http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=75152&parent=33

by Sean Keogh.  

It has been a long time coming, but registrations are now open for the fourth annual UK MoodleMoot conference - MoodleMoot 07 UK - which is happening in late October 2007, during school half-term week.

The general Moot information site is at http://moodlemoot.org
For information about registrations and submitting papers, (including online conference registration) go to http://present.moodlemoot.org - bear in mind that registering as a user on either site does not register you for the conference - but you can do this (including payment) online from the above (present) site.



The main organiser this year is Jason Cole - I'm just helping out here and there - so many thanks to Jason for doing all this hard work!

I hope to see many of you in Milton Keynes in October.

Sean Keogh

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=73485&parent=33

by D. Bourne.  

Tues AM - This link does not seem to work. Is there an alternative address?

http://security.moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=396

by Martin Dougiamas.  

Recently two XSS vulnerabilities were discovered and fixed.



The first was reported to us by Olivier Dembour (thanks!) tracked as MDL-10276, the other was disclosed publically (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/fulldisc/full-disclosure/54676) and is tracked as MDL-10341.



The fixes are included in all recent relevant branches. Moodle 1.8.2 is recommended, but at the very least sites should upgrade to the latest releases available in their current branch, from http://download.moodle.org/.

http://security.moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=396

by Martin Dougiamas.  

Recently two XSS vulnerabilities were discovered and fixed.



The first was reported to us by Olivier Dembour (thanks!) tracked as MDL-10276, the other was disclosed publically (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/fulldisc/full-disclosure/54676) and is tracked as MDL-10341.



The fixes are included in all recent relevant branches. Moodle 1.8.2 is recommended, but at the very least sites should upgrade to the latest releases available in their current branch, from http://download.moodle.org/.

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=76018&parent=33

by Conrad Law.  

Are there any MOODLE conferences being planned for the United States in 2008?  I attended the February 07 MOOT in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  It was well worth the trip.

Thanks.

Conrad

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=76018&parent=33

by Conrad Law.  

Are there any MOODLE conferences being planned for the United States in 2008?  I attended the February 07 MOOT in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  It was well worth the trip.

Thanks.

Conrad

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=76018&parent=33

by Kevin Kelly.  

Hi Conrad,

I had a great time in Albuquerque, too! Several of us have been talking about putting together a MoodleMoot in San Francisco in Spring 2008. I will post some more details here when we have something concrete.

Kevin


Kevin Kelly
Online Teaching and Learning Coordinator
Academic Technology
San Francisco State University

e: kkelly@sfsu.edu
p: 415.338.6455

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=76018&parent=33

by Kevin Kelly.  

Hi Conrad,

I had a great time in Albuquerque, too! Several of us have been talking about putting together a MoodleMoot in San Francisco in Spring 2008. I will post some more details here when we have something concrete.

Kevin


Kevin Kelly
Online Teaching and Learning Coordinator
Academic Technology
San Francisco State University

e: kkelly@sfsu.edu
p: 415.338.6455

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=76018&parent=33

by Conrad Law.  

Thanks.  I'm on the east coast (Maryland).  Is there another event that it can be tied to such as the E-Learning 2007 Conference in New Mexico?  It would be easier to justify.  Or it could just be a larger, multiple day MOODLE event.  That would be great.

Keep me posted and let me know if I can do anything to help.

Thanks.

Conrad

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=76018&parent=33

by Conrad Law.  

Thanks.  I'm on the east coast (Maryland).  Is there another event that it can be tied to such as the E-Learning 2007 Conference in New Mexico?  It would be easier to justify.  Or it could just be a larger, multiple day MOODLE event.  That would be great.

Keep me posted and let me know if I can do anything to help.

Thanks.

Conrad

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=76018&parent=33

by Tom Wilson.  

Kevin,
Count me in. I have been using moodle in my counseling practice since 2004 to reach remote clients. I attended Albuquerque Moot and, like others had a great time. Let me know if I can help.
Tom Wilson
Director
Tom Wilson Counseling Centers
Boise and Beyond

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=76018&parent=33

by Tom Wilson.  

