Humboldt State's Moodle Office is Makes the News!

Humboldt State University (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Our own inimitable Bill Bateman's video tutorials for Moodle 2.5 are featured at the Moodle News Website as were four of his videos for 2.3.

Bill is the lead Moodle Support Specialist in Humboldt State University's Moodle Office located on the third floor of the library. Bill's team manages the day-to-day operations of the learning management system, one-on-one student support, one-on-one faculty support as well as going out to faculty offices and classrooms. The Moodle Office is a good place to drop in for help and a cup of coffee. And if all that wasn't enough, Bill still takes the time to produce the video tutorials. The instructional design team and I rely on the Moodle Office pretty much on a daily basis.

Moodle News is the international hub for all things Moodle. It is the brainchild of Joseph Thibault a Course Manager at StraighterLine.com, and Mel Benson, a writer who runs Moodlerific.org, a site to share and explore Moodle ideas. She is also Moodle tech support for a school district Minnesota. Moodle News is a valuable resource for all things Moodle: it "is a collaborative project bringing order to news and information pertaining to the open source project and learning management system called Moodle. We scour the web for the freshest, most interesting and valuable Moodle information and publish it here."

Related articles

• 8 Moodle 2.5 Overview Videos for Faculty from Humboldt State University (moodlenews.com)
• Looking back at 2013, a huge year for Moodle (moodlenews.com)
• Moodle Tutorial: Using the book module (jasonrenshaw.typepad.com)
• Teaching and Learning with Moodle (moodlenews.com)

Fallen Angel

Angel sold out to Blackboard.
Or Blackboard acquired Angel. Either way it is a real shame. Angel had a lot going for it as a company. It was practically revolutionary in the way it handled customer service. While Bb had service tickets that were years old, angel would send a team of people out to each campus to meet with people. All of the reasons Blackboard claims to have acquired Angel were all of the reasons we left Blackboard - innovation and customer service. I really hope Bb doesn't figure out too soon how to lock down, monetize and password protect all of the great features of Angel. The next year will probably be the greatest argument for open source software since Micro$loth. I seriously think this aquisition should be looked into especially in light of all the litigation around Desire2Learn and Blackboard's attempts to sue them out of existence. Angel's market share was expanding and if they just waited they would certainly have become a dominant force in another year. We really need to take education out of the hands of the corporations. I am not anti-Blackboard - I am anti-big money, bad service, and stifling of innovation. I was pretty angry when I first heard this news because of all of the time, training, energy, and money the State of WA has put into this. We still really don't know what it all means. I will be brushing up on my Moodle skills. One of the more measured responses to this Paradise Lost was from Marc Lentini who said via email:

"We got word about the Blackborg buyout less than an hour before starting our very first Angel Transition Orientation.

Our plan is to continue transitioning to Angel. It's still a better product, it's still going to be maintained as its own entity, it's going to be here for three years (which is all we figure you get out of any system these days), and it'll still allow cross-campus collaboration.

Then I'm going to ram my head into a concrete wall."

The Best of Both Worlds: Second Life + Moodle = Sloodle! CIT2007

9:45 AM – 10:45
The Best of Both Worlds: Second Life + Moodle = Sloodle!
See how the world’s most popular learning management system can be linked to the most
popular 3D virtual world. Sloodle incorporates tools within Second Life that tie to a Moodle installation, allowing for in-world blogs that post to a website, chats between avatars and online students, and even in-world attendance tracking. Come learn how this exciting project started, where it stands now, and where it is headed.

D.I. von Briesen, Instructor, Futures Institute, Central Piedmont Community College, NC

Avatar: Icabad Vallejo

Used a flickr account at the beginning of the presentation – it was a collection of pictures from Second Life.

He opened the presentation with Radio Paradise in Windows Media Player.
Handed out a playing card that had the URL www.tropicalteachers.com

He discussed the importance of mood established by creating an environment – he used images and pictures to open the workshop to create an atmosphere.

They have a campus Island. He is offering office space for free for educators.

There are weekly meetings sloodle.

Question: how do you create a mashup between Moodle and SL? Why would you want to do this?

Second Life is good for:
1. Proximity
2. Emotional investment

Every Weds. 2:00 PM there is a developers meeting.

Jeremy Kemp at San Jose State headed up sloodle.

A mash-up actually has to use an API. Code that allows other programs to talk to one another.

Linden Labs made the code open source (the client not the server)

Question: How does a quiz happen in Second Life? Is it something that we should be doing in SL? Quizzes can be given some visual reinforcement.

There is a chat integration between sl & moodle. They use a chat logger. If someone was logged into Moodle, they can use this to chat with people in Second Life. This allows others who can not get into SL, are on a PDA, or a low connection speed.

He has a history instructor that gives extra credit for building virtual, historical sites.

Why would you want to give a slide show in SL? There is a sense of being and communicating in a space. There is a powerpoint that discusses this. But he says it is too long. The screens are going to be able to share from Flickr.

They are asking what is appropriate for teaching. An HUD for students should be able to reflect how people communicate in real time.

He considers Second Life as a 3-d web.

He used the Sloodle toolbar HUD (heads up display). User still has to authenticate into Moodle. The HUD has a blog and classroom gestures. The 3d world has a line of communication between SL & Moodle. HUD puts all the gestures one needs all in one place.

There are modules you have to install on Moodle.

Princeton just bought 9 islands.

We were at a place in SL called sloodleville (Sloodle Learning Center).

There is no connection between the assignments and the gradebook.

They want to create an in-world browser.