobile activities and devices.

In these cases, Moodle, as an open-source solution, is often overlooked. The basic structure and philosophy of Moodle are simple: object-oriented, with a focus on reusability of components, and a very transparent structure that rests on a foundation of forums, which makes it very friendly to interaction and collaboration. Further, the flexibility of Moodle makes it ideal for programs ranging from certificate programs to graduate programs such as an online MBA program.

Ideal for Small and Evolving Programs
Moodle is instantly appealing to fledgling programs. After all, the price is right. It's free. Granted, nothing is really free, and the trade-off with opensource is the fact that it's necessary to do the IT work oneself. There are hosting solutions such as MoodleRooms, which are affordable for the individual instructor or small institution.

Moodle does not look much like other learning management solutions such as Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Angel, or the old WebCT. If anything, it reminds one of an expanded discussion board, with customizable add-ons. Student information systems can integrate fairly easily, which makes a "soft launch" or pilot program a viable option. This kind of approach is effective for graduate programs, professional programs, as well as independent study and professional development. One is limited only by the limits of one's imagination.

Moodle's emphasis on reusable content objects makes it fairly easy to make changes to individual courses and to an entire curriculum. It's also fairly easy to save objects in repositories that can be shared by other instructors and the instructional design / technology support. Moodle lends itself to convenient, enterprise-wide content management.

The fact that Moodle allows faculty and the institution to be responsive to evolving student and organizational needs, and educational objectives is a core benefit. For example, if the school wants to be able to tweet students in the event of an emergency, Moodle is much more effective than using email to do so. One can embed applications and integrate them in order to enhance functionality.

Emphasis on Interactivity
With the forum structure as its foundation, Moodle's core architecture rests on interactivity. However, Moodle's capability extends much further than simple posting to a discussion board. Students and instructors can post photos, videos, audio. In addition, they can embed an integrated application which allows content sharing as well as collaboration.

The fact that the forum is so interactive is engaging. Students like to see if their posts have provoked a response. They also like to comment on each other's posts, and to respond in kind. Relevant, engaged interaction is motivating, and one can guide the interaction toward achieving outcomes. Continue reading here...

12/17/09

Moodle Books & Screen Capturing -- from Moodle Girl's Blog

12/16/09

A disjointed series of thoughts -- from techticker.net by Mike Bogle

Not simply to help mentally reconcile and negate some of my current involvement with far more centralised and closed proprietary monlithic systems, but more importantly as an ideal and model for the way learning really should be in practice: learner-centred, learner-directed, adaptable, customisable, personalisable, and open [emphasis DSC].

“Open” in the sense of transparency and elimination of barriers to communication and participation, where reflection and interaction, sharing and discussion are not limited to a certain context – be this within the university or beyond it – but anywhere and everywhere learning or discursive opportunities exist online, and with any individual who might join the conversation.  Drawing upon a scholarly frame of mind, but also one that considers and incorporates real life, real experiences and ideas, and is capable of extending beyond the confines and short-term boundaries of a stay in formal education.

Learning Management Systems
Learning management systems don’t facilitate this sort of flexibility. Period. At all.  They splinter, and filter and externally structure; they manage, and control, and dictate.  They establish arbitrary lines between one subject and the next, between one course and the next, and prevent any real sense of continuity from taking place.

From DSC:
Though this is a bit more harshly put than I would put it, Mike brings up some valid points about how learning should ideally be practiced.

12/14/09

Related posting:
Introducing the SCORM Cloud -- from B.J. Schone
How to describe the SCORM Cloud…
If you didn’t have to use an LMS to offer learning content, where would you want to do it? A Facebook page? Your WordPress blog? Via an iGoogle widget? Maybe, but you’d lose the ability to track and record and assess, right? Enter SCORM Cloud, which lets you take learning outside the LMS and put it pretty much anywhere you want.

How does that happen? Essentially, your course content sits out on the cloud (much like your Google Docs or your Flickr pictures), and SCORM Cloud lets you deliver it wherever you want. SCORM Cloud tracks and records the same things SCORM 2004 (or 1.2 or AICC) would in your LMS and reports them back. So you can score quizzes, track interactions or set sequencing for any content you upload to the SCORM Cloud. No LMS required.

Moodle in the Cloud -- from elblog by James Ballard

Will Learning Adopt the Linux Model for Development in the Future? -- from the Upside Learning blog

I came across this really interesting interview with Greg Kroah-Hartman – Linux Kernel Dev/Maintainer. In this interview, Greg talks about how the Linux project has accommodated the accelerating rate of change for the kernel. It was very interesting to draw parallels between some of what he says and learning.

“And then I send stuff off to Linus. So, Linus trusts 10 to 15 people, and I trust 10 to 15 people. And I’m one of the subsystem maintainers. So, it’s a big, giant web of trust helping this go on.”

Web of Trust’ Networks of trust are becoming very important to the way we create products/services where each individual on the network is a potential contributor. There are just such networks in the enterprise as well, and they play a big role in how tacit knowledge is transferred in the organization. Increasingly, social networking tools are available within the organization and analyzing these networks gives a good idea who the knowledge leaders in an organization are, and which individuals form their network. The ability to target and influence knowledge leaders will lead to similar effects on their networks as well.

Will Moodle evolve into this system or will another ecosystem similar to the Linux model emerge in the learning space?

12/11/09

What is the Future of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE's)? -- from Peter Beaumont

-- from Hans De Zwart

Moodle Hubs scheme: Goals and rationale
The main goals of the Community hub project are:

1. to allow people to easily find courses around the world that they want to enrol in:
   • educators want to find communities of practice that are subject or region-oriented, so that they can associate with their peers on a long-term basis.
   • other learners want to find and study courses on various other subjects
2. to make it easy for educators to find and download course templates from other people. This will help educators share and identify examples of best practice in online pedagogy and hopefully improve the average quality of online courses.

