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Its been a while since I last checked into Moodle-Land to see what’s happening–in a nutshell, nothing new–Moodle 2 still sucks

In scanning a list of a few hundreds posts, one of the newest is titled: “Moodle 2.02 runs dead slow”. In that post, the author makes some very familiar statements:

My  students are falling asleep while waiting for pages loading in 2.02!

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For all Moodle end users…. DO NOT UPGRADE TO VERSION 2.x if you are running 1.9x ok    IT IS NOT WORTHY!

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 Read more... (324 words, estimated 1:18 mins reading time)

Moodle partners still trolling the forums un-checked–this has become a common, almost everyday occurrence in the Moodle “community” over the past few years. What a “caring” reply from the community, business partner–and you thought the forums were  for free help when you found yourself in deep trouble, didn’t you?

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=172883

Saw an interesting post today titled “Why Open Source Sucks“. The author makes some good points and based on the replies to his post, has rattled the cage of a few open source evangelists. I just love the first comment on that post were Arthur is “suitably shocked” and it’s going to take him an entire month to get over his shock so he can reply…shame on you Adrian

I love point number 4–in the case of Moodle, this couldn’t be more true!

4. Open source can be great for businesses, or schools with lots of money and lots of time to waste.

I’ve scaled back quite a bit on posting about the frantic cries for help, destroyed sites, and pure anguish being expressed in the moodle.org forums a result of people attempting a Moodle 2.0.x upgrade–the fact is, posting about what a disaster moodle 2 is, has become the norm over in moodle-land. But I found the following post in moodle-land today worth re-posting. To answer the posters question–without a complete backup–NO, you’re stuck.

Hi,  Read more... (148 words, estimated 36 secs reading time)

After over three years of development and nearly four months after the Moodle lead dev declared Moodle 2.0 Stable, 14 independent colleges have concluded that Moodle 2.0 is “Not production ready”…in fact, it’s far from being suitable for any real production environment.

Moodle2-Status-Report  Read more... (461 words, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)

A couple days ago, I reported about the hair-brained idea of ending support for the latest stable version of moodle — moodle 1.9.x — in December of this year. Seems that resulted in a lot of backlash for Moodle HQ. So today, Mo announced support would continue through June 2012 and in the same announcement, stated the following:

I hope this assuages any fears anyone had (possibly having the misleading “End of Life” in the title of this thread wasn’t helping much!)

Source: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=168021#p738502  Read more... (208 words, 2 images, estimated 50 secs reading time)

It’s official…Larry, Mo, and Curly leading Moodle into the future

The official advice being given for months on moodle.org has been, if you are planning on upgrading to Moodle 2.0–don’t! Anyone who has been following the moodle 2 saga, knows that’s good advice. Now, the moodle lead dev (aka Mo) chimes in and announces that support for moodle 1.9.x will cease less than a year from now, in Dec 2011.  So, let’s see where that puts you:  Read more... (432 words, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)

1. You are responsible for your institutions moodle install.

WARNING: This report is (NSFMD), Not Safe for Moodle Disciples. Read at your own risk!

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~n51ls801/MoodleTwoNCSUCoursesFall2010Web.pdf

This is a “must read” report for anyone in a decision making position considering adopting Moodle as an institutional Learning Management System (LMS).

The very first line in the Introduction section of the 61 page report should serve to alert any reader that this is not your typical “I’m a blind Moodle lover and can’t see the flaws” type report that is prevalent on moodle.org.

Our experience with using Moodle as a Learning Management System contrasts sharply with the faculty experiences described in Vista to Moodle: Everybody’s Doing It2  Read more... (935 words, estimated 3:44 mins reading time)

Why do I like Marc (net-buoy)? Below is an example…hard to find that kind of integrity around moodle-land these days. Most of the free thinkers have left and it’s a place dominated by disciples–some so obvious they even change their names to things like “Moodleman”

Oh dear Julien….. yet another back-handed remark from the evangelistas?

