A new Addition to the Marsden Whanau – Malea Praise Marsden born 10:21pm 2/12/2010, 3.445Kg(7.6 Pounds)
Malea Praise Marsden
December 9th, 2010Free online Moodle courses
October 28th, 2010Open Polytechnic of NZ and Flexible Learning Network have just finished developing some new Moodle courses and are offering the courses for free during their pilot!
here’s the full press release:
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An exciting opportunity is now available to get qualified in the open source environment.
The launch of the Open Source Learning Laboratory now allows the delivery of high quality, accessible training in open source software.
Specialised courses for effective learning
Six courses specifically designed for the open source environment are available now for enrolment:
- Moodle Administration – This course will develop the skills and knowledge to configure the Moodle Learning Management System to meet an organisation’s specific learning and development delivery requirements, manage learner and course data, identify security and maintenance issues and deliver appropriate reports for business decision-making purposes.
- Developing Courses in Moodle – This course teaches the learner how to apply online course design skills using the Moodle learning environment. Moodle is now the predominant learning management system being used in the New Zealand Tertiary Education Sector as well as having a large take-up by education and vocational training institutions worldwide.
- Technical Documentation – This course will provide students with the knowledge and skills to; make decisions about appropriate technical documentation to meet a specific technical requirement, and business need; how to manage the process of technical documentation production, and how to develop technical documentation according to industry standards within an Open Source development project.
- Open Source in Business – The course aims to prepare learners to make decisions about implementing an Open Source application including deployment, maintenance and licensing. The course will assist learners to understand the value of different tools or applications in a business context; make choices about software purchases; identify the opportunities for Open Source in a business context.
- Programming for Open Source Software with PHP – This course provides an introduction to developing programs in PHP and integrating with other technologies to develop Open Source web applications.
- Open Source Software Development Model – This course will provide students with the knowledge and skills to identify the attributes of an open source (OS) development model, the processes and organizational implications of managing and using such a model in IT development projects and the protocols of working within an open source community context.
- Dedicated tutors with proven industry experience.
- Tutor support is available in all courses by experienced tutors with specialist knowledge in the open source environment.
Limited spaces available free of charge
We are currently offering places in all courses free of charge, go to www.eduforge.com to see details. Courses are short, suitable for part-time study delivered entirely online. Places are limited and are on a first come first served basis. There is also general information on open source technologies, a showcase area and project spaces at www.eduforge.org.
Enrol online today
To reserve your place in any of the courses available, visit www.eduforge.com and complete your enrolment soon as places are limited.
Turnitin and Moodle
October 27th, 2010With the new Plagiarism API landing in Moodle 2.0 I’ve been working on the Turnitin plugin for Moodle 2.0 and backporting some of the new features in the 2.0 plugin into a new 1.9 version
The 2.0 version has the following features:
- Single folder for really easy installation – just drop it into a new folder called “turnitin” in the new /plagiarism folder in 2.0
- Uses Teachers own credentials instead of a “global teacher” account – makes for better integration with Turnitins other products like Grademark
- I mentioned it above – new “experimental” integration with Grademark. (needs a few victims to test/give me feedback)
- Better Date handling – uses the start/close dates in Moodle as the start/close dates in the Turnitin assignments it creates (although Turnitin doesn’t like start/close dates before the assignment is created so it uses the earliest possible date instead)
- More advanced setting of Turnitin features when creating/updating an assignment. You can now set:
- Whether to compare a submission against other students files
- Whether to compare a submission against Internet sources
- Whether to compare a submission against Journals, periodicals, publications
- When to generate the Originality Reports
- Whether to use an institutional repository (if set up)
- Exclude Bibliograpy references from the report
- Exclude quoted text from the report
- Exclude small matches from the report
- Improved performance and handling of errors (still more improvements to come over the next week on the error reporting page)
- Now creates assignment in Turnitin as soon as Moodle assignment is created instead of waiting for the first file to be submitted (it creates the assignment in Turnitin when the next cron cycle runs after the Moodle assignment is created)
- Easier integration with other Moodle modules (soon to come) – keep an eye out for integration with essay quiz questions and the Workshop module.
The new Moodle 1.9 version has the following new features:
- Better Date handling – uses the start/close dates in Moodle as the start/close dates in the Turnitin assignments it creates (although Turnitin doesn’t like start/close dates before the assignment is created so it uses the earliest possible date instead)
- More advanced setting of Turnitin features when creating/updating an assignment. You can now set:
- Whether to compare a submission against other students files
- Whether to compare a submission against Internet sources
- Whether to compare a submission against Journals, periodicals, publications
- When to generate the Originality Reports
- Whether to use an institutional repository (if set up)
- Improved performance and handling of errors
Sites using an older 1.9 version of the integration that wish to upgrade to Moodle 2.0 must upgrade their 1.9 Turnitin integration first – otherwise they will lose content/data during upgrade.