Finally, we want to do all this in the simplest, safest way possible, while allowing a range of scenarios such as courses that are public or private, free or paid, so that the Moodle community can build solutions for themselves.

12/10/09

Connecting Google Apps Education Edition with Blackboard -- from Google blog by George Kroner, a Developer Relations Engineer for Blackboard

Also see:
Bboogle is software that lets you embed Google Documents (including spreadsheets, and presentations) and Google Calendars in a Blackboard course site. Everyone with access to the course can get to linked Google Documents without logging in a second time. Students and instructors are automatically added as collaborators, even if they join after the link is made.

Portal, LMS, and Alert Solutions: Best of Breed or Single Source -- from Campus Technology and Timecruiser
"Timecruiser is a private company based in Fairfield, NJ. We have been quietly serving the higher education community for over ten years. Since that time, TCC’s CampusCruiser® has been adopted enterprise‐wide by colleges and universities, serving more than 2.5 million students on campuses across the U.S. serving faculty and staff every semester, 24 by 7."

• CourseCruiser™ Learning Management System
• CampusCruiser™ Communication & Collaboration
• CruiserAlert™ High-priority & Emergency Alert System
• CruiserEval™ Next-generation Course Evaluation System

12/9/09

MoodleMoot San Jose 2010 - July 2010
The Call for Proposals is now open for the joint Sloan Consortium, MERLOT, and MoodleMoot International Symposium, called Emerging Technologies for Online Learning (ET4Online)! Visit the Call for Proposals site (http://et4online.merlot.org/) to submit your session and pre-conference workshop proposals (link opens new window). The Symposium will be held July 20-23, 2010, at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, CA. The proposal submission deadline will be January 18, 2010.

 

12/8/09

From DSC:
Though the above image/items are for K-12, Google leads the way in university email
(according to the 2009 Campus Computing Project survey where 59% of 4-year
universities and colleges using hosted email named Google as their provider).
It may not be long before they package up a suite of items for higher ed.

12/7/09

A design concept for a mobile Moodle application -- from BrnDmp blog

12/5/09

Moodle 1.9.7 and Moodle 1.8.11 have been released -- from Moodle.org
Moodle 1.9.7 and Moodle 1.8.11 were recently released. Apart from a range of bug fixes and small improvements, ten security vulnerabilities (2 critical, 6 major and 2 minor) have been discovered and fixed since Moodle 1.9.6. (Thanks as usual to the reporters and to all the guys responsible for fixing these serious issues). WE RECOMMEND ALL MOODLE SITES UPGRADE THEIR SITES TO ONE OF THESE VERSIONS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Book Reflection: Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching -- from Miguel Guhlin

Add live video eSeminars within Moodle LMS -- from scherlund.blogspot.com

...which eventually led me to this:

Innovative eLearning campus for Biblical Theological Seminary -- from PitchEngine.com

MindActive Inc, a Web marketing and eLearning development firm based in St. Louis, Missouri, recently created and launched a new online eLearning platform for Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield, PA.

Biblical Theological Seminary, an accredited interdenominational seminary, had asked MindActive, and its partner, Shapevine.com, to help create an innovative online campus, called “The Digital Campus Project”, so it could offer credit-based courses for its Master's Degree in Missional Church Planting.

“We have integrataed our live interactive technologies with an open-source application called Moodle, to build the Learning Management portion of the eCampus. They wanted the ability to enroll students for online courses using their existing registration process. The integrated eCampus platform was built to allow users seamless use of their course applications with a single login, said Paul Shirer, partner with MindActive”.

MindActive also integrated their own innovative video webcasting, live event video, and video email applications into the seminary’s Learning Management System (LMS) to allow administrators, students, educators, and faculty members to share, communicate, and collaborate all within the same school based platform.

12/4/09

12/3/09

12/2/09

Bluenog ICE
...is an integrated suite of content management, collaboration, portal and business intelligence software, built on open source projects. It is an
Integrated Collaborative Environment that leverages Web 2.0 technologies and accelerates enterprise application development. Bluenog ICE’s unified framework simplifies administration and security. It also provides ready integration with third party products. Bluenog ICE consists of four distinct modules:

 

12/1/09

Program Tracks include:
The Cutting Edge | Pedagogy | Faculty Development | Inventive Uses of Media and Tools | Immersive Learning and Virtual Environments | The New Learning Communities | Emerging Technologies for Administration, Infrastructure, and
Support Services | Architecture and Applications | Pre‐conference workshops

Examples of topics for pre‐conference workshops might include: Moodle training, support, software development, or hosting, developing and vetting learning objects, management perspectives, low‐cost tools, designing hybrid course for the net generation learner, Web 2.0 technologies and student‐centered learning, Google apps to organize your work, cloud computing for student services, moving laboratories online, copyright issues, content creation, and social networking tools.

Some other Learning Management System/Content Management Systems:

• epsilen
  Epsilen Environment—An innovative global eLearning system
  Epsilen Environment engages today’s students in their digital world—combining fully integrated Web 2.0 social networking with the best practices of eLearning course delivery—so that faculty and students can easily work together on campus and around the world. Unlike legacy systems, Epsilen Environment is intuitive and interactive, allowing students and faculty to create online identities, store work in Epsilen ePortfolio, and move seamlessly between courses, groups, and collaborative tools.
  
