Tag Archives: moodle

google

Google Chrome and Moodle

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In my last posting on Chrome I mentioned Moodle issues with Chrome which I had picked up from Kev Hickey’s note on Jaiku.

I have now installed Chrome (on Vista running in VMware Fusion on my iMac) and is running smoothly and very fast as well.

Tried out the Gloucestershire College VLE (we run Moodle 1.5.4) to see how it worked.

Google Chrome and Moodle

Logged in fine, but as you can see in this screenshot when you try to post a disucssion topic (or a wiki page or a lable, etc…) you don’t get the WYSIWYG HTML editor.

Google Chrome and Moodle

Now if you know your HTML you could format that way, but with a wiki page, are all learners going to know HTML, I think not (as does Kev).

The problem is twofold.

Firstly Chrome uses the same backend browser, WebKit, that other browsers such as Safari uses. You have exactly the same issue when accessing Moodle in Safari – which is why I always use Firefox on my Mac when editing the VLE and adding discussion topics on the VLE.

So why doesn’t the HTML editor in Moodle work in WebKit?

This is the second problem, the HTML editor is an old editor which has been discontinued. Newer HTML editors exist which do work in WebKit browsers such as Safari and Chrome.

The answer from browser developers appears to be, update your web sites and applications!

Eventually things will work fine, as Moodle 2.0 uses the newer TinyMCE HTML editor which does work in WebKit browsers.

So if you are using Moodle you may want to avoid Chrome until your Moodle installation is upgraded to Moodle 2.0

twitter

Twitter has landed (on Mars)

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Some of you may follow me on Twitter (or Jaiku) and will know I flit around the South-West and sometimes further afield.

Looks like there’s a new Twitterer to follow and they’re on Mars.

Twitter has landed (on Mars)

Nasa are using Twitter (amongst other web tools and sites) to update people on what the Pheonix Mars Lander is doing on Mars.

Twitter has landed (on Mars)

This to me illustrates another way in which micro-blogging tools can be used to provide information and interesting stuff to learners.

One of the features of Twitter is that the tweets are available as an RSS feed and therefore can be fed into a browser or into a VLE (such as Moodle).

news, vle

Moodle 1.9 Released

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Today sees the release of Moodle 1.9.

Our latest release fresh from over 5 months of community beta testing and improvements. This release is like a “gold reference” version, but usually the daily build above will be even better. Moodle 1.9 not only has lots of requested new features but some very large performance improvements over Moodle 1.8. We recommend all sites upgrade to 1.9 as soon as practical, especially if you are seeing poor performance in some areas.

Download it now.

Thanks Gary.

vle

Moodle taking the lead in the secondary sector

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Moodle (the open source VLE) one of the most popular VLEs in the FE sector is proving to be a real hit in the secondary sector.

The Guardian reports that:

Schools are becoming increasingly attracted to open source virtual learning environments (VLEs), according to a report by the British Educational Suppliers Association (Besa), which also reported a solid increase in spending on the software packages that assist the development of personalised learning.

The report, Personalised Learning in Schools, questioned more than 600 schools in England and found Moodle, a free e-learning platform, was now the second most popular in schools, but with the preference split between primary and secondary. Moodle was the virtual learning platform of choice among secondary schools and the third most popular among primaries, after Digital Brain and My Grid for Learning.

However are they going for Moodle because of the benefits of the open source system, the flexibility and the fact that it “works”, or are they attracted because they believe that it is free and are under the impression that this means free as in no cost.

Anyone who has every run a VLE realises that when you take in all the costs of running a VLE, the licences are a very small part of the overall cost of the implementation, development and operational costs of running a VLE.

Hopefully those schools which are using a VLE (and that means any VLE not just Moodle) are not relying just on the efforts of a sole enthusiast and have a scalable and costed implementation plan. Anyone can install and run Moodle (personally I have three versions running on a single Mac mini) however it is a different story when that implementation needs to be accessed by hundreds of learners from across (and outside) the institution.

video, vle, youtube

Video on the VLE

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I have over the years looked at how we can store and use digital video to support and enhance learning. Generally small video clips seem to work better online (just look at the success of YouTube) rather than whole programmes.

Though having said that I am currently enjoying the BBC Archive trial and the BBC iPlayer beta and on both of those I am watching full length programmes. However I am watching it for entertainment rather than educational – raises another question, is there a such a stark difference between entertainment and learning these days?

We are storing video clips we use on the VLE (we use Moodle) using the Flash Video format. Though some staff are using YouTube or TeacherTube.

Our Flash video generally streams “okay” both inside and outside the college.

I have found that using Quicktime H.264 encoded files results in a similar file size, but much better quality. This was particularly evident with the Italian Language programme I used as my example, where the audio was out of sync with the video when using Flash video which would have proved difficult for language students to follow the foreign language.

h.264 video

However it does require that the client have Quicktime installed and though this is a free download for users outside the college, the Quicktime player we have installed on college machines is not capable of playing H.264 content.

The main advantage of encoding H.264 was the time it took to encode the files. Though quality and final file size were also advantageous.

To encode a 15 minute MPEG2 Freeview recording took around 15 minutes on my iMac.

To encode the same 15 minute MPEG2 recording as a FLV file took about five to six hours… and then I needed to create a Flash object which contained the FLV video file.

We now have a 15 minute limit on files just because anything longer will take too long to download. For those video recordings/files we put them on DVD and allow the students to view them via a DVD player.

Longer term for larger videos we are aiming to have a media/video server, but this will be mainly aimed at streaming internally.