Check out the Moodle Moots coming up in the next few months via Moodle Announcements.
My co-worker and I have been looking into attending a Moodle Moot. Our district has an idea of putting on our own Moodle Moot, or Moodle Workshop (on a smaller scale), in the future and attending an actual Moot would greatly benefit us. We have been looking into the Canada one or perhaps one in Oklahoma or San Francisco. Check out the main Moodle Moot page.
Have you any ideas how Moodle navigation (including blocks, layout and themes) can be improved? [read more]
From Moodle.org, Helen Foster writes a post about the navigation in Moodle 2.0. Read more and see what Martin Dougiamas says about solutions.
Google Apps Education Edition is coming to an open source learning management system near you. Moodlerooms, a Moodle partner, is launching a new enhancement to the open source LMS in collaboration with search giant Google to provide access to the application suite using a single sign-on. [read more]
This really excites me! Our district has been looking into student email possibilities and a way for students to collaborate. Google Apps Education Edition seems to be a top choice for secondary students. This would be an awesome integration for us! In the article, I think this is the most important reason why I like the idea of a Moodle/Google App integration:
“This greatly simplifies the task of implementing a collaborative suite, as well as enables institutions to leverage the work they’ve already done integrating their platforms with their other systems. From a teacher’s perspective, this provides an easy way to assign students to collaborative tasks without having to worry about the students having different operating systems or incompatible software or being unable to access an online system. From an IT staffer or CIO’s perspective, this provides an integration tested with large-scale data loads and built on industry standard SAML 2.0 and OAuth protocols for secure single sign on and information transfer.” [read more]
Easy integration, fewer logins and “places” to go seem to be very important for teachers. If our district does decide to go with Google Apps this is something really look into.
Source: http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/02/20/google-collaborates-on-moodle-integration.aspx
From Moodle.org Announcements:
Have you any ideas for new features you’d like included in Moodle? If so, please see our documentation New feature ideas for information on the process of how ideas can be turned into reality.
Now is a particularly good time to come up with ideas for new features, as we’re hoping to take part in Google Summer of Code 2009, so we need lots of great ideas for student projects. Please see the discussion Wanted: New feature ideas for GSOC projects in the general developer forum for more details.
Source: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=116731
Martin Dougiamas tells us how to prevent spam
“One of the most common security issues that we see in Moodle sites is profile spam.
Profile spam is primarily a problem on sites with the combination of these two settings:
- email authentication is enabled, allowing people to self-create an account on the site
- the admin setting forceloginforprofiles is disabled, allowing anyone to see and link to user profiles
Some older versions of Moodle had these as default.
The problems with these settings is that spammers can create a page on the Moodle site which they can fill with links and pictures of porn and other nasty stuff. This in turn comes up in Google searches for those things, and is used to boost ratings to porn sites or hacking sites designed to take over your personal computer. Note that this content is designed for people using search engines, and is usually not available from within the Moodle site itself (since spammers don’t join any courses) so users and admins are usually not even aware their site is having this problem.
Please pass the word to all Moodle admins that you know to check these Moodle site settings and make sure their sites are not vulnerable to profile spam. Email authentication should be disabled if not needed, and if it can’t then forceloginforprofiles should definitely be enabled.
Please also use our spam-cleaning tool to scan your site to find affected profiles and delete them. This page in the docs has more details: Reducing_spam_in_Moodle and you can also get help in the Security and Privacy forum.” – from Moodle.org Moodle Announcements
Source: Moodle.org Moodle Announcements
Moodle has released updates to four of its most recent branches. The latest point update, 1.9.4, addresses security vulnerabilities and includes a number of minor fixes and enhancements to the open source learning management system. – from THE Journal: read more
Martin Dougiamas also speaks about this in the Moodle Announcement: New releases: Moodle 1.9.4, 1.8.8, 1.7.7 and 1.6.9
Keep up with Moodle 2.0!
Follow the Moodle 2.0 Roadmap on Moodle Docs and track the current Moodle 2.0 progress on the planning document. This document is frequently updated and shows the progress of Moodle 2.0. Moodle 2.0 is set to come out mid 2009.
Alfresco Software Inc., the leader in open source enterprise content management (ECM), today announced an OEM partnership with Remote-Learner.net, the provider of open source solutions for online learning management, record keeping and learning object storage to corporate, academic and governmental clients. The partnership will deliver solutions to allow learning organizations using Moodle’s open source course management system (CMS) to access Alfresco’s robust open source ECM repository to support content development and reuse. – read more
I take a great interest in this integration because our school district is looking into Alfresco as a possibility for document management. I have no experience with Alfresco but I have heard good things about it. There is a free version and an Enterprise version you can pay for. Learn more at Alfresco.com.
Remote-Learner is a Moodle Partner that hosts Moodle sites and is “a learning company providing technology services”.
Moodle 2.0 is impressing me more and more each day. I feel like there are many improvements (some free, some may be “paid-for” services) in file management and repositories. Glancing at the admin plug-ins section I can already see that they have made it easier for Moodle to integrate with a variety of sites and other software like Alfresco, Box.net, Flickr, Picasa, WebDAV, Wikimedia and YouTube.
Read more:
Alfresco Press Release -Alfresco and Remote-Learner.net Partner to Deliver Moodle eLearning Integration
Moodleman blog post - Alfresco tie-in in Moodle 2.0
Moodle Docs – Repository API
The Moodleman Blog has recently posted a sneak peak at conditional activities in Moodle 2.0. Before I read the post I was not sure what this even meant but Moodleman writes
“Conditional activities now say that if a student has “completed” an activity/resource (or range of activities/resources) they can then see the newly created one.”
I never really thought of this concept but it makes complete sense and it could make a teacher’s life a lot easier! Moodle.org even has a forum dedicated to this type of thing. In earlier versions you will need a hack but it looks like it will be in the core of Moodle.org (I believe).
For more information take a look at Moodle.org Docs on Conditional Activities. Read more about the feature and watch a video walkthrough on Moodleman’s blog post: Moodle 2.0 Sneak Peak – Conditional Activities.
Realizing this ability in Moodle 2.0 makes me excited to show our users (in the way future..) that this is possible. I believe this will save teachers’ time by allowing them to do more at one time. For instance, instead of having a student complete an activity, then having the teacher go back to unlock or create a quiz and directing the student to complete it–a teacher is able to do everything at once instead of editing the course twice. I think this will also work great with motivating students to complete their work. Knowing they have the power to see or reach the next activity may motivate them–like a game.
I just wonder how easy this feature is to set up in Moodle 2.0. I might focus some attention on this on my dev site and post on it in the future.
Any thoughts?