  
• SchoolDude.com
  
  

11/30/09

Excerpt from My research and development plan at UC re: Moodle -- from Leigh Blackall

The UC Moodle set up is one of the better setups I have seen. Users have the option to make their courses open access, including deep linking into the course itself from outside the network. Also, I was able to embed several forms of RSS fed media into a Moodle course, delivering a relatively seamless relationship to outside media platforms. Here is an example course I set up to automatically update based on my activities in the social media platforms outside moodle. Recently, I am told, Moodle now has the ability to capture a blog post on Blogger and update the blog instance for that user inside Moodle. Unfortunately the RSS feed coming out of Moodle is difficult to use, the URLs for the courses are not easily memorised, and Google search does not effectively locate pages inside the Moodle course.

Blackboard's Smartest Decision -- from InsideHigherEd.com by Joshua Kim
The smartest decision that Blackboard has made recently does not involve a new feature, acquisition, policy change, or marketing strategy. The smartest decision Blackboard has made in recent months is to recruit Mark O'Neil to come work for the company as a new Technical Product Manager.

11/29/09

Low use of web 2.0 in e-learning -- by Tony Bates
From the Chronicle’s news report:

Online education has grown in popularity, yet it remains dependent on learning-management systems, with content-delivery built around text, says Richard Garrett, an Eduventures managing director.

“The underlying delivery model or pedagogical model hasn’t really changed much in the last five, 10 years,” Mr. Garrett says.

The study found that nearly all programs were either profitable or breaking even. Overall, 65 percent reported that their online programs were profitable. For for-profits, 100 percent were profitable; for nonprofits, 62 percent were. (With nonprofit colleges, “profit” is used in the sense of a surplus, with revenues being larger than expenses. Universities have various systems for handling the surplus.)

The Eduventures survey found that the widely used tools are e-mail, text discussions that don’t happen in real time, physical textbooks, and word and PDF documents.

That contrasts with what you find on the programs of distance-learning conferences, where the talk is often about Web 2.0 technology that allows students to interact with the content or the provider in tangible ways [emphasis DSC].

F-MU.S.EU.M -- from Free Technology for Teachers
The European Virtual Museum is the product of collaboration between twenty-seven European museums. The European Virtual Museum makes artifacts of European history available in interactive 3D form. Through the use of QuickTime technology the artifacts in the European Virtual Museum can be rotated for optimum viewing. Visitors to the European Virtual Museum can browse through the collections by chronology, geographic area, object type, contributing museum, routes, and tour itineraries.

11/25/09

11/24/09

11/23/09

Blackboard Joins Forces with Microsoft to Make Course Information Available on Web Browsers Companies Collaborate on Blackboard Learn for Bing [from 11/4/09]
Blackboard Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBB) today announced an alliance with Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) to offer students and learners access to information from their online courses on Web browsers, enabling them to keep up with important course updates while surfing the Web, not just when logged into their Blackboard(R) accounts. Under the agreement, Blackboard and Microsoft will work together to enable notifications to appear in their Web browser using the Bing(TM) toolbar when new course information becomes available through the Blackboard Learn(TM) platform. The toolbar will also be compatible with the Internet Explorer(R) and Firefox(R) Web browsers.

11/17/09

Update on Moodle Inappropriate Access -- by Miguel Guhlin

Are learning management systems doomed? -- by Tony Bates

Moodle Journal Movies -- from Moodle Journal Blog

Welcome to the Moodle Journal Movies on the web. Below you will find a selection of Moodle and related eLearning video tutorials currently available on the web. So please select an option and be sure to have popups enabled on your browser, and enjoy. Introducing Moodle Moodle best practice LAMS Sequence Authoring Using Chat and Scribe Using the Forum Moodle and Mahara Mahara tour What is Web 2.0 WiKi in Plain English Plain English Social Networking Cloud Computing in plain English

11/16/09

Moodle Problem with Inappropriate Admin Access -- by Miguel Guhlin

Quote from Ken Task:
"If you are a Moodle administrator, teacher, student, or even if you have ever simply created an account on a Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) site, you need to read this post and watch the videos. It’s no secret that Moodle has suffered from some pretty serious security and user privacy issues over the past few years, but nothing before, that I am aware of comes close to the severity of the Moodle security/privacy vulnerability I discovered a few days ago. In the videos below I will demonstrate the problem and show you how you can verify the problem on your own Moodle site using nothing more than a normal teacher account."

11/14/09

-- from MoodleMoot San Francisco, June 2009

11/13/09

Future of learning: LMS or SNS? -- George Siemens

Google looked at the web and saw information to organize. Facebook looked at the same web and saw people who needed to be connected. Facebook’s model is the one that will be successful in the long run. As Google continues to morph into a more open and distributed version of Facebook, educators should pause and focus on insights that can be gleaned from the FB/Google experience. There are several of significant importance for the development and future of online learning.

First: Most organizations currently use a learning management system (LMS) such as Moodle or Desire2Learn. These systems are content-centric. Their objective is to organize and manage content, just as Google did in early 2000. Because higher education is particularly enamored with content, an LMS is a critical service. It’s completely the wrong model, however, and this will become increasingly apparent in the next several years.

Second: The wild card in education today is abundance. We simply have too much information and we can’t make sense of it all. It changes too quickly. Many universities rely on a “design today, use for three years” course design model. It worked great in 1950. 2009 – not so much.

Third: Complexity is quickly becoming a type of conceptual language that all members of society should be fluent in. Complicated=jigsaw puzzle. Complexity=weather.

Fourth: Managing abundance and complexity requires a different view of teaching and learning than currently forms the foundation of education. The content-centric view reflected by LMS’ must be replaced with more adaptive network models. Instead of experts and designers serving as the key sensemaking and wayfinding agents in curriculum, social networks and their ability for context-sensitivity must play a greater role.