Kevin,
Count me in. I have been using moodle in my counseling practice since 2004 to reach remote clients. I attended Albuquerque Moot and, like others had a great time. Let me know if I can help.
Tom Wilson
Director
Tom Wilson Counseling Centers
Boise and Beyond

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/06/video-formats-and-storage.html

I received a request recently from a client to produce my Moodle training resources as a set of video files, which does make a lot of sense; I have also been using more video this year on the VLE. If you are finding this emerging trend, then you may like to have a look at a couple of resources for video conversion and storage. At the Yasasoft website you can download a limited free version, it will convert just about all format up to five minutes and its a really nice and easy to use piece of desktop software. I also came across a reasonable online media converter the other day at vixy.net, which seems to be worth having a look at. Of course with video comes the need for storage, and if yours I limited, then why not try storing it with blip.tv, they seem to be making an open invitation.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/06/self-evaluation.html

If like myself you are deploying much of your full time course delivery over Moodle , then you will no doubt also be realising that while there are many advantages to this for everyone regarding administration, are there any similar enhancement to outcomes? Well I have to say probably not, after all, good teaching, good notes and resources are exactly that whatever the medium you deliver them by. If you have been reading this blog then you will know that I have been trialing methodologoes such a 'Communities of Enquiry', with some success. Even so I still find myself trawling round for some realistic model for self evaluation, and thats when I came across this article that I find myself getting somewaht enthusiastic about. Of course the test is going to be can I implement this through Moodle in some way, well stay tuned for that one.

http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=19&rid=903

http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=19&rid=903

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/06/one-more-for-constructivist.htm

For those of you who have been following this blog, you will recall that last academic year 05/06 I ran a trial with my HND Computer Systems Engineering students where I used the VLE to investigate the delivery of about 20% of the course material based around the Social Constructivist model. The particular framework that I chose for this was the ‘Community of Enquiry’ from Garrison, Anderson and Archer. Well as I said then, results looked promising but it needed more data and so here are the results from this years trail 06/07 for both percentages and grades as measured against 2002-2005. I think you will agree that it does look more than encouraging and I shall be featuring these outcomes in my Camel presentation at the college on the 2nd of July this year.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/07/handouts-to-videos.html

Well its that time of year again when following the upgrade of Moodle to our test server and tried out all the features that I need to star thinking about updating the Moodle course notes for the new version. This usually means I check each page of the notes with the new version and apply changes as they occur. This year however I have decided to reduce the actual Moodle training notes in their printed form and deliver the rest as a series of short video clips that can be run on demand by users as and when they need them. The impact of this will be to reduce the time needed for initial training, while at the same time ensuring that during the training, which does tend to be a bit hectic, given I only get 2 hours, I can spend more time looking at specific curricula issues rather than Moodle features that I have come to realise many will not come to use. So how do I intend to breakdown the content into printed and video formats?

Printed format

• System settings and administration
  
• Labels and headings
  
• Editing facilities
  
• Managing files and folders
  
• Linking to resources
  
• Moodle Assignments
  
• Course presentation
  

Video Format

• Using Forums
  
• Using Chat
  
• Creating Glossaries in Moodle
  
• Managing the calendar events
  

Once I have these completed these I will make them available through this blog, so feel free to give them a test-drive and get back to me with any comments.

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=76663&parent=34

by Mark Drechsler.  

Hi all,

There is an e-Learning conference in Sydney this week (details at http://www.learnx.net/learnx/) and was wondering if anyone from the Moodle community will be there? The sessions are largely about e-Learning in a broader sense but if anyone is going to be there I'd be keen to catch up and make some contacts, being the Moodle newbie that I am

Cheers,

Mark.

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=76663&parent=34

by Mark Drechsler.  

Hi all,

There is an e-Learning conference in Sydney this week (details at http://www.learnx.net/learnx/) and was wondering if anyone from the Moodle community will be there? The sessions are largely about e-Learning in a broader sense but if anyone is going to be there I'd be keen to catch up and make some contacts, being the Moodle newbie that I am

Cheers,

Mark.

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=76018&parent=34

by Bill Kopf.  

Kevin and others,

I am the Distance Learning Director for Lubbock Christian University and we are switching to Moodle from WebCT in May 2008. We have finished some beta testing with our faculty and are making the transition during the 2007-2008 academic year.

We are about 4-5 hours from Albuquerque. I would be interested initially in attending anything in New Mexico (My wife is from NM). I would like to become involved also. I would be willing to attend any conference in the Southwest or further west. Could you keep me in mind when planning or if you are aware of other conferences for Moodle? I am actually willing to travel anywhere in the states to learn and/or to share since Moodle is new and exciting to us here at LCU.

Lubbock doesn't hold the draw that Albuquerque or Santa Fe, but in the near future, or if necessary we might be willing to host.

