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http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=79081&parent=35 by Peter Sereinigg. switch edit on (right upper corner). and select the missing block ... BUT this question would fit better to the general questions of moodle not to the conferences Peter
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/2006/09/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/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/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/2006/10/second-life-from-dartmouth.html I hav e 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/2006/11/free-learning-resources-from-ou free and open educational resourcesIf 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/2006/12/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/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/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/2007/03/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/2007/03/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/2007/05/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/2007/06/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://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://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/08/so-long-intranet-welcome-dsace. This week thanks to some major groundbreaking efforts from my fellow Moodle VLE administrator Clive, we now have our DSpace content repository accessible through common authentication with Windows Active Directory via Free Radius server. If you have been following this blog then you may recall the posting DSpace Content Repository - Tuesday, April 12, 2005, where I reported that the system was now fully installed and rolled out for user access. Well to be honest, that turned out to be somewhat optimistic, because apart from myself, Clive and couple of other brave souls, not very much has been happening. But now that can all change, because through Clive's efforts this week not only can we offer users a common Windows Network, Moodle, DSpace login; you may like to keep up with his blog on all this. DSpace will now only allow authenticated users to access the actual content, in other words, the Meta Data is visible and will continue to be Harvested by OAIster, but only Bromley College staff and or Students can access the content. This of course overcomes one of the major concerns from staff, that their material will be open to all, regardless of Copyright or IPR. Naturally the next big bonus is that DSpace resource are now available from within Moodle; you just have to login in once at the start of your session. So goodbye to dupliacted Moodle resources, network drives, incomprehensible folder structures and ground fills of orphaned documents, from now on may DSpace and Meta Data rule.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/08/thoughts-on-social-nerworking.h Going on as I do these days with regard to the value of social networking tools practices and the implications for collaboration in learning, which you may well have picked this up from a number of posts in this blog. As its summer now and there are no classes, its given me time to start thinking about trying to see if I can extract anything at all meaningful from the exercise that I encouraged my year 1 level 3 students to carry out at the start of their course in September 06. In fact I did a couple of blogs on this which you can still get to from here and to save repeating myself they are:-
Tell And Post, Thursday, September 14, 2006
Social Networking So Far, Sunday, September 24, 2006
Essentially the idea was to start them off by using Moodle as a social tool and see if this had any impact of the likely emergence of online groups and ultimately outcomes. Just recently, during the summer, I have been dipping into SNA (Social Network Analysis) this is a methodology for mapping and measuring relationships and flows in a system; this can be human or even data itself. Now being a software person, my first reaction was to go looking for some tools, free ones anyway and I found Agna, a superb little piece of Java freeware. I used Moodle reports to produce a student-by-student activity for the Social forums throughout September 06. Then using their names, though for this exercise I have replaced these with numbers, as the node values in the Sociomatrix; see below.
For this simple Binary exercise I simply recorded a 1 at the intersection of contact between two students.
I carried out the exercise for two groups, who I shall simply refer to as A and BMy next stage was to use the Agna Network Viewer to produce charts.


I shall let you make up you own mind on the level of social networking taking place here, but just establish for you that the arrows indicate the direction of communication. Well what do you think? Is any of this likely to influence outcomes for later on the course? I will reveal all a week today, on Sunday 12th August.
http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=19&rid=957
Type: Report
From: America's Digital Schools
Published: 4 September 2007
From the key findings (pdf): "Open source is gaining importance for schools. The growth rate is a healthy 70% per year. Beyond Linux and the well-known Indiana open-source initiative, a number of other states and districts are considering open source. Moodle, a curriculum delivery platform, is an example of a popular open-source program. Widespread open-source usage will grow eight-fold from 2006 to 2011.