At this stage, however, LMS’ will need to make a far greater transition for long term educational relevance than an SNS like ELGG.

Moodle Partner offers Moodle integrations -- from Moodle.org by Helen Foster
Many of our Moodle Partners specialize in providing Moodle integrations, including American company Remote-Learner who are offering an Enterprise Learning Intelligence Suite for Moodle (ELIS™).

ELIS, an integration of several open source solutions with Moodle, comprises a curriculum management system, the Business Intelligence software Jaspersoft and the Content Management System Alfresco. For further details, see Remote-Learner Announces Enterprise Learning Intelligence Suite for Moodle.

Remote-Learner have also been involved in integrating the Open Source Video Platform Kaltura with Moodle as both a new resource and assignment type, enabling teachers and students to easily add and edit videos from within Moodle. For further information, see Remote-Learner and Kaltura Announce Partnership to Bring Open Source Video to Moodle.

11/12/09

Moodle is an Airport, Not a Total Solution! -- from Zaid Ali Alsagoff (From DSC: This posting includes a nice discussion of what Moodle is and is not)

11/11/09

11/10/09

Research on the the impact of an LMS on students' learning -- by Tony Bates and Tom Carey

Lopes, V. (2008) Course Management Systems and Campus-Based Learning North York ON: Seneca College

One of the rare research reports that looks at the use of a learning management system for campus-based teaching, and its impact on students’ learning. The main finding was that faculty used the LMS mainly for providing course information, and very little for direct interaction with or between students. However, for students, the structure that the LMS provided was essential for them in managing their studies.

Datatel's Strategic Academic Enterprise -- from Datatel
How do you offer more services, and at the same time reduce your institution’s costs? It seems contradictory.  At Datatel, we accomplish this by thinking about your institution’s business in a whole new way.  We frame your institution’s processes holistically – combining administrative and academic enterprises across the board.  That new approach is the Strategic Academic Enterprise.

Rather than artificially separating the back-office technology and the front-office academics, the Strategy Academic Enterprise focuses on your institution’s processes as a whole, enabling you to reduce the total cost of ownership of your technology and offer better student services.  By addressing all of the following business areas together, your institution will be better prepared to face today’s emerging trends and more agile to handle tomorrow’s unique challenges:

• Strategic Enrollment Management
• Institutional Advancement
• Teaching and Learning
• Performance and Operational Management
• Strategic Planning

The days of focusing on administrative and academic separately are over. The union of these tightly intertwined areas requires a new way of thinking along with enhanced solutions in order for you to remain competitive. With Datatel, you’ll do that by embracing the framework of the Strategic Academic Enterprise and using the next generation ERP – Datatel’s Enterprise Education Platform.

ActiveCampus Portal -- from Datatel
From DSC: Seems to me to be very weak on the "Teaching & Learning" focus and offerings...

11/6/09

Moodlerooms To Provide E-Portfolio Solution through eFolioWorld; eFolio Delivers Portability and Rich Feature Set -- from B2E
Moodlerooms, Inc. —Sunday, November 01, 2009
Baltimore, MD — Together with the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, Moodlerooms, Inc., a leading provider of reliable, secure and scalable learning management solutions with open-source Moodle at the core, has announced the intent to fully integrate eFolioWorld, an easy-to-use and portable Web-based e-portfolio solution, with Moodlerooms’ enterprise learning management platform.

Pearson launches a bold new approach to online learning: Pearson LearningStudio -- from Pearson.com

New generation learning environment offers assessment and analytics to inform instruction, improve student retention and performance
Denver, CO (PRWEB) November 3, 2009 -- Pearson, the global leader in education, education technology, and services, today announced Pearson LearningStudio, a powerful new approach to personalized learning that drives student performance and faculty engagement, and course and program enhancement. This new generation learning environment extends Pearson's proven record of helping institutions increase access, providing technology-enabled learning tools, and improving faculty effectiveness and student success.

Pearson LearningStudio will be unveiled this week at the 2009 meeting of EDUCAUSE, one of the largest gatherings of education technology professionals in the world.

Pearson LearningStudio combines the power of two existing platforms serving over nine million students worldwide--Pearson eCollege and Fronter -- allowing institutions to create a flexible learning environment that best aligns with their academic mission and goals. Pearson LearningStudio offers three licensing levels (Campus, Blended, and Online) to create a customizable learning solution that grows with institutions as their needs evolve. Pearson's widely adopted MyLab study and assessment tools are fully integrated and customizable within Pearson LearningStudio giving faculty instant access to data and analytics on student performance.

This breakthrough learning environment embraces the latest technologies to support a culture of collaboration and creativity, including Software-as-a-Service and cloud computing, providing educators and administrators with a choice of scalable, cost-effective, dependable solutions to power their online programs so they can focus on what they do best -- educating students.

BlackBoard, Sakai and Moodle – Point/Counterpoint at Educause 2009 -- from Mark Smithers

GoingOn Announces First Community Platform for Education at EDUCAUSE 2009 -- from B2E
The GoingOn Community Platform leverages social web technologies to create online communities for collaboration, learning and social knowledge management
November 4, 2009/San Francisco, CA – GoingOn provider of the first open source community platform for education, will showcase its cornerstone technology, The GoingOn Community Platform at EDUCAUSE 2009, November 3-6, at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver.

11/5/09

Moodle and Elgg: a comparison -- from Learning Conversations

11/4/09

LMS 3.0 -- from InsideHigherEd.com by Kenneth Green
In a thoughtful commentary published in Inside Higher Ed earlier this year, my friend and colleague Lev Gonick, vice president and CIO at Case Western Reserve University, proclaimed that “course management systems are dead; long live course management systems.” This was one of his eleven IT predictions for 2009.

