(photo by Amazon)

Elgg has a new book!

We are currently using Elgg as the ePortfolio and social networking tool of our Personal Learning Environment. My plan is to review the book and highlight the sections in each chaper that are most useful for people using our integrated system.

Preface: 

I am writing a lot of marketing material these days as we launch our PLE product.  Thus I have a huge respect for how hard it is to describe these rich complicated systems simply.  Here is a quote:

Elgg provides each user with a personal weblog, file repository (with podcasting capabilities), an online profile, and an RSS reader.  Additionally, all of the user's content can be tagged with keywords - so they can connect with other users with similar interests and create their own personal learning network. However, where Elgg differs from regular weblog or commercial social network (such as MySpace) is the degree of control each user is given over who can access their content.  Each profile item, blog post, or uploaded file can be assigned its own access restrictions - from fully public to readable only by a praticular group or individual.

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(photo by uptal of flickr)

Web application designer's can take inspiration from the Google User Experience Design Principles. These 10 guidelines are great to keep in mind and help you think about the people who will have to use your web application every day.  The principles tie directly into the Ten things Google has found to be true.

The first two are probably the most important to us here at Solution Grove.

1. Focus on people—their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.

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(photo by by Bramus!)

A very interesting post caught my attention.  There's an easier and faster way to add Google Analytics to Moodle.

If you have no server access and can't add the Google Analytics code directly on the source code, Eamon of rElearn.ie has found an alternative solution for this.  It is simply done by adding an "HTML block" and pasting the Google codes.

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(photo by Moodle Tutorials)

Are you a Youtube junkie?  Almost every internet users (if not all) have come across or used this video-sharing site.  Moodle users and/or developers would have most likely used Youtube for a share of its tutorial.  But look no more.  Moodle Tutorials is the answer.

I was reading GHOP when I found this site.  It pretty much is a clone of Youtube and its functionalities.  Young students have uploaded them to the site and more are definitely coming.

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(photo by FABIOLA MEDEIROS of flickr)

Jeff Atwood is frustrated with web sites that timeout a session and lose the data that was typed into a form. There is a huge comment thread discussing the various ways around this.  Most of them are overly complex and try to use tricks like refreshing the page using AJAX. The simple answer of course is, don't lose the user's work.

Some commenters say you should just lock your computer, but that obviously is not appropriate in all situations. Short session timeouts are not the right answer for all situations either. 

Sessions timeouts are necessary for security in some applications, most people know about online banking, and really any application that expects users from a shared computer. The developers and administrators of a site need to balance security and usability and decide on the right session timeout.

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(photo by jurvetson of flickr)

Gustavo Duarte makes a good observation about engineering and software. He compares some information in Richard Fenyman's report on the Challenger Disaster and software design. The most interesting parts are how the avioncs where designed.

The software is checked very carefully in a bottom-up fashion. First, each new line of code is checked, then sections of code or modules with special functions are verified. The scope is increased step by step until the new changes are incorporated into a complete system and checked. This complete output is considered the final product, newly released. But completely independently there is an independent verification group, that takes an adversary attitude to the software development group, and tests and verifies the software as if it were a customer of the delivered product.

 The testing step is the most important here.Each small part is tested as it is built to ensure it is correct before moving on to the next part. Software projects can learn from this. It is an interesting data point considering the quality level that is required for the Space Shuttle. All projects should work towards a goal of this level of quality. Testing at each phase can help improve quality and inform the design as the tests reveal shortcomings and expose new ways of thinking about a problem.

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(photo by depone of flickr)

Scott Leslie blogged about a new wiki he set up to keep track of content conversion tools for course management systems. He is asking for help to complete it. 

This is necessary since no two CMS support import and export in exactly the same way. We have felt Scott's pain, the .LRN LORS (Learning Object Repository Service) package had to have special import procedures for each version of Blackboard we wanted to support import from.  It looks like there is still a long way to go in learning content interoperability.  

The cynical view is that there is very little ecconmic driver for any