Tagged with:  

My 5 favorite Moodle 2.5 improvements [Thibault]

My 5 favorite Moodle 2.5 improvements — from Moodlenews.com by Joseph Thibault

Excerpt:

Moodle 2.5 is coming this summer and after seeing some of the features demoed during the General Developer’s Meeting [on 4/23/13] I can say that I am very excited.  Here are my top five improvements to Moodle 2.5…

 

Tagged with:  

College branding: The tipping point — from forbes.com by Roger Dooley

Excerpt:

Change is coming to this market. While there are multiple issues of increasing importance to schools, two stand out as major game-changers.

 


From DSC:
Important notes for the boards throughout higher education to consider:


Your institution can’t increase tuition by one dime next year. If you do, you will become more and more vulnerable to being disrupted. Instead, work very hard to go in the exact opposite direction. Find ways to discount tuition by 50% or more — that is, if you want to stay in business.

Sounds like the scene in Apollo 13, doesn’t it? It is. (i.e. as Tom Hanks character is trying to get back to Earth and has very little to do it with. The engineers back in the United States are called upon to “do the impossible.”)

Some possibilities:

  • Pick your business partners and begin pooling resources and forming stronger consortia. Aim to reduce operating expenses, share the production of high-quality/interactive online courses, and create new streams of income. Experimentation will be key.
  • Work with IBM, Apple, Knewton and the like to create/integrate artificial intelligence into your LMS/CMS in order to handle 80% of the questions/learning issues. (Most likely, the future of MOOCs involves this very sort of thing.)
  • Find ways to create shorter courses/modules and offer them via online-based exchanges/marketplaces.  But something’s bothering me with this one..perhaps we won’t have the time to develop high-quality, interactive, multimedia-based courses…are things moving too fast?
  • Find ways to develop and offer subscription-based streams of content


 

Tagged with:  

Top20LMSs-Oct2012

Tagged with:  

Moodle Version 2.3 is now available

Moodle Version 2.3 is now available

Tagged with:  

3 solid paid training options for Moodle — from Moodle News by Joseph Thibault

.

Tagged with:  

From LMS to Learning Ecosystems — from GettingSmart.com by Tom Vander Ark

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The sector is in the early stages of transitioning from LMS to learning platform ecosystems. As noted in the 10 Elements of the Post Textbook World content libraries will exist within ecosystems will include these elements:

Tagged with:  

Rebuilding the LMS for the 21st Century — from CampusTechnology.com by Jennifer Demski
Can the goals of 21st century learning be met by retooled legacy LMSs, or does the future belong to open learning platforms that utilize the latest technology?

From DSC:
I especially love the last quote:

“We’re doing a disservice to our students by pretending that the traditional LMS reflects the way that the world works. A phrase we use a lot on our campus is that we feel it is our responsibility to train our students for the world they’re going to inherit, not the world they live in now, and certainly not the world we grew up in.”

Tagged with:  

Blackboard launches Open Source Services Group — from Blackboard
Company will support both commercial & open source systems

WASHINGTON – March 26, 2012 – Blackboard Inc. today announced the launch of Blackboard Education Open Source Services, a new effort to support clients using open source education technologies. With the announcement, the company will continue to focus on its flagship Blackboard Learn platform as well as ANGEL and Edline, while also helping institutions successfully manage open source learning management systems (LMS) including Moodle and Sakai.

The move complements Blackboard’s existing focus on supporting the entire education experience with products and services for learning management as well as mobility, real time collaboration, analytics, campus services and notification, and other needs. Blackboard already serves hundreds of institutions that use Moodle, Sakai and other LMS systems in tandem with these additional education-focused solutions. In extending its focus to include open source options, Blackboard can support a wider variety of approaches to online learning and help institutions increase the value they get from technology of all kinds.

Tagged with:  

Blackboard acquires Moodlerooms, NetSpot

Blackboard acquires Moodlerooms, NetSpot — from Blackboard
Company now one of world’s largest education open source service providers Moodlerooms, NetSpot will continue to operate independently

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.

Moodlerooms and NetSpot are official Moodle Partners, and each will continue their current programs to support clients with no changes to their leadership or their support and service models.

In addition, each team will also become part of Blackboard’s new Education Open Source Services group, dedicated to supporting the use and development of open source learning technologies globally.

Leaders from each company recently traveled to Perth, Australia to meet with Martin Dougiamas, founder of Moodle and Managing Director of Moodle Pty Ltd, and present their plans. The meeting included Blackboard CEO Michael Chasen and Chief Technology Officer Ray Henderson, Moodlerooms CEO Lou Pugliese and Chief Architect Tom Murdock, and NetSpot Managing Director Allan Christie.

Also see:

Blackboard speaks out on open source move — by Dian Schaffhauser

Excerpt:

Blackboard’s announcement that it had acquired Moodle service providers Moodlerooms and NetSpot to create a new business division focused on delivering open source services to educational customers may well be met with the same kind of astonishment Mac users showed in 1997 when Steve Jobs announced that Microsoft was investing $150 million in Apple. When long-time competitors are suddenly on the same team, you can’t help but ask, what’s going to happen to the game?

In this interview Blackboard Learn President Ray Henderson and Moodlerooms Chairman and CEO Lou Pugliese explain why Blackboard is getting into the open source business, what’s different about delivering services to those customers versus Blackboard’s traditional customers, and what might be next on the open source agenda for the No. 1 learning management system company in the world.

Tagged with:  

GoodSemester.com

 .

https://www.goodsemester.com/?p=featuretour

From DSC:

  • Tie this type of cloud-based platform in with learning analytics, new types of certifications/assessments/badges, web-based learner profiles, and the ability to continue building your own cloud over a lifetime, and you may find yourself enjoying a very powerful learning ecosystem!!!

 

 

From Daniel Christian -- November 2011 -- An important note to publishers of academic/educational materials!

 

From DSC:
We really need a much more granular approach — like an iTunes for academic content.

 

© 2024 | Daniel Christian