At a time when the Course or Learning Management System (LMS) has become an embedded, if not indeed an essential, element of the college experience for students across all sectors of American higher education, Gonick’s proclamation seemed, at face value, contrarian. But Lev focused his assessment primarily on the fate of proprietary systems (read Angel, Blackboard, and Desire2Learn):

"Proprietary course management systems are heading for a brick wall. The combination of economic pressures combined with saturated markets and the maturing stage of the life cycle of these once innovative platforms means that 2009 may well be the year of change or a year of serious planning for change.

Relatively inexpensive and feature-comparable open source alternatives, combined with some now learned experience in the process of transition from closed to open systems for the inventory of repeating courses, makes real change in this once bedrock of education technology a growing possibility. As product managers and management view these trend lines, I think we might see incumbent players make a valiant effort to re-invent themselves before the market drops out from underneath them. Look for the number of major campuses moving (or making serious threats to move) from closed systems to open ones to climb in the year ahead."

...In other words, the value of the LMS will increase as it migrates from a resource for content and services into a source for real time data about academic activity and student behavior.

...LMS 3.0 marks the transition from the LMS as an instructional resource and service for students and faculty to a key source for critical transactional data about academic interaction and student engagement. The transactional data from the LMS -- what students do while “in” the LMS for an individual class and how long they are “in” the LMS -- are the new metrics for student engagement and time on task.

...Many campuses are beginning to deploy Business Intelligence (BI) and CRM (Client/Customer Relationship Management) software as analytical resources for student outcomes and retention analyses.

...For campus IT officials, the issue that emerges in the wake of the Spellings Commission Report about institutional effectiveness, student learning, and student outcomes concerns not if but when college and university IT leaders will assume an active role, a leadership role, in these discussions, bringing their IT resources and expertise -- bringing data, information, and insight -- to the critical planning and policy discussions about institutional assessment and outcomes that affect all sectors of American higher education.

Transitioning to Technology Based Instruction (Sakai) -- from CampusTechnology.com by Bridget McCrea
Marist's Mark Van Dyke navigates higher education's technology maze with the help of the Sakai open source LMS

11/3/09

Moodlerooms Releases New CMS Based on Moodle -- from The Journal by Dian Schaffhauser

Open Source Collaborative: Moodle Assessment Report (August 2009) -- from North Carolina Community College System Office: Learning Technology Systems by Bill Randall, Ed.D, Jonathon Sweetin, M.S. Ed., Diane Steinbeiser, M.A.

Wimba Collaboration Suite 6.0 is now available for Moodle -- memo from Wimba
MP4, whiteboard, and assessment innovation extends learning beyond physical classroom
The Wimba Collaboration Suite™ 6.0, unveiled in April, is now available for Moodle. By creating a highly personal and dynamic environment for online learning, thousands of higher education institutions and K-12 districts around the world rely on Wimba’s technology to improve outcomes and increase student retention.

Customers now have access to innovative new capabilities of Wimba Classroom™ 6.0, Wimba Pronto™6.0, and Wimba Voice™ 6.0 - enhancements that include advanced MP4, whiteboarding and assessment functionality. For more information on how the Wimba Collaboration Suite 6.0 can impact teaching and learning at your school or campus please visit: Solutions for K-12 | Solutions for Higher Education

11/2/09

Open Source E-Learning Development 9: Drupal CMS -- from Michael Hanley
Very much like platforms like Moodle and Joomla!, Drupal is an open-source Content Management System (CMS) freely available under the GPL. It is used as a back-end system for many different types of websites, ranging from small personal blogs to Enterprise 2.0 collaboration and knowledge management uses to large corporate and political sites. In October 2009, the administration of U.S. president Barack Obama adopted Drupal for the official Whitehouse.gov website.

The LMS of the Future -- from 2009 Symposium for the Future -- by Jeff Borden

The future LMS will look very different from those of today. Well beyond Web 2.0, mash ups, and social learning, the LMS of tomorrow will connect people, technology, assessment, outcomes, social learning, and much, much more. Join Jeff Borden as he gives a glimpse into the tools students will use for learning in 5-10 years.

Archives:
Audio recording of this presentation (31.3 Mb MP3)|

Download Presentation: (includes 2 video files)
http://web.nmc.org/files/2009-future-symposium/Future-LMS.zip

10/30/09

Conduit -- from MoodleRooms
Moodlerooms has created a systems integration and course templating tool called Conduit that allows administrators to quickly load critical information from an existing SIS, ERP, assessment or other learning database into Moodle. This tool is also architected to enable two-way data syncing.

10/28/09

Moodlerooms Launches Data Exchange Tool and Cisco WebEx Integration -- from The Journal by Dian Schaffhauser
Moodlerooms, a Moodle service provider, has released a data exchange tool and announced two new programs: a partnership with the Cisco Entrepreneur Institute and a new partner program for the development of plugins. Moodle is an open source course management system, and Moodlerooms is a for-profit company that provides hosting and other services and software to institutions that use Moodle.

10/27/09

E-Learning's 'Third Phase' -- from InsideHigherEd.com
Though Blackboard's critics have worried the company might monopolize the market for e-learning tools, competition continues to surface -- notably from companies that once were more focused on the administrative side of campus computing.

