April Fool’s joke? Nope..

Blackboard has bought two Official Moodle Partners. Blackboard has not bought the Moodle software.

WASHINGTON – March 26, 2012 – Blackboard Inc. announced a major investment in open source today with news that it has acquired Moodlerooms and NetSpot, two leading providers of open source online learning solutions to the education industry. Both organizations will continue to operate independently to support their clients. read more

At first, I was like whattt..now I’m a bit confused, but honestly not (too) worried. I will take a few days to read others’ reactions and see if Moodle HQ has any official explanation..because truly – what’s in it for Moodle? Money? Will it make Moodle better? How? Before we panic, here are a few tweets from the Moodler himself (Martin Dougiamas):

And apparently Blackboard has launched a new effort, Blackboard Educational Open Source Services – huh? Check out Joseph’s post with Blackboard’s full news article. It’s very interesting. I will also look forward to his thoughts on this move – he will probably post on Moodlnews.com soon.

I’ll weigh in on this a bit later but here are some blog posts for more opinions

Mark Drechsler – Blackboard Education Open Source Services – a personal view.

Mark Smithers – Blackboard Aquires Moodlerooms and Netspot

So what do you think? Will this make Moodle stronger? Is it the beginning of the end…the end of the beginning? I’m not sure “what this means” yet, I have to read what other people have to say before I come to any conclusion. I’d be very interested in seeing what smart business-like people think about this..someone with no ties to either side.

It came as a pretty big shock last night when the news broke, especially to the Moodle Community, but after the initial surprise I think there is some optimism and Martin’s tweets have brought people back from the ledge.

Either way, our district is excitingly forging ahead with Moodle 2 this summer and fall with no hesitation..as of now : )

Just a quick note to stay updated with Moodle 2.0 news at Moodle Monthly. Moodle 2.0 Beta recently came out and is available at Moodle.org for download.

Recent posts

• What’s up with FTP in Moodle2.0? by @moodledan #moodle2PR
• 4 part video preview of #Moodle2 by @Moodler
• @ghenrick showcases the #moodle2 navigation
• @Moodleman outlines #Moodle2 conditional activities

Other ways to keep informed of the development of Moodle 2.0

• Moodle Monthly web site
• Moodle Monthly Twitter – @moodlenews
• Martin Dougiamas – @moodler
• #Moodle2 Twitter hash tag

Moodle Announcements

• Moodle Partner offers Moodle integrations (11-13-2009)

Other

Great Post: “Moodle is an Airport!” (GlobalClassroom)

On another note, I plan to write a few posts about our district’s experience with the Moodle-Google SSO module. I will be co-presenting at the TIES 2009 Conference about this and in January I will be giving a short presentation to another district with my co-worker.

I hope to write up a few posts with bits and pieces and maybe attach some of the slides or parts of our presentation. Happy Moodling!

Moodle Announcements

• New course format: Timeline 9-25-09 (Helen Foster) – Great new course format, can’t wait!

Planet Moodle

• Cool Course Competition opening soon! 10-14-09 (Helen Foster)
• Seven new particularly helpful Moodlers 10-09-09 (Helen Foster)
• Moodle features list 10-09-09 (Helen Foster)
• Moodle 1.9.6 coming soon! 10-06-09 (Helen Foster)

Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org blog posts

• PHP INI Settings for Moodle 10-11-09
• Moodle Use Guideposts for Student (Revised) 10-9-09
• Comment Hoist – Suzanne Dreyer on Moodle Messaging 9-28-09

Other Links

ischool Learning Network – videos

Martin Dougiamas recently posted on Moodle Announcements that latest stable releases of 1.8.x and 1.9.x are now available.

There are many small bug fixes and some new features in each release, but the main two things you need to know about are the gradebook interface changes in 1.9.5 and some important security issues. – Read more

Related Links:
Release notes for Moodle 1.9.5
Release notes for Moodle 1.8.9
Moodle 1.9.5 and Moodle 1.8.9 are now available – Martin Dougiamas post

Have you ever wished there was a way for students to draw or paint in Moodle? If so, you’ll be pleased to hear that one of our GSOC 2009 projects is a paint tool for Moodle.. read more

This is a bit late (first posted on Moodle.org on May 8th) but Helen Foster posted a Moodle Announcement about a paint tool being developed. Read more about it.

I have created a Twitter account for Moodlerific. Although I do post some Moodle related news and information on my personal Twitter account, this account will be everything Moodle and Moodlerific information. Follow Moodlerific!

Check out Helen Foster’s latest Moodle Announcement about Moodle taking part in the Google Summer of Code.