Bill Kopf

Director of Distance Learning

Lubbock Christian University

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=76018&parent=34

by Bill Kopf.  

Kevin and others,

I am the Distance Learning Director for Lubbock Christian University and we are switching to Moodle from WebCT in May 2008. We have finished some beta testing with our faculty and are making the transition during the 2007-2008 academic year.

We are about 4-5 hours from Albuquerque. I would be interested initially in attending anything in New Mexico (My wife is from NM). I would like to become involved also. I would be willing to attend any conference in the Southwest or further west. Could you keep me in mind when planning or if you are aware of other conferences for Moodle? I am actually willing to travel anywhere in the states to learn and/or to share since Moodle is new and exciting to us here at LCU.

Lubbock doesn't hold the draw that Albuquerque or Santa Fe, but in the near future, or if necessary we might be willing to host.

Bill Kopf

Director of Distance Learning

Lubbock Christian University

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72929&parent=34

by Peter Sereinigg.  

You may register for the the international Austrian Moodle Conference in Graz (13th/14th Sept. 2007) for free:
http://mk.campus02.at
Part of the conference will be presented in english and parts will be "streamed", to give you the possibility to attend "virtually".
Program will be finished in 2-3 weeks!

See you in Austria,
best Peter Sereinigg

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72929&parent=34

by Peter Sereinigg.  

You may register for the the international Austrian Moodle Conference in Graz (13th/14th Sept. 2007) for free:
http://mk.campus02.at
Part of the conference will be presented in english and parts will be "streamed", to give you the possibility to attend "virtually".
Program will be finished in 2-3 weeks!

See you in Austria,
best Peter Sereinigg

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/05/thinking-about-your-vle.html

If like us here at Bromley College you have been deploying a VLE, then like me you may be wondering after having structured courses with all kinds of content from Word files to podcasts, where the technology is moving and what the outcomes have been. If you are thinking along these lines, then you will be interested in the findings of the JISC funded projects that are about to enter their second phase, you can find the site here. I read a summary in the May 2007 edition of Cilip Update, which seemed to promote the conclusion of student preference for social networking over pure VLE, with the suggestion that educators are becoming concerned about the future of the traditional VLE. For my part I have no real evidence that this is the case, have you, please feel free to post.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/03/vles-and-poor-attendance.html

I was surprised by the concerns expressed in the recent HE Forum about VLE’s leading to reduced attendance. And so an emailed was circulated to a national list, not by myself I must add, to see if this is generally seen as a problem. The responses indicate the opposite. You will find a link here to some of the responses that you may find useful. The question posted was:- Using a VLE might lead to a reduction in attendance. Does anybody on the list have to deal with this worry? Is it true? How do you counter it? Please feel free to inform us of your own views on this subject by replying to this post.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/03/project-leon.html

Starting Monday 12th March ULCC are running London's first Online Conference looking at Web2 Technologies supporting 'personalisation' called LEON (London e-Learning Online Network). There are a number of strands to this project,and my own here at Bromley is looking to the potential of Second Life, where students can share a 3D space and presence in real time. The current project features a library with access for individual or group study, links to web sites, pod casts, movies, documents and virtual page turning books. Presentations and lectures can be delivered to groups or individuals using white boards, media players all delivered by the lecturer. The potential improvements for social engagement above that offered by the more usual first world experience of synchronous, asynchronous chat and forum seem boundless. If you are interested in joining us the go to the website and contact Philip Butler for enrollment details.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/03/vle-project-2-completed.html

Going by the transactions from the latest learning trial using Moodle, here at Bromley I feel certain that I will be looking at another successful outcome. There were 23 students taking part of which only 16 eventually completed the project and between them accounted for over 12,000 transactions in four weeks. For all those who did manage to stay the course, I presented feedback assessment for collaboration, and there is without doubt overwhelming support from them as well as a sense of achievement. However for students who’s engagement / attendance proved patchy before the project, the new approach seemed to be of little positive influence.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/01/learning-in-virtual-world.html

Just lately a lot of my time has been taken up with Second Life, if you have yet to try virtual worlds then let me recommend the experience. My principle reason for the whole venture is to see how this new semi-immersed virtual reality can be utilised for teaching and learning, even as an extension to our continuing work with Moodle. On Saturday 17th of Feb at 5pm I will begin hosting some presentation trials that will be looking at the Linden Script, that’s the language in SL, and comparing it with other main stream computer languages. So if you are free around that time and would like to come over for a short and small class and supply us with some feedback in another reality just click here and I will look forward to seeing you.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/01/video-beats-audio-star.html