10/26/09

Moodle is now certified SCORM 1.2 compliant -- from E-Learning Curve Blog

Moodle-related resources from Miguel Guhlin

Presentation Notes from Moodle Sessions I've Attended

• TxDLA2009 - Using Moodle to Create and Collaborate
• TxDLA2009 - Moodle 411

Moodle Bloggers

• All About Moodle
• Moodle Tutorials Blog
• Moodlerific.org
• Moodle Web Site with Teaching related stuff
• Multimedia in Moodle Course
• Using Moodle Online Textbook
• Bamboo Project Blog Writing About Moodle
• Virtual High School Meanderings - Great blog about research and information related to online learning.

Moodle Videos (Tutorials and Positive Stories)

• Moodle in El Paso ISD's Molly Tipton
• MoodleTutorials.org

Examples Of Moodle Web Sites

• Middle School Level III - IV Independent Exploration, Centerville Schools
• http://heblearning.hebisd.edu - Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD
• San Antonio ISD
  http://intouch.saisd.net/plc - Professional Learning Center
  http://intouch.saisd.net/opencampus - K-12 Learners Open Campus
  http://intouch.saisd.net/ourspace - A DRAFT Initiative for Mathematics Tutorials
  http://intouch.saisd.net/itech - Our Support Area for various initiatives
• http://moodle.uhcl.edu - University of Houston Clear Lake, a provider of TxVSN approved courses
• http://moodle.forneyisd.net/moodle - Forney ISD
• http://moodle.roundrockisd.org - RoundRock ISD
• http://moodle.goliadisd.org/moodle19 - Goliad ISD
• http://woisd.net/moodle - White Oak ISD

Video Tutorials on Moodle

• Auto Assigning students into Groups in Moodle - Assigning students into groups can be a painful process when done manually. See how you can automate the task using enrollment keys.
• Podcasting In Moodle - See how you can use contrib code to deploy podcasts inside your Moodle
• Importing Free Courses into Moodle
• How can Moodle change a school (Part 1) - First in the series of two clips. Part 1 shows how mostly standard features of Moodle are used by classroom teachers in high school settings.View Part 2 as well.
• Moodle explained with LEGO - An attempt to explain Moodle to our staff or anyone else by using an analogy with modular Lego bricks.
• Moodle explained with LEGO short version - Short version of an attempt to explain Moodle to our staff or anyone else by using an analogy with modular Lego bricks.
• Goomoodleikiog - How Google Aps, Moodle, Wikis, and Blogs can enhance student learning, enable collaboration and information exchange both inside and outside of your classroom.
• Creating and Maintaining a Manual Gradebook in Moodle (Video hosted at YouTube) - Paul Tannahill demonstrates the basics of creating and maintaining a manual gradebook in Moodle.
• File Organization - How to organize your files and save them in your digital locker on Moodle.
• Over 30 videos on YouTube on Using Various Aspects of Moodle

10/23/09

The Right Way To Go About Open Source LMS -- from Upside Learning

10/21/09

Top Plug-ins for Moodle (as of 10-21-09) -- per Moodle.org's stats page

http://www.moodlerific.org/2009/07/16/best-moodle-modules-plugins-part-2/

• Cool tip!
  Visit: http://download.moodle.org/stats.php – See the top 50 plug-ins downloaded in the last 60 days (scroll down to the “plug-ins” section).
• Cool tip!
  Note that there is a “rating system” for add-ons. On each individual add-on page there is a rating. But be aware that just because that rating is high (or low) does not mean it is good (or bad) necessarily. To determine whether or not an add-on is trustworthy check for ratings, documentation, support and discussions about the add-on. As you can tell, I have not personally used each and every listed add-on. Some I’ve tested, some I’ve researched and some have been recommend from others. I plan to install and test drive a lot of the previously mentioned add-ons on my own development site. Later on I will write about my experiences in doing so.
• Related Links:
  • Moodle Administration book (Some of the above information and suggestions were taken from this great book!)
  • Contributed modules and plugins forum (Forum)
  • Installing contributed modules or plugins (Documentation)
  • Development:Guidelines for contributed code (Documentation)
  • Modules and Plugins Database – an improved rating system? (Discussion thread)

Datatel and Moodlerooms Partner to Offer Higher Education a Full-Featured Intelligent Learning Platform -- from AJAX World Magazine
Datatel has extended its previously announced entry into the teaching and learning space by signing an exclusive partnership with Moodlerooms, Inc. The partnership will provide higher education with a teaching and learning solution that is totally integrated with Datatel Colleague® and based on Moodle™, an open-source e-learning software platform. Moodlerooms augments Moodle by adding valuable functionality, tested reliability, upgraded security, and technical support. The result of the Datatel–Moodlerooms solution is a more complete, cost-effective, and powerful choice over traditional proprietary learning systems.

Excerpts from memo from MoodleRooms:
Moodlerooms Raises the Stakes with Enterprise Learning Management Platform

Enter a powerful new enterprise LMS solution from Moodle -- the Moodlerooms Learning Management Platform (LMP). The new feature-rich Moodlerooms LMP builds on the shared knowledge and experiences of the 28 million Moodle users worldwide who use the popular open-source learning management system. Along with standard capabilities like online chat and threaded discussions, and Moodlerooms' reputation for excellent customer service, the new platform is packed with features that extend the product well beyond traditional LMS offerings.

In addition, the new Moodlerooms LMP is offered "in the cloud." Rather than having to purchase software and hardware that require maintenance and periodic replacement to stay current, higher education institutions can simply purchase access to the fully supported application from Moodlerooms, vastly lowering the initial capital outlay. Institutions pay only for the services they use, and with an open source core, there are no licensing fees. Instead of investing time and money on resources and installation, the product is ready to run over the Internet, backed by Moodlerooms' testing procedures that ensure all code is ready for production environments.

