Three years of egg on their face and the disciples over in moodle-land are still pushing the big Moodle security lie. Maybe they need to refresh their memories.

Good thing Blackboard bought Moodle…at least there is one secure LMS in the company to choose from and it isnt Moodle

Moodle Security = Oxymoron

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WordPress 3.3.2 is a security release and everyone should upgrade. Looks like the SWF uploader is being replaced…good, since it didn’t work that well anyway. No added features, but for security sake you do need to upgrade. Remember…don’t just push the upgrade button…do it right to avoid Murphy’s Law.

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Now that Blackboard has effectively bought out Moodle, they are wasting no time making their presence noticed. Just look at the #Moodle hashtag on Twitter today and it’s right in your face. Moodle sells out and Blackboard takes over…of course, I still don’t see Blackboard in the Official Moodle Partner list over at Moodle.com

MoodleBoard

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I love it when people tell it like it is…especially when that person is the leader of a very successful endeavor and doesn’t care that the truth may offend the “elites” in the industry. Kudos to the Canvas leadership for putting it out there.

But what about open source? Yes Ray Henderson talks a lot about open source, but clearly it’s eyewash. Blackboard hasn’t changed, but hope springs eternal.

So, what’s going to happen now? Expect more confusion. I don’t think it requires much imagination to suppose that the Moodle and Sakai community will become even more jumbled and Blackboard will shove innovation even further back on the burner.

And what about Instructure? Most of our customers are former Blackboard schools. We rarely see Moodle or Sakai make it to the short list of any education institution. We launched only 13 months ago and have just closed our 128th school. Why did Alamo Colleges, Auburn, Brown, Maricopa Community Colleges and Wharton pick us? Because Canvas is the open, full featured LMS platform, built on modern technology, native to the cloud. Instructure is about innovation.

And no, Blackboard can’t buy us – it’s not all about the money. (Yes, that’s my 2011 W-2.)

Keep learning,
-josh

Source: http://www.instructure.com/blog/2012/03/27/blackboard-calls-it-quits/

And in related news, it seems the Moodle lead dev isn’t getting a lot of love related to this sellout and he doesn’t seem to be taking it well…see screenshot below

The Blackboard PR department may have to contact him and provide some training on maintaining the proper corporate image.  Maybe the training department can travel to Australia and provide that training to all MoodleBoard employees like, according to the Chronicle, the BB leadership did when asking for his blessing on this deal:

Officials from Moodlerooms, NetSpot, and Blackboard recently traveled to Australia to tell the inventor of Moodle, Martin Dougiamas, of their plans, and in a way, to ask for his blessing. He is quoted in a press release by Blackboard as saying that he will continue to consider Moodlerooms and NetSpot official Moodle partners.

Source: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/blackboard-buys-2-leading-supporters-of-open-source-competitor-moodle

Source: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=199248#p868841

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Blackboard was bought out by Providence Equity Partners venture (vulture?) capitalists, who specialise in leveraged buyouts, last year. Presumably they borrowed the $1.64 billion they paid and need to see a significant return on that ASAP. Leveraged buyouts are usually about a fast turnaround and how to extract the biggest possible return in the shortest possible time regardless of the long-term outcomes. If they destroy Moodle and/or Blackboard in the process, that’s just business.

Source: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=199248#p868732

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Blackboard announces the purchase of moodlerooms, the largest Moodle partner. For those of you who don’t know, Moodle partners pay a stipend (normally around 10%) to Moodle HQ. Wonder how much Moodle HQ got and will continue to get in this deal?

Not sure why this should surprise anyone…Moodle was never an open source project…it was always about pretending to be one, getting free labor and development from thousands of people, and making a handy profit off a closed business model. However, this announcement takes the business side of Moodle to a complete new level.

I remember years ago, in the early days of Moodle, when the Open University had about 3 million pounds to invest in an LMS and decided to go with Moodle. There was a lot of concern about what that kind of money and influence could do to an “open source” project…many feel it drove moodle development via the development interest of the OU and not necessarily the community. That kind of money and influence doesn’t even begin to touch what Blackboard will bring to the table. I predicted years ago, even before, the ex-BB executive bought into Moodlerooms that this was heading toward BB owning Moodle.