At the start of this term decided to try using my PDA to record parts of my lectures, and these recording are in range of 3 to 4 minutes. The particular course that I selected for this is my High Level Programming for level 4 students, and to date I have made about 40 recordings. But I thought I would tryout something of an experiment by making these recording available in two forms, one being a straightforward mp3, while the other would feature a speaking CrazyTalk avatar. Although the speech content of the two media are identical, the CrazyTalk avatar version has attracted almost twice the number of viewings!

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/12/using-moodle-to-deliver-self-fi

I am hopeful that Moodle here at bromley College will begin to fulfil a commercial role following an enquiry the other day from company who required a course in Website Design for one of their employees. I have been running a very successful self financing course “HTML and JavaScript for Website Designers” for some time now, however it does require a minimum of 12 students to be viable, with the next one likely to start in January. This timescale was however too long, and I was asked if it could be run as a distance learning package, well maybe if I ran it through Moodle. As this will effectively be a trial, I have given the course for free in return for a comprehensive feedback and review. In fact when the boss came along to lookover the set-up, he signed himself up as well. The course can now run at the pace of the students, they will provide me feedback via the Journal, have access to resources using Block Folders, submit completed exercises as Assignments and keep in touch using Forums and Chat. Hey I may even be able to use Second-Life!!! I’ll let you know how it goes.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/11/podcast-or-videocast-which-do-y

Do you podcast you lectures? . I have started this in a small way but from the system logs the results were not encouraging. Anyway I started to give the whole idea some serious thought recently. From my own perspective, if am driving or travelling on public transport, then yes I would listen to a podcast, however if was sat in front of a computer, then I would appreciate something more visual. The feasibility of videoing and editing a whole lecture on a regular basis would for me be unrealistic. But do you really need the whole lecture, well no, and all I record usually are selected parts in audio using my PDA. Anyway I decided to pop one of my audio tracks into one of CrazyTalks avatars, the result, good, judging from the Moodle logs, the media is definitely getting a better response. If you would like to take a look just click here. Please feel free to feedback on your own experiences by posting to this blog.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/11/free-learning-resources-from-ou

free and open educational resources
If like myself you are always on the lookout for some quality e-Learning materials, then you simply have to take a look at the Open Universities Moodle site OpenLearn. The resources here are free to use and are of an excellent quality, well done OU.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/11/time-for-second-life.html

Just recently I decided that the time had come to put my money where my enthusiasm was, so I upgraded my membership in Second Life and bought some land and see how it could be used in conjunction with my work on Moodle. In fact I bought a small island from diddster.com, these are really nice properties and the company extremely helpful. In fact the whole experience was a bit surreal, as I had to leave my wife cruising around Diddsters Daydream island complex, made more stressful for her as she had not used Second life before, looking for a vacant plot and making the purchase. While all this was happening I was watching through a colleague’s avatar at work (Whoops), keep that bit to yourself. Anyway Jinxster of Diddster turned up and gave some very timely advice and we all had an extremely useful three way conversation. I have since acquired a building for my island (Shimmer Island) and begun accumulating some tools; whiteboard and media player, both of which were actually free. If you click on my island thumb nail at the top of this post, you will get a bigger picture.
Anyway I am off to my alternative reality now, but do stay tuned to see how things go.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/11/value-added-moodle.html

Keen as I always am to make use of our vle for course delivery, I am also very keen to find evidence on its effectiveness with regard to student outcomes. One of the courses that see particularly heavy use of the vle here at Bromley is my BTEC National Software Development. Just the other day I am informed that it has attracted highest Value Added in the country for this course, wow. How much of that is due to the vle, difficult to say, but I was asked to put my views in writing; 50 words! Anyway here is my response. We have an experienced subject specialist team delivering a wide range of software technologies that include VBA, VB6, C, Java, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP and SQL, and find attracts motivated students with an ambition for Software Development.
Our adoption and increasing use of the Moodle vle has further allowed us to explore a variety of teaching methods, that facilitate our students the opportunity for personalisation, to extend their learning beyond the traditional physical boundaries and time constraints of class based lectures.A bit Just a tad more that 50.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/10/second-life-from-dartmouth.html