Ian, what I find untenable is that during the discussion on moodle.org of the specifics of the possible enforcement by Moodle HQ of any rights to the use of logo, trademark etc., you and others remained mum. I can;t just blame it on Brits as people on this side of the pond seem to have turned their backs on Mr. Emerson and seem to be most willing to duck, duck… until they are the goose, at which point they appear to whine inordinately….  Read more... (244 words, estimated 59 secs reading time)

Now there’s a question all Moodle users should be keen to know the answer to. I think the end of life for Moodle as you know it is around the corner and the end of life of Moodle as a viable LMS may well come before the end of life support for 1.9. When you have a userbase so afraid of your newest and greatest release, that they want to know how many years they can just keep using the old stuff, then you should start seeing the writing on the wall  Read more... (261 words, estimated 1:03 mins reading time)

I have so many Moodle 2 nightmare stories bookmarked, it’s becoming difficult for me to find the time to blog about all of them, but the following post from yet another new moodle user caught my eye. This type review from those who are seeing Moodle for the first time is quite common these days…could it be that expectations for what constitutes a true 21st century web app has changed over the past few years?  Read more... (889 words, estimated 3:33 mins reading time)

http://iandavidwild.blogspot.com/2011/02/is-moodle-partner-programme.html

Have you been hiding under a rock for the past 5 years Ian?

I know you have been around Moodle for a while, so why the interest all the sudden? Get rejected as one of the chosen few and now don’t like “the program”?

Here is a little history lesson on the subject for you. Moodle.com doesn’t only try to control who uses their logo (which is understandable) they try to corner the market to a point of attempting to prevent anyone from even using the plain text word Moodle to advertise that they offer moodle services.  Read more... (193 words, 2 images, estimated 46 secs reading time)

A lot of people are posting and tweeting about the following video being a message from Instructure to Blackboard, but seems to me it’s a message to all of the “last decade”, entrenched LMS’s out there. The message may be, your old “kludgy”, closed, ridged systems are on the way out. Students live in a connected, web 2.0 world and Canvas intends to embrace that world.  Read more... (286 words, estimated 1:09 mins reading time)

This could be the sign of a real competitor for Moodle in the open source LMS market. I’ve reviewed their Canvas LMS and it’s light years ahead of Moodle in virtually every area. It remains to be seen how “open source” they really become…not all open source is equal. But, for anyone out there looking for a viable alternative to Moodle’s tired old 1990′s look, feel, and functionality, you should take  a look at Canvas to see what a web 2.0 LMS looks like.  Read more... (356 words, estimated 1:25 mins reading time)

Saw an interesting post in moodle-land today. Actually, it was a reply in a long, interesting thread about Moodle 2.0 backups and how broken that entire process really is now. The part of the reply that is very interesting, is quoted below:

True enough… and of course we are already backing up the Moodle data area and the database, though now that the database and the Moodle data area are so closely linked, it’s unclear how to get consistent backups.

Source: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=167471#p735217  Read more... (298 words, estimated 1:12 mins reading time)

Sometimes a fresh set of eyes can spot the ugliness that others seem to have learned to live with and can no longer see.

For a demonstration of just how true this really is, see the post about a new Moodle admins experience with moodle 2.0…he hasn’t been jaded by the nightmare of an upgrade…he just installed a fresh copy of 2.0 and is looking at it in its natural glory. As of now, no one has replied in moodle-land…but I’m sure it won’t be long before the disciples descend and attempt to explain in painstaking detail why that ugliness is so beautiful to them.  Read more... (346 words, 1 image, estimated 1:23 mins reading time)

No elaboration needed here…this from one of the most loyal Moodle disciples in moodle-land and an official Moodle business partner.

I would like to be able to placate you in some way but, unfortunately, although I might not put it so strongly you make some compelling points. The documentation for Moodle 2.0 is currently lacking, plain wrong or non-existent. The new file manager is proving to be a source of confusion for many and I strongly suspect bitter experience will result in some rework in future versions.

I will tell you what I’m honestly telling most people… unless you have a compelling reason to move from 1.9 – don’t  Read more... (112 words, estimated 27 secs reading time)