Keywords: buzz, moodle, news
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=440&parent=1009 by OpenLearn Admin. myLearningSpace has been launched this week to enable learners and educators to personalise their OpenLearn experience. Registered learners can create a personal page on OpenLearn to help them organise their self-study. They can customise the page to show a list of the courses they’re enrolled in, along with information about recent changes within those courses (such as new forum posts). Among other things, users can personalise their page to show or hide different blocks of information relevant to their needs. This may include showing a list of recent site visitors, enabling them to connect easily with other learners who are interested in similar study areas.
For further information on myLearningSpace see the Get started pages.
http://moodletraining.blogspot.com/2007/08/social-networking-outcomes.html If you had read my previous bog to this, where I presented two Social Networking diagrams, produced from the Sociomatrix data processed by Agna, then you will no doubt have been having some thoughts about the likely final outcome for the two groups. If you recall group ‘A’ displayed a very low level of social activity and group ‘B’ a far more impressive set of connections. Well here are the results. Of course it is not possible to draw any firm conclusions from a single trial, more are needed and more will now take place, but certainly the outcome even to a casual observer produces a clear enough impression. The less well-connected group ‘A’, have between them achieved results that are skewed toward Pass and Merit, while the more active network of group ‘B’ displays a skew toward Merit and Distinction. I must say that I was more than pleased with this outcome, as it does at least on the surface appear to support the case for a more socially oriented model of learning.
One more small and possibly insignificant point is that group ‘A’ would seem to have double the amount of late assignment submissions.
You will no doubt have guessed that I have been keenly showing these results to just about anyone that will listen, and the response I must say has been very positive. Apart that is from one senior manager, who will of course remain nameless. But who pointed out somewhat reasonably, that had the outcomes for the two groups been reversed, then we might have been able to build a case for blocking access to all these Social Networking sites! And what if any are the intrinsic suggestions here I wonder, that entertainment wins out against education, perish the though.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=77246 by Martin Dougiamas. If you believe Moodle should win this award, please nominate us:
http://www.packtpub.com/article/nominate-overall-open-source-cms-winner
Even though Moodle is technically not a content management system Packt assures me that we qualify.
In other news Moodle 1.9 is coming along well and we should have a Beta release very soon! ![[[yes]]](http://moodle.org/pix/s/yes.gif)
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=71624 by Martin Dougiamas. We are looking for a new PHP developer to work with us full-time on location here at Moodle HQ in Perth, Western Australia.
If you know someone who might be interested, or who might know someone who might be interested please let them know!
Strong PHP skills and good web design are definitely required to succeed in this role. You will need a high degree of self-motivation but will have the support of a knowledgeable team in Perth as well as a fun international developer community. A solid understanding of Moodle architecture will be viewed favourably.
RESPONSIBILITIES - Write high quality PHP code conforming to Moodle guidelines
- Unit testing
- Reviewing peer code
- Investigate and resolve bugs
- Participate in planning and design sessions (online and offline)
- Escalate issues when appropriate
ESSENTIAL SKILLS - Min 3 years experience working in a development environment
- Relevant tertiary qualifications or equivalent commercial experience
- Ability to operate with minimal supervision
- Ability to complete tasks to deadline
- Ability to work as a member of a team
- Good communication
TECHNICAL SKILLS - Very strong PHP programming skills
- Good knowledge of XHTML Strict 1.0 and CSS
- Good knowledge of MySQL and/or PostgreSQL
- Good knowledge of Linux system administration
- Familiarity with using the UNIX shell
- Javascript and AJAX experience would help
Interested? Please send your resumé with cover letter to jobs@moodle.com !
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=70338 by Martin Dougiamas. This server has been having some unusual problems causing it to lock up every now and then. The loads have been high (lots of visitors!) but I don't think that's the whole issue here.
We'll be bringing it down for maintenance sometime later today (so it will be unavailable for a while).
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=70126 by Martin Dougiamas. Unfortunately our anonymous CVS service (at Sourceforge) is currently down, which may impact administrators using CVS to maintain their Moodle sites. (Development access is unaffected).
Sourceforge have told us they switched it off due to very high loads on that server - this may be due to our growing number of users but it may just be a rampant process somewhere. We're still working it out with them.