Today Moodle just got Owned!

Of course, the lead dev is already trying to put lipstick on this pig and I’m sure many will pucker up and kiss it, but I’m not one of them…a pig is still a pig, no matter how much you try to dress it up

I would be misleading everyone if I said I wasn’t enjoying this more than just a little…to see the shock on the faces of all those Moodle disciples–and the cognitive dissonance of a couple already is priceless

First disciple in denial: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=199248#p868706

Second disciple (even named himself after Moodle)  in denial:

“@moodler: Bb has NOT bought Moodle itself. I want that to be perfectly clear.” <= @moodler is the project lead of #moodle

March 26, 2012 7:21 pm via Tweetbot for iOSReplyRetweetFavorite

@moodleman

Julian Ridden

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In this video I show how to quickly install a WordPress blog and then replicate it multiple times resulting in multiple independent WordPress installs using a single database. If you need hundreds of WordPress installs, then the using the network feature (multiple blog feature) in WordPress is the way to go. However, if you only need a few then installing separate blogs may be a lit simpler and easier for you to manage.

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I’ll be lurking in the #blogchat discussion tonight on #twitter and the topic of discussion is “favorite blog plugins”. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I realized it’s hard to identify my favorite plugins–I use a lot of different plugins on different sites depending on a lot of variables. However, in the spirit of sharing, here are some of my favorites/most used blog (WordPress) plugins — in no particular order:

- Akismet: What WordPress user wouldn’t list this among their favorites? Just look in the sidebar on this site to see the number of spam comments it has protected this site from–and compared to a lot of sites, I don’t really attract that many spammers. This is one of those plugins you just install, configure, and forget…it just does its job. So although I don’t think about it a lot, it is a great, free plugin and deserves recognition for doing what it does, very well.

- WP Touch: This is a great plugin that makes creating a mobile version of your WordPress blog very easy–and the free version does have a lot of features. I’m using the free version of this plugin on this site–check it out on your smartphone. I like this plugin so much, it is the only plugin where I have actually purchased the Pro version for use on another client site.

- Tweet Old Post: Okay, I know the true Twitter evangelists out there may cringe at this one–how dare I install something that will “auto post” to my Twitter account. Well, get over it, because I do…on more than one Twitter account…and I love it Great little plugin…if you haven’t checked it out, take a look.

- Blackbird Pie: A cool little plugin that I don’t use a great deal, but provides a nice way to insert tweets directly into my blog posts. The plugin adds an icon to your WordPress visual editor and all you need do is retrieve the twitter url or id and use the icon on the editor to add it directly to you post…see and example below:

MT @MackCollier: Tonight at #Blogchat 9 ET we'll be discussing favorite blog plugins. Here are mine: http://t.co/AotvT3fj

February 19, 2012 7:32 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@LisaPetrilli

Lisa Petrilli

Those are just a few plugins I use and like….I use dozens of others I like just as much, but will save those to share at another time.

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The video in this post is a follow-up to the last video I published here about creating a members only WordPress blog. In that video I briefly demonstated a WordPress plugin that allows you to upload a csv file of and create tens of thousands users in a matter of minutes. In this video, I demonstrate how to create that csv file of users with MS Excel. The video is a bit long…I’m sure given a lot of planning and thought I could have demonstrated this in under 10 minutes, but since I can now upload videos of unlimited length to YouTube, and since I no longer have the time to spend hours on creating these, my videos will tend to be a bit longer these days. The upside is, in this video, you should not only learn a thing or two about WordPress, but you may pick up a few Excel tips that could come in handy in several different applications–I demonstrate the use of the “text to columns”, “concatenate”, and “past values only” functions in Excel that are extremely useful. Anyway, enjoy.

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In the video above I demonstrate how to close a WordPress blog to the public and make it available only to members who have a username and password created for them by the blog administrator. The site I demonstrate has 49,500 members that I created and bulk uploaded in about an hour. I show the plugin I used for the bulk upload of users. I’ll create a follow-up video in a week or so demonstrating how I used Excel to create those users from a file with nothing but first and last names. If you have need for a private blog/website to share with a few people or tens of thousands of people, this should help get you started.

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