The new 1.9 version of the code is available as a git branch here:
http://github.com/danmarsden/moodle19-patch_turnitin
(this is based off the old mdl19-turnitin branch on git.catalyst.net.nz so if you’ve been using that it should be an easy switch)
Installation of this on an existing 1.9 site should only be attempted if you can easily manage significant customisations to your Moodle site (and know how to use git) – if this is new/difficult for you, best that you wait untill you upgrade to Moodle 2.0 – you can also get this code in patch or diff format here:
http://github.com/danmarsden/moodle19-patch_turnitin/compare/MOODLE_19_STABLE…mdl19-turnitin.diff
http://github.com/danmarsden/moodle19-patch_turnitin/compare/MOODLE_19_STABLE…mdl19-turnitin.patch
The 2.0 version of the code is available as a git branch here:
http://github.com/danmarsden/moodle-plagiarism_turnitin
or you can get it as a zip here:
http://github.com/danmarsden/moodle-plagiarism_turnitin/zipball/master
To install the 2.0 version – just grab the files above and put them in a new folder called “turnitin” under the /plagiarism folder in 2.0
then..
- Go to: Admin > Advanced features and select the checkbox “Enable plagiarism plugins” and save the settings
- Go to: Admin > Plugins > Plagiarism Prevention > Turnitin configure this page as usual
- Select the “Turnitin Defaults” tab and set the default settings you would like when a new module that allows plagiarism is created.
- Make sure Scheduled Tasks/Cron is running on your site
- Create a new Assignment and make sure Turnitin is enabled
- Submit a file
- Done!
I’m also working with Sergey Butakov to generate a Moodle 2.0 Crot plagiarism plugin – Crot is an open source based plagiarism tool that uses the MS Live (Bing) Search engine as a backend for comparing results – it’s not quite ready/working yet, but you can check out the progress so far here:
http://github.com/danmarsden/moodle-plagiarism_crot
For those wanting to create their own Plagiarism plugin with another tool, I’ve created a “new” template that can be used as a basis for creating your own plugin here:
http://github.com/danmarsden/moodle-plagiarism_new
and developer docs on the api are available here:
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Plagiarism_API
It’s important to note that Moodle 2.0 doesn’t include any Plagiarism plugins by default – you must install them separately – but as it is all self-contained in a folder it is very easy to install. Inclusion of Plagiarism Plugins in Moodle Core may be investigated/debated/discussed in future (definitely not before 2.0 final release!)
Always keen to hear feedback – let me know how you go!
Awards Time?
August 22nd, 2010With nominations soon closing for the NZ Open Source Awards I’ve just heard about Packt Publishing’s Open Source Awards – It looks like Moodle and Mahara aren’t eligible, but if you’re aware of any open source products that you think should be recognised make sure you nominate them! – Packt are offering cash prizes to the winners and runners-up.
The NZ Open Source Awards are a bit more flexible and a wider range of projects will be eligible but nominations are closing very soon!
SCORM Bug update
July 13th, 2010In preparation for Moodle 2.0 we’ve been going through all the outstanding SCORM bugs in the tracker and have merged many of the fixes into 1.9Stable – we’ve closed over 30 bugs in the past 3 weeks with a range of issues from grading to support of buggy SCORM packages. Piers has also been working on a new SCORM player to hopefully fix a range of issues people have had with the old one – it’s based on the new player that Petr Skoda wrote for the new IMSCP Module in Moodle 2.0.
2.0 is looking like a great release!
New Mahara book
February 18th, 2010Packt Publishing just sent me a copy of the new Mahara book:
Mahara 1.2 E-Portfolios: Beginner’s Guide
It’s been a while since I’ve sat down and read through a text-book, my eyes tend to glaze over and I find something else to read instead! I’ve also never been very good at sitting down and “studying” – This book surprised me, I was expecting a book detailing the different features in a dry step by step manner, but what I found was quite different. The first paragraph of the content in the book made me feel a little uncomfortable:
So, you’re interested in Mahara? Maybe you are already using it, but you are wondering if you are using it well. Maybe you’ve recently heard of Mahara and you are wondering if this is actually the ePortfolio solution you were looking for? Or, maybe you have been told you have to use it and you just need to get a sense of what Mahara is all about?
The book seemed to be talking to me – that’s not supposed to happen is it? After reading further I began to almost see the writers at the front of a computer lab speaking to me sitting at a PC – this easy to read tone engaged me in the book and the blend of content, hands on activities, and reviews made it an interactive experience – not what I’ve come to expect from the reference manuals I normally have on hand! The book has some great use cases and full detail without overwhelming the reader. It’s split up into logical bite-sized chapters that could be tackled one at a time when the reader has a quiet moment. Packt release this book as an eBook which I found useful – it meant that you could switch over to a web browser and run through the activities on the demo site provided specifically for readers of the book. I have a multi-monitor display which made this easy – some readers will definitely prefer the hard copy. Unfortunately the urls in the eBook weren’t live urls so I had to copy/paste them, but that didn’t take too much effort.
I’d recommend this book to anyone new to ePortfolios or new to Mahara – it gives the reader a really good detailed knowledge of not only the features of Mahara, but how they can be used in a variety of ways for very different groups of people. The book is great for real users – teachers/students/educators – it gives a much “easier to digest”, concise guide than the mahara.org online documentation. It’s not aimed at Administrators or Developers but if you haven’t implemented Mahara yet it gives some good information for new administrators or those considering Mahara’s suitability towards the end of the book. I’d highly recommend that any organisation running Mahara grabs a hard copy of the book to lend someone when they walk into your office and ask “so what’s this Mahara thing?”
