The integration between Elgg 0.6 and WebCT is now available on our download site. The WebCT Powerlink is identical, so anyone migrating from Elgg 0.4 does not need to update anything on the WebCT side.

The integration itself remains the same functionally - the Elgg-portion of the code has just been updated to take advantage of the database abstraction layer that was added for Elgg 0.6.

A few users of the Elgg PowerLink have suggested that it would be nice for their students to be able to log into Elgg directly, without first having to pass through WebCT.

We have just completed an Elgg authentication plug-in which addresses this request. When users access Elgg's login page and enter their username and password, Elgg's internal authentication is bypassed, and a web-services connection is made to the WebCT server instead.

If the username and password match those stored in the WebCT database, the user is logged into Elgg and is presented with their Elgg homepage.

For more information and download instructions, please see this page.

As with the Elgg PowerLink, this authentication plug-in is provided free of charge. If you have suggestions on how it could be improved, please let us know.

Curverider, the company founded by the creators of Elgg, have just launched a turn-key hosted solution for Elgg at http://elggspaces.com.

This is a much-needed option for those institutions who don't have the technical expertise or the staffing resources to host Elgg for themselves.

Since the service is being run by Elgg's developers, users can expect all of the latest bug-fixes and features to be available as they become available.

We made some small changes for the MediaWiki-Elgg integration to support Elgg version 0.6. The original version was coded against Elgg 0.4.

Specifically, Elgg 0.6 supports a database table prefix for the Elgg tables, which is now a configuration option for the integration.

I have just posted the MediaWiki-Elgg integration for download off the Aperto download site. More information about the integration can be found here.

Comments and feedback welcome.

I am back in Vancouver after an eventful week at the Annual WebCT Users Conference, held in Chicago this year. It was a bittersweet event for me, since it was the last official WebCT-only conference -- all future ones will be joint Blackboard/WebCT events. I was able to reminisce with a few old-timers about the past 8 annual conferences, and the great energy and enthusiasm the attendees and the staff have brought to these events.

Ok - enough of that. Let's get to some the major take-aways for me:

Blackboard's Beyond Initiative

This initiative was announced in March at BbWorld, and originally focused on 4 areas: Global Learning Objects Respository, Social Networking, ePortfolios for Life, and Outcomes Management.

In the opening keynote by Matt Pittinsky and Michael Chasen, a fifth element was added, which was Student Centered Learning. This was of particular interest to me, since it happens to be the exact title of the handout that I created for the WebCT-Elgg integration, and which was an insert for the conference bags. It is good to see that everyone is thinking along the same lines.

Blackboard is just starting on these initiatives, and clearly stated that they would be multi-year projects. While real details were not yet available, I hope that these central sites will have a trickle-down effect to the product lines, so that web 2.0-type functionality can be taken advantage of directly within the course environment right across the institution.

Blogs, Wikis, RSS and Podcasts are everywhere

There was a huge buzz on these topics at the conference, with many sessions and pre-conference workshops touching on one or more of these. Most of the users take advantage of centrally-hosted commercial sites, such as blogger, blogspot, del.icio.us, so I took the opportunity to mention Elgg as a locally-hosted option in many of my conversations.

Dr. Helen Barrett's Closing Keynote on ePortfolios

Very good presentation touching on a number of key points (Download slides here).

The take-aways for me were:

• Concept of Working Portfolios vs. Presentation Portfolios
  
  
• Is Portfolio to be used as an Assessment of learning (summative), or as an Assessment for learning?
  

The Closing Video

It would not have been a WebCT conference without some comic relief from Utah State's Kevin Reeve and Marc Hugentobler. This time, they wandered around the conference with a camera crew and captured some great moments. The sailor suits for the conference party at the Navy Pier were a nice touch.

Hello WebCT-clients - I am currently attending the WebCT User Conference in Chicago. If you are interested in having a chat about Elgg and the WebCT PowerLink integration in person, please feel free to send an email, with potential times that work for you.

I will also be demonstrating the integration as part of the following conference activities:

• my talk on Thursday morning, July 13th, at 9:00 am in Room Michigan A
  
  
• a demonstration in the Vista Developers Network booth in the exhibit hall on Thursday July 13th, from 10:45 to 11:15 am.
  

I am looking forward to catching up with you all in Chicago.

Sasan

Over the past few weeks, I have been involved in a project using Elgg in a non-academic environment.

Vancouver is currently hosting the World Urban Forum, an international event on global urban sustainability. Working with teams from UBC and Opn Design, Aperto helped set up two sites to support activities related to the event:

Earthblog.ca is a site to promote dialogue around social, environmental, cultural and economic issues facing the Greater Vancouver region.

Elgg's main homepage was branded with logos, and the entry page of Elgg pulls in the most recent postings of four key bloggers, as well as a 'hot comment' (as designated by one of the site admins periodically), and the most recent comment to the site.

Most of the Elgg functionality was disabled for visitors, except for the profile tool. The official bloggers have access to all of the Elgg functionality.

Another key part to this site was the single-sign-on integration between Elgg and MediaWiki. All login is handled by Elgg, and the session is transferred to MediaWiki if a user wants to edit a particular Wiki page.

We will be releasing the Elgg-MediaWiki integration to the community shortly, as a number of other Elgg users are looking for this functionality. More on that in a future post.

The second site Aperto worked on is GUSSE, a social site to collectively discuss, review and apply the best ideas for sustainable cities.

The integration here involved a customization to the Elgg entry page again. Registration and log in is being handled by the social tagging system opntag. Elgg reads the opntag session information and creates users in the Elgg system. GUSSE maintains all Elgg core functionality.

It has been interesting applying Elgg to a non-academic environment, and I hope that these examples help showcase the flexibiliity of Elgg, and the ability to customize the look and feel of the application.

After getting a number of follow-up requests from the WebCT European Conference in Edinburgh, I decided to create a short Flash-movie which demonstrates the WebCT-Elgg integration.

The file can be found at:

http://www.aperto-elearning.com/files/elgg_demo.htm

The demo is best viewed on a 1024x768 or larger display, to minimize any scrolling.

For those interested, a PDF version of my presentation slides are also available for download from the conference site at:

http://gromit.webct.com/webct_europe_2006/Tu/Salari.pdf