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Last week I had a server crash — hardware problems — and have spent the past week recovering. I had several php apps running on the server along with a lot of static content–including a couple thousand videos. So I spent a day rebuilding the server on a new box and restoring the static content was a breeze–really drove home the point for me about the value of keeping things simple. 500+ videos were just uploaded into a directory and were not part of a php app–very simple to restore. However, the vast majority of my content was tied to a couple Moodle LMS installs, several WordPress installs including one WordPress Mu install, and five MedaiWiki installs.  Read more... (580 words, estimated 2:19 mins reading time)

The foundation behind the Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment, a popular and free courseware-management and group-cooperation system, has announced that it intends to pursue a merger with another open-software group active in higher education, the Jasig organization. Jasig is known for uPortal, a general online gateway for college and university services. The two groups say they will craft a merger proposal to be submitted to both boards of directors in the coming months.

See original post here…

Sakai following Blackboard’s lead and integrating student management systems into their LMS…smart move.

Over three years in the making and finally, moodle.org is in the process of upgrading to Moodle 2.0 — The version that promises to revolutionize  the LMS industry and solve all the many moodle problems once and for all. I’m sitting on the edge of my seat just waiting for a glance of what the site will look like. I can’t wait to try out all the cutting-edge features. I’m so excited, I made a video…

SunGard and Blackboard have largely kept out of each other’s turf, with Blackboard dominating the market for course-management systems and SunGard focusing on administrative software for student records and other tasks.

Now SunGard is crossing that line. For the first time, the administrative software company will directly sell a course-management system to colleges and universities.

SunGard is making the play through a deal with rSmart, a for-profit company that packages, supports, and hosts freely available software that has been produced through a collaborative “open source” process. Under the partnership, SunGard will sell subscriptions to rSmart’s version of Sakai, an open-source course-management system developed by universities.  Read more... (109 words, estimated 26 secs reading time)

Ever have someone ask a seemingly simple question and when its answered, you ask yourself…WOW, where did that come from? See the answer from a Moodle disciple below to a one sentence question posted to the Moodle forums…WOW, where did that come from?

For a different answer to this 3+ year project, see below:

http://educhalk.org/blog/moodle-2-0-vaporware/

That kind of thinking is why many traditional colleges will be extinct in the near future. One reason why faculty are not the best decision makers when it comes to ensuring the longevity of an institution…

Lots of colleges are experimenting with e-book readers. St. John’s College is fighting them. At a recent meeting, the faculty of the liberal-arts college’s Annapolis campus voted “to discourage students from loading up Homer or Aristotle on their Kindles or iPads and bringing them to seminar,” said Rosemary Harty, the college’s communications director.

Read more…

Kudos to Matt Mullenweg for leading by example when it comes to open source.

Automattic has transferred the WordPress trademark to the WordPress Foundation, the non-profit dedicated to promoting and ensuring access to WordPress and related open source projects in perpetuity. This means that the most central piece of WordPress’s identity, its name, is now fully independent from any company.

This is a really big deal.

http://ma.tt/2010/09/wordpress-trademark/  Read more... (207 words, estimated 50 secs reading time)

I haven’t been reading the threads over in Moodleland for a couple of months now, so I decided to check in today and see what I had missed. In a word…nothing! Same old disciples spewing the same old propaganda. I noticed the “hot topic” is still, when will Moodle 2.0 be released…calling that a broken record is a huge understatement. It seems the 3+ year development is still at least 6 months away from a true beta…that should be directly after Moodle 2.0 Preview 36

Question: What do all of the following phrases have in common?  Read more... (366 words, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)

Now that Elluminate and Wimba are owned by the evil empire I wonder if all the Moodle disciples will stop using them? It’s going to be real funny watching the all those BB haters using Elluminate at their next Moodle developers meeting…and it will be even funnier when Moodle finally realizes it can’t keep up and BB owns them within the next couple of years

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In a fact sheet about the purchases, Blackboard officials promised to continue to support both products, including their compatibility with rival course-management systems and open-source systems. “We’ll honor all existing contracts for Elluminate and Wimba clients,” the company adds in the fact sheet.  Read more... (140 words, estimated 34 secs reading time)

It looks like quite a few people are having problems after upgrading, or attempting to upgrade, their WordPress sites to 3.0. If you are having problems, then first scan the forums here:

http://wordpress.org/support/view/all-topics

Also, you may want to look under the upgrade category on this site to make sure you go about upgrading in a manner so that you will be able to recover if you do run into problems.

