Desire2Blog

Following the lead from Adobe and others (Photoshop Elements, Premiere Elements, etc.), D2L has announced the release of Desire2Learn Elements, apparently a less full-featured learning environment than the standard D2L package. Essentials is intended for institutions with fewer than 5,000 users. John Baker, Desire2Learn President & CEO said: "As a company that shares the ideals held by its educational clients, we wanted to find a way to provide clients with the best educational tools possible regardless of their size. This package will allow all our potential clients to have access to enterprise-class tools and functionality; removing another barrier in the delivery of effective education." D2L press release Story from Campus Technology

The Moodle Moot is over, at least for me it is. There's still a couple of sessions going on but I'm shot from talking LMS all day long. For some reason, a vision of a wet moodle keeps popping into my mind ... please stop that. Just a few thoughts in closing: 1) The best part for me today was to be with a whole bunch of anti-Blackboard people. There was only one person (that I saw) who was trying to say that Blackboard is not evil. The vast majority of the attendees were either former Blackboard users, or current BlackCT users who are planning to switch away from Darth Vader. (flickr photo courtesy of emerald isle druid ) 2) The user/developer community of Moodle is growing and passionate. Those seem to be two key components of a successful FOSS project. 3) California is becoming increasingly Moodlefied. The California schools are all over the map as far as LMS implementation is concerned, but if they ever have one system that is clearly dominant, it will likely be Moodle based ...

Jason Cole – Director, Cognition and Instruction Associates, session titled “Open Source + Open Content = Open Education” Abstract: “As the world of open content and open source software expand, the natural next step is the combination of the two. Truly open education will require a combination of open content and software available to a global audience. Currently, open content and open software are developed completely separately, and there is no easy way to join the two. These silos are slowing the adoption of open content and increasing the cost of education.” “This talk will discuss some future possibilities for integrating these two worlds. The next generation of content repositories and Moodle tools will provide the opportunity to begin to truly integrate open content and open source. What might this integration look like and what are the barriers still in our way?” Author of Using Moodle available under Creative Commons Why are textbooks so expensive? Textbook Costs: $900 per y...

What is Moodle? The word Moodle is actually an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment The first breakout session (11 AM - noon) that I attended was with Michael Penney – LMS Project Manager, California State University – Humboldt. The title was “The Case for Moodle as an Enterprise Level Learning Management System (LMS): Why Open Source makes sense for public institutions looking to build an online learning environment.” (prize for the longest title) Humboldt LMS committee decided to completely drop BlackBoard. Many California schools are making the same decision. They will be Moodle-only within the next year. Moodle has better standards/accessibility compliance: Moodle version 1.8 = full sec. 508, WCAG 1, 2, 3 Italy is pushing Moodle because they have even stricter accessibility requirements than the US. Scalability questions about Moodle because it is php-based: however, php is also used for Yahoo, Wikipedia, and FaceBook which are all very scaleable. Commun...

I'll take a shot at live blogging the Moodle Moot this morning. No guarantees. 8:30 - Jim Farmer is making welcoming remarks and preparing to introduce the keynote speaker, Kevin Kelly from San Fracisco State University. Topic: "Moodle at the Center: Communities of Practice, Integration, and Partnerships." 8:43 - Low connectivity here - Kevin says that wireless users in the audience might reduce the bandwidth enough to make the presenter's access unworkable - but I'll let the others stop using the wireless - not me. 8:45 - Three interconnected areas of Moodle Teaching and Learning Technology Management Organizational Administration 8:47 - Metaphors to describe the LMS world: Metaphors from Literature: Image from Gulliver's Travels (Blackboard): Moodle-iputians holding down the Gulliver Blackboard with ropes and stakes trying to hold him down. Metaphors from complexity science (autopoiesis, or self-organization, interconnectedness, fractility, or self-similarit...

I'm in Albuquerque for the Moodle Moot on Friday. From their website: "This year's moot will be focused on intra and inter institutional communication, and features a keynote presentation by San Francisco State University's Kevin Kelly - Moodle at the Center: Communities of Practice, Integration, and Partnerships." "Dr. Jason Cole is the author of Using Moodle and the Director of Cognition and Instruction Associates. ... He has also worked at San Francisco State University where he and Kevin worked to introduce Moodle as an improvement over some other LMS which will remain nameless." " Tim Hunt is part of The Open University's Moodle development team. ... The Open University, founded in the 1960s and based in Milton Keynes, UK, is the world's first successful distance teaching university. It is in the middle of a two and a half year programme to build a state of the art VLE based on Moodle. It employs the largest group of Moodle developers...

Recently, Desire2Learn served on Blackboard its Preliminary Invalidity Contentions , which is an analysis of D2L's view about why the Blackboard patent was invalidly issued by the USPTO. This is a 70 page PDF that contains a detailed and lengthy analysis of prior art at the time of the Blackboard patent filing. They specifically refer to 60 pieces of evidence of prior art (pages 3-7) that "anticipate and/or render obvious the asserted claims of the ’138 patent." Some of the included prior art include: 1. Educom/NLII Instructional Management Systems Specifications Document, Ver. 0.5 (April 29, 1998) 2. IMS Prototype, first public use and/or sale occurred on or before April 29, 1998 3. Janison Solutions, Web Training Toolbox Management Guide (May 1999) 13. Ceilidh Version 2.7, first public use and/or sale occurred on or before January 1997; http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~ceilidh/papers.htm l 14. Fred T. Hofstetter, Serf User Guide Version 1.0, University Of Delaware (Jan. 1998)...

Being ever so magnanimous, Blackboard has taken a shot at erasing some of the incredible badwill that they have generated over their B.S. patent and subsequent lawsuit for infringement against D2L. I've used this graphic before, but it feels like the time to bring it back again. This feels very snakey and snarky to me. The BLACKBOARD PATENT PLEDGE was released by the company on 2/1/07. "In summary, the Blackboard Patent Pledge is a promise by the company to never assert its issued or pending course management system software patents against open source software or home-grown course management systems. The Blackboard Pledge is legally binding, irrevocable and worldwide in scope." Yeah, right. Of course I believe them. "Blackboard is also extending its pledge to many specifically identified open source initiatives within the course management system space whether or not they may include proprietary elements within their applications, such as Sakai, Moodle, ATutor, Elg...