Moodlerooms' LMP has been designed with the needs of education institutions in mind. Enhanced content management and generation capabilities get users to the content they need more quickly. Because integration is critical to any LMP, a new authentication and enrollment system works with existing student information systems. A course templating feature helps you roll out new courses quickly each term. For fast imports from other systems, conversion tools ensure that courses can quickly and easily be added to Moodlerooms from virtually any other product, including Moodle. To make sure users can get help when and where they need it - a common issue with leading LMS systems - the Moodlerooms LMP includes a connected learning architecture that provides inline tutorials and other sources to deliver help to faculty from directly within the application.

Moodlerooms' new platform is designed to be a connected part of your institution's learning architecture. For ease of integration with other campus software, Moodlerooms is partnering with Datatel to be a part of its Teaching and Learning solution, and with WebEx for online meeting and conferencing needs. For e-mail, both Google Apps and Microsoft Live@EDU are included in the platform. That's in addition to the recently announced collaboration with the award-winning EQUELLA digital repository, which brings powerful content management capabilities, along with sophisticated features such as keyword and content searches, hierarchical browsing, and federated search.

The benefits of open source are already widely appreciated in education. And the concept of an application, platform or data residing in the "cloud" and accessed remotely via the Internet is rapidly drawing interest, in higher education in particular, because of its promise of high value and flexibility at low cost. Now Moodlerooms, already a popular choice in learning management solutions, has upped the ante dramatically with its new enterprise learning management platform. Moodlerooms | 1101 East 33rd St. | Suite A306 | Baltimore, MD 21218

10/20/09

Resources for Moodle -- from Moodlerific.org

Moodle Blogs

• Allisune Learns
• Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org
• Global Classroom Blog
• Moodle Blog | Mary Cooch
• Moodle Girl’s Blog
• Moodle Journal
• Moodle Tutorials Blog
• Moodle | Lewis Carr
• Taming Moodle Blog
• The Moodleman Blog

Moodle Communities

• iMoodle (Ning)
• Moodle Meet (Ning)
• Moodlers Online (Ning)
• Using Moodle

Moodle Help: Videos

• 2 Minute Moodles
• Moodle Tutorials.org
• Moodleman YouTube Channel
• Screencast-o-matic Moodle Channel
• Using Moodle YouTube Channel

Moodle Resources

• Moodle Commons
• Moodle Share
• NewSchool Learning (Themes)
• PacktPub (Moodle books)

Official Moodle Links

• Community Forums
• Moodle Docs
• Moodle Partners
• Official Moodle Site

Best Moodle modules & plugins -- Part I -- from moodlerific.org

Best Moodle modules & plugins -- Part II -- from moodlerific.org

Moodle Tip - Top Moodle Modules and Blocks -- from Miguel Guhlin (K-12)

Accessibility in Moodle
This block provides a set of buttons allowing users to customise font sizes on the page.

Accessibility Options in Moodle
We needed to find a way for our students to change the font size and background colour of our Moodle site. Here’s how we achieved it.

Moodle Partners in the United States

	Remote-Learner USA
	ClassroomRevolution.com ClassroomRevolution.com offers a wide range of Moodle services for clients located in the United States.
	Moodlerooms, Inc. An all-service company for corporations and schools using Moodle.
	NewSchool Learning We're a small design company that's obsessed with making Moodle look good.

 

10/19/09

Moodlerooms and Datatel Combine Open Source LMS with ERP -- from The Journal by Dian Schaffhauser
Moodlerooms and Datatel have teamed to integrate learning management functionality with enterprise resource planning (ERP). The integration combines Moodlerooms' learning management "platform" with Datatel's Colleague ERP system to give institutions a more complete view of their students. Moodlerooms is a private company that wraps its customization and programming services around the open source learning management system Moodle. Moodle provides a means for educational institutions to put course management online. It also features e-mail, blogs, wikis, forums, chat, RSS feeds, and multi-language support.

Moodle at Wabash College

Bb/Moodle Functionality Matrix

Resources re: moving from Blackboard to Moodle

What About my Old Blackboard Courses? -- Wabash College
We are working with a company in Australia to develop a custom Blackboard course import tool to ensure that you have easy access to all historical course information.

http://online.sfsu.edu/blackboard/convert2ilearn.html

http://its2.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree/<-- bFree - Blackboard™ Course Content Extractor

http://docs.moodle.org/en/Blackboard_migration
Also on that page:

• Final 2009 Report of the University of North Carolina LMS Evaluation Committee describing the results of an evaluative comparison of Moodle with the University’s current Blackboard system (Vista)
• The Open Source Collaborative: Moodle Assessment Report This report is the accumulation of two years of experimentation and evaluation of Moodle by the North Carolina Community Colleges System.
• The Whole Kit and Caboodle on Moodle presentation introducing Moodle and sharing experiences of migrating from Blackboard
• An LMS By Any Other Name... presentation helping transition Blackboard users to Moodle terms
• Blackboard to Moodle resources including a Blackboard 7.3 to Moodle 1.8 Cross-Reference

Using Moodle forum discussions:

• Migrate a course from Blackboard to Moodle
• Blackboard 6.1 to Moodle 1.4+ Content Conversion Tool
• Moodle 1.9 Blackboard Import - contains some troubleshooting

• Lessons learned from this Word document
  and
• References from same Word document
  • Eduforge Guidelines for Migrating – http://eduforge.org/wiki/wiki/eduforge/?pagename=Guidelines%20for%20MIgrating
  •  HSU Moodle Support Manual – http://www.humboldt.edu/~moodle/instructor/manual/index.html
  •  bFree – BB file extractor – http://its.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree/about.php
  •  SFSU BB to Moodle Conversion Tool (new 09- big files can take up to 2 hrs to convert!) – http://moodleconverter.lsu.edu/
  •  Using Moodle Book 2nd Edition – http://docs.moodle.org/en/Using_Moodle_book
  •  Cheap Moodle host &– Siteground – http://www.siteground.com/moodle-hosting.htm

10/16/09

 

Moodle Central -- by Miguel Guhlin
Welcome to Moodle Central, the central repository for anything I've written or encountered regarding the use of Moodle in K-16 teaching and learning virtual spaces. On this page, you'll find some presentations I've prepared, links to articles, Moodle tips, and notes from conference/workshop sessions I've attended regarding Moodle.