In the meantime we're working on a CVS mirror just in case the Sourceforge service doesn't come back up.
For full details and updates, you can watch MDLSITE-182 in the Moodle Tracker.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=69208 by Martin Dougiamas. I'm very happy to announce that we will again be participating in the Google Summer of Code Program (an annual event where Google pays students to work for three months on open source projects mentored by established developers).
We had 83 applicants for 10 projects! The projects cover a number of features and improvements that have been much requested by segments of the Moodle user community.
For full information about the projects, see the Student projects page in Moodle Docs.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=68408 by Martin Dougiamas.
The eLearning Guild has just released their Guild Research 360o Report on Learning Management Systems, based on a survey of 930 e-Learning professionals representing 840 different organizations world-wide. The survey covers market share and satisfaction ratings in various key sectors using LMS products.
Moodle took out three Platinum awards (top award) and one Gold award (runner-up).
Education and Government Learning Management Systems:
 Satisfaction
|
 Market Share
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Small and Medium Corporate Learning Management Systems:
 Satisfaction
|
 Market Share
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For more details, see the eLearning Guild press release. Now's a good opportunity to thank our worldwide Moodle community of teachers, students, researchers, developers and other participants who help make the Moodle project what it is.  We also want to thank our Moodle Partners and the clients of our commercial services who contribute to the funding of our core team of developers and keep the software Free. If you need Moodle hosting, Moodle training or any other Moodle services, please use an official Moodle Partner company (you can find them listed on moodle.com).
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=68148 by Martin Dougiamas.
At long last, Moodle 1.8 is ready for production sites. 
After some of the issues some people experienced with Moodle 1.7, we modified our release process somewhat to give the testing team more time to help developers evaluate and stabilise all the new work in Moodle 1.8. As a result I think Moodle 1.8 release is of a very high standard and I highly recommend production sites using older versions to upgrade to Moodle 1.8.
In this release we've (again) changed nearly every one of the thousands of scripts in Moodle. Here is a taste of some of the biggest new features:
- Accessibility improvements - Moodle now complies with all major international standards in this area, including XHTML Strict 1.0. All the main forms are now consistently generated using a new core forms library.
- Moodle Network - the foundation of our networking strategy leading up to Moodle 2.0, it is now possible to link Moodle sites allowing cross-site roaming, transparent enrolments and remote log viewing. We also now include a Web Services API using XML-RPC for remote control and commands. These features are a result of the work of Richard Wyles and Catalyst in New Zealand - thank you!
- Roles improvements - after feedback from the community, our implementation of Roles from 1.7 has been further improved to increase the usability and flexibility.
There's a lot more in this release - full details are the in the Moodle 1.8 Release Notes, and downloads are, as usual, on the Moodle Downloads page.
Thanks to all the developers, testers, users and supporters who, as usual, help make the Moodle project possible.
Enjoy! I hope this version makes it easier for educators to facilitate quality online learning.
![[[martin]]](http://moodle.org/pix/s/martin.gif)
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=68146 by Martin Dougiamas. We've just released two new packages of the older 1.7 and 1.6 releases, containing a number of bug fixes.
In particular, a number of minor security issues were fixed, so even if you don't plan to make any major upgrades in the near future, we highly recommend upgrading to the latest stable package for your version.
You can find all detailed information about the releases in the release notes for Moodle 1.7.2 and Moodle 1.6.5, and of course, all the downloads are available on the Moodle download page. 
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=67833 by Martin Dougiamas. Despite Moodle's popularity around the world it's always nice to have some local recognition from one's home state. 
Many of you know that the Moodle project was started in Perth, Western Australia and we continue to be based here (our headquarters).
At a big annual awards dinner for the Western Australian Information Technology and Telecommunications Awards last weekend, Moodle won two categories out of the ten: one for "Best Exporter" and one for "Best Online Service", plus we were a finalist for "Best Product".
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=67227 by Martin Dougiamas. Time is running out for student programmers to apply for projects under the exciting Google Summer of |