It’s available on Amazon, but cheaper from Packt Publishing who sell the eBook as well.
Moodle and SCORM 2004 – certified already?
November 1st, 2009now that I’ve got your attention…. The guys at Rustici have written an plugin for Moodle to connect to their Commercial hosted SCORM player – which is SCORM Certified for 1.2 and 2004
Bascially, they “host” your SCORM object on their SCORM Cloud, and the Moodle plugin redirects the user to their site, and allows their site to pass back information like the grade and duration data. The Moodle module is free to download, and you pay Rustici for “hosting” your SCORM objects. You can create a free demo account to test their SCORM Engine but to use on a production site, you will need to pay them for the hosting.
The Moodle code and the SCORM Cloud are still in beta, (I’ve just had a quick look through the beta code and reported a couple of small issues) but in the near future, this could be an easy answer to those RFP’s that require a SCORM 2004 checkbox to be ticked.
something like this could be used in those RFP’s(and in the moodledocs):
Moodle 1.9.5 is SCORM 1.2 Compliant and Certified, it supports some SCORM 2004 content, but if SCORM 2004 certification is required then the commercial Rustici SCORM Cloud can be used to host SCORM objects that require full SCORM 2004 support
With the availability of the Rustici engine at an affordable price, the urgency for getting the SCORM module in Moodle SCORM 2004 compliant/certified has definately decreased.
Moodle Scorm 1.2 Certification
October 23rd, 2009In case anyone missed it – Moodle is now certified for SCORM 1.2
Helen posted about it.
Martin closed the Moodle Tracker issue
Good work everyone!
Moodle Networking bugs
September 11th, 2009I’ve been battling with a couple of issues with Moodle Networking over the past week!
The first was an issue where the configuration of Mnet between a Moodle and Mahara site on the same server worked fine, it obtained the various keys as necessary, but when an Mnet call was made like a Single Sign on call from a Moodle user accessing Mahara, it would fail – with no useable error message anywhere to be found! – I eventually traced it down to a call to xml_parse – turns out that libxml in certain versions of PHP is quite buggy – and this is actually a known issue with other areas of Moodle. MDL-17136 MDL-16759
IMO we should really notify administrators that they are potentially running buggy code so I’ve created MDL-20220 to add such a notification!
The other issue I’ve been battling with is related to Moodle and Mahara not generating any keys at all – this is centered around the installation not being able to locate an openssl.cnf file on the server, and it appears in my testing that adding an environment var on the server didn’t reliably work! – also I needed to get this to work on a XAMPP install or an MoWeS install, so setting an environment var wasn’t really an option! I’ve got an incoming patch for 1.9Stable and Head that fixes this – I also have a patch for Mahara which will go upstream very soon!
New windows installer for Moodle
September 3rd, 2009A while ago I noticed Silverstripe and Drupal had been added to the new Microsoft Web Gallery for installing on Windows platforms – this installer looked really easy for people to use, so I wondered how much it would take to put one together for Moodle!
Here’s the result: http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/Moodle.aspx
If you’re running windows you can click the following button to trigger the install!
Early on the documentation seemed a bit on the limited side, but has improved a bit now and the Web Application Team from Microsoft were very helpful! – to see the scripts that build this package see: http://cvs.moodle.org/contrib/tools/m4wpi_builder/ thanks to some help from Eloy, the package is being rebuilt each month with the latest weekly build. It’s not an automated process getting the links in the Web Gallery updated though, so I expect it to take a bit of time before the Microsoft site is updated each month with the new build.
The packaging works a little like the LAMP installer for Windows, but it installs IIS/FastCgi/PHP instead. It doesn’t “automatically” install MySql but it does install the MySql odbc drivers, and it’s very simple to install mysql seperately.
The WebPI Packaging process doesn’t allow configuration of folders outside the webroot which can be a problem as the moodledata folder should really sit ouside the webroot for security and shouldn’t be accessible via an http request – IIS 7.0 allows you to prevent this by using a web.config file to prevent the access – IIS 5/6 doesn’t use the web.config in this manner, but the MS team have pointed me to this posting which will allow the same thing to be achieved – I haven’t implemented this yet, but will have a look at some point and try to include it in the package.
The other issue I came across is that there’s no easy way to determine the url that will be used to access the site on someone’s machine – according to some friendly help from the Microsoft Team:
Generating a wwwroot automatically is always challenging. The WebPI doesn’t do it because there’s no consistent way that the WebPI can know exactly which applicable host name you want to be used for your application. There may be any number of legitimate host names for your server.
To get around this, the Moodle config file used by the package uses a combination of $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] and $_SERVER['SERVER_PORT'] however this may cause issues in the long term….but it would be relatively easy for someone to configure this manually post-install if needed.
At the moment – the package I’ve put together only supports installation with MySql, but it’s possible to allow users to choose between MySql and MS Sql during installation – When I get some free time, I might look at how easy this would be to add!