 

 

 

The Killer App: Google Apps and Moodle Integration? -- my thanks to Daniel Laninga, in the T&L Digital Studio, for this resource

BB2Moodle Course Conversion -- from The Linux Box; my thanks to the T&L Digital Studio Staff for locating this resource

10/15/09

Install Moodle on an Oracle Database (in 25 minutes or less) -- from Learning is Change. by Ben Wilkoff

10/14/09

Why Sakai 3?
The time has come for a significant change in Sakai. The current system has been successful in enabling campuses around the world to benefit from the community source collaboration envisioned by the founding universities and the Mellon Foundation. Still, many things have
changed since Sakai’s inception. Sakai end users, increasing familiar with “Web 2.0” technology, are demanding an environment that is more flexible and affords them greater control. Social networking has exploded on the scene. Uses of Sakai in research and administrative collaboration have proven extremely valuable. New standards and open source projects have emerged that Sakai can leverage and integrate with. New models of web development have emerged, models that leverage client‐side technology, significantly improve productivity and lower the bar for meaningful contributions and Service Oriented Architecture has emerged as a design and deployment preference for institutional systems. Most significantly, the traditional role of Course Management Systems & e‐Portfolios is rapidly changing and there is broad recognition that the current platforms need to evolve substantially to meet the long‐term needs of users and institutions.

From DSC:
As of 10/14/09, Sakai is at version 2.6.0. Version 3.0 was supposed to be out in June '09 from what I could ascertain.

The New Literacy and the CMS -- from InsideHigherEd.com by Joshua Kim

The idea that the new literacy involves writing for a Web audience is supported by a Stanford study by Professor Andrea Lunsford. The 5 year Stanford study found that only 62 percent of student writing was done for course work. Lunsford's main conclusions were that: a) students are writing more then any time in the past, b) this writing is often about communication, and c) students are writing with the audience in mind.

ConnectYard Widget Talks to Social Networking Sites from CMS -- from The Journal by Dian Schaffhauser
ConnectYard, which builds education-related applications, has developed a widget that can be added to a course management system for delivering queries to the user via social networking sites and other means. QuickConnect Widget works with Blackboard, Moodle, Sakai, and other LMS platforms, according to the company.

10/13/09

Blackboard, Moodle, and Sakai -- from Educause; Nov 4th, 2009 | 2:15 PM - 3:05 PM | Korbel Ballroom 3C
Representatives of several learning management system options (Blackboard, Moodle, and Sakai) will discuss the pros and cons of adopting proprietary versus open-source solutions. Issues addressed will include total cost of ownership, licensing, options for application hosting and technical support, and how new features find their way into a product.

CMS Crossroads: Sakai, Moodle, and Blackboard -- from Hear One, Do One, Teach One by Allan Shawn Gyorke

Selecting and Implementing a Course Management System for Your Campus -- from Educause

PPTs and HTML files for that presentation here

From Sakai vs. Moodle -- from Zacker.org

• Digging into OpenBRR Rating of Sakai and Moodle
• Higher-ed LMS Market Penetration: Moodle vs. WebCT+Blackboard vs. Sakai
• http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/confluence
• http://moodle-vs-sakai.blogspot.com

10/8/09

Could Google Wave Replace Course-Management Systems? -- from The Chronicle by Jeff Young
Google argues that its new Google Wave system could replace e-mail by blending instant messaging, wikis, and image and document sharing into one seamless communication interface. But some college professors and administrators are more excited about Wave's potential to be a course-management-system killer.

10/2/09

Moodlerooms, Learning Edge Partner To Bring Digital Repository to Moodle Bundle -- from The Journal by David Nagel
Moodlerooms is integrating the EQUELLA digital repository into its learning management platform, powered by the open-source Moodle LMS. Through a new partnership with The Learning Edge North America, the platform will incorporate EQUELLA without adding any new licensing fees.

Moodlerooms is a Moodle partner that provides services centered around the Moodle learning management system for both K-12 and higher education. Its learning management platform, Moodlerooms LMP, is a custom package designed to extend the functionality of Moodle based on the needs of a given institution with training, additional modules, and other features. Moodlerooms describes it as a "configurable end-to-end solution for institutions and organizations seeking the benefits of Moodle with extended features, functionality and personalized service."

9/30/09

Related item:
Google Docs to Blackboard, "Your days are numbered" -- from hackcollege.com by Kelly Sutton

9/29/09

Instructional Technologists Collaborate to Support Faculty Moodle Use -- from Liberal Education Today by balexander

9/25/09

Item re: Moodle from Miguel Guhlin:
Moodle Tip - ExamView and Moodle Quiz Activity -- includes Video Tutorial for ExamView into Moodle (MP4)

9/24/09

“The Collaborative Liberal Arts Moodle Project: A Case Study”
...is available on AcademicCommons.org. The case study looks at our efforts to transform our informal Hack/Doc Fests into a more formal organization with the help of a grant from the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE).  The case study is part of the September 2009 issue, which features a number of case studies provided by NITLE schools.

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