I have just looged out of the first Second Life conference for teachers, I think. I got into the conference from a French restaurant in Dartmouth via rather a weak wifi signal, in fact I am Blogging from here still. There were plenty of people and some interesting proposals for future projects, its all looking extremely promising, all in all a great show. Well done Optimus Paul.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/10/google-for-educators.html

This week, I guess with no great surprise, I find that those people at Google, who no doubt have been keeping a watchful eye on our surfing habits, have made an encouraging response by launching Google for Educators. My first impression is that this has the makings of a powerful and valuable resource that already features a growing repository of materials, tools, ideas and stories. I was particularly taken by the invitation that we can upload video clips, a timely offer, given that I have spoken to a few people recently who are showing some concern as to where they can place such materials given the limits that seem to exist for storage in some institutes.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/09/social-networking-so-far.html

I have some satisfaction and surprises reviewing the way in which my plans for introducing a social networking forum are working out with the courses this year. I have given the rounded figures in the table.

A couple of points come to mind for me: 1 by far the most active group is the BTEC National General, but this is a year 2 group, so they already know each other well by now. 2 Though the HND group seem to have shown more activity than the BTEC National Software, in fact less then half, 9/23, of the HND have yet to actually post their own details, does age make you more cautious in these forums?

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/09/podcasting.html

Last week I decided to start using a podcast approach as part of my regular Moodle material. I have incorporated these as part of my level 4 groups work in Object Oriented Design. The course is delivered as a series of lectures accompanied by detailed course notes and assessed using a portfolio approach of exercises. It’s the presentation in class of these exercises that I have decided to make available as mp3’s. I have installed them all into their own folder and students access them through Moodles Add a resource/Display a directory feature. I decided against the usually highly mobile podcast approach, as I know very few of the students actually own one. I shall be sure to report on their popularity and utility in due course

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/09/tell-and-post.html

I started three new level 3 groups today and as a first exercise decided they should begin to make use of Moodle by posting lifestyle styles and ambitions to a forum. Postings could include links, particularly if they had Myspace, some did. I then asked them to reply to at least 2 postings, but not if they were already friends; I encourage this in support of the need to establish a virtual presence, after all given the diminishing requirement of funding bodies, students are only actually at College 2.5 days a week, so what happens the rest of the week? Well maybe it can be virtual, lets shall see. A significant proportion of postings were as I anticipated in youth code; medium is the message! I am reassured however given recent finding by Bev Plester and Claire Wood at Coventry Uni. Its early days but be assured I shall be collecting and posting feedback from the groups on these and other online activities.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/09/myspace-induction.html

The HND course officially started today with an induction. I had an hour to present myself and courses to them. This year has been really different though rather than explain courses in detail with references to handouts, assignments and grading, I talked almost exclusively about the part Moodle would play as a delivery platform in support of the collaborative leaning framework and assessment strategies that proved successful in last year’s trial. Upon ending the presentation rather than give out advice on pre-start of courses reading, I asked them to get a Myspace account, fill out all the categories and be sure to post comments to at least two from others. My plans are that the Social networking aspects of Myspace will not only form the first point for an ongoing trend of collaboration but be the foundation in forming an online presence and identity.

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/09/save-n-forget.html

Things Moodle-wise here at Bromley are looking OK for the start of the coming academic year. The new vle is up and running and the old version for 0506 is now only available to staff. Just the other day I found that I am to be teaching on the OO Development and OO Applications courses (that’s all about objects to us programming nerds). The courses uses Java and so I decided to begin populating Moodle with some of my Java CourseGenie materials, but was unsure where they were, home, work, CD, usb? Then I remembered that I had uploaded all that stuff to our DSpace content repository, great, logged in found them straight away no problems, of courses no folders to navigate, because there are none, meta-data discovery is the way. Uploaded the content as a Moodle Scorm Activity, finished, isn’t this the way it should be though?

http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2006/08/xbox-on-syllabus.html

I have a sense or resurgent enthusiasm again with regard to the place of games in teaching: re my posting to this blog on 3DML and Robocode, when today I read that Microsoft are to offer XNA Game Studio Express, a free consumer version of Xbox tools that will run on a PC. In fact my interest in games has taken an upward leap after discovering the Sleeper Curve in Steven Johnson’s book ‘Everything bad is good for you’ ( I can recommend it). The suggestion is that our pop cultures game playing has contributed to our ability in managing rising complexity and cognitive demands. I wonder what impact the mention of xbox programming would have on the syllabus?