If you have exhausted your options and are still stuck with a broken site after attempting to upgrade, then contact me with details and I’ll give you a reasonable quote to fix your site.

WordPress 3.0 was just released and it’s a very nice version. I think the best feature in this release is the merging of WordPress and WordPress Mu (multi-user). I just upgraded this site to 3.0 and, as usual, the upgrade was smooth, quick, and problem-free.

I’ve been hosting a multi-user site for the past few years that currently has around 500 blogs, so I’ll be moving that site to WP 3.0 in the next few weeks. Of course, I’ll be doing some testing first, but as I do the transfer, I’ll create a video to document the process and publish it here.

I noticed a post in the moodle.org forums today that grabbed my attention for a few reasons:

1. It is reporting yet another Moodle site being hacked…that’s about a bazillion and counting now
2. It’s not just any Moodle site…it’s actually a site set-up specifically for a Moodle Moot (a type of Moodle conference that typically attracts a hand full of Moodle evangelist)
3. It was hacked the same day the Moot was scheduled to take place — Ouch!

Here is an excerpt from the person making the post…  Read more... (290 words, estimated 1:10 mins reading time)

As if BP didn’t have enough trouble to deal with at the moment, it seems they were running a Moodle LMS site that was hacked and private data (or data that was supposed to be private) was compromised. While this is pretty amusing and I’m sure it’s not on the top of anyone’s list at BP, it does point out one thing any organization running Moodle should be aware of…if someone really wants to hack your Moodle site, it’s typically not a difficult thing to do.  Read more... (197 words, estimated 47 secs reading time)

Last week was a big one for Google fans in higher education. Google Wave opened its doors, and Google Voice now lets students get calls forwarded from their old numbers to their new phones. Google made one more announcement last week—about a new course-scheduling system, CloudCourse—that could potentially have implications for higher education. READ THE REST HERE.

And see the second comment in the comments section of the article…that’s coming and it’s a death sentence to the rigid, out-of-date LMS systems like Blackboard and Moodle. Blackboard may survive as it’s evolving into a full-fledged campus management system, but Moodle, being nothing more than a document repository, gradebook, and discussion forum, is well on its way to extinction.

Purchase a Moodle 1.9 Extension Development book…

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=149501

…released on the same day Moodle 2.0 “Preview 1″ is released.

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=149513

Didn’t someone spend the last 2 years completely rewriting the entire codebase for 2.0?

The phrase ”A day late and a dollar (or $39.99) short” comes to mind. But, that’s about par for anything coming out of remote-Learner.

Here’s an idea…take your $39.99, go down to the local book store, rummage through the discount bins and buy a bunch of Windows 95 books for 99 cents each…if you’re into outdated stuff at least you’ll get more for your money

Moodle 2.0…the Godsend to LMS users worldwide…under development for over 2 years now…

Someone emailed me today asking: O 2.0, O 2.0 wherefore art thou 2.0?

He/she may have even posted here: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=145632

Actually, that is a very good question, but one that doesn’t really concern me. The person who emailed me (why he/she emailed me is a mystery) stated that Martin (you know, king of the disciples), stated at the recent UK moot that he has decreed Moodle 2.0 Stable will be out in July so all in the Northern Hemisphere will be able to upgrade before school starts in the fall.  Read more... (204 words, estimated 49 secs reading time)

Update: See comment by Network Solutions in comments area.

It seems Network Solutions and WordPress may not be playing well together and, as usual with tech geeks, they’re both pointing the finger at each other. I don’t have the time or interest to follow all the links on the net to figure this one out, but if you are hosting WP (or any other php app for that matter) on a network solutions, then you may want to do a little research on this one…here are a few links to get you started.

http://news.techworld.com/security/3221030/network-solutions-hacked-again-after-mass-wordpress-blogs-attack/

http://blog.networksolutions.com/2010/we-feel-your-pain-and-are-working-hard-to-fix-this/  Read more... (132 words, estimated 32 secs reading time)

Sad…

Moodle, the open source learning management system, has been plagued with major security and privacy vulnerabilities over the past couple of years with the severity of those issues seeming to be on a sharp upward trajectory. Information about another batch of very serious security and privacy issues was released yesterday (Saturday, 27 March 2010) with notice that everyone needed to upgrade.

Understand…these issues weren’t discovered yesterday…they have been in your codebase for a very long time…they were simply released yesterday to a select few people.  Read more... (460 words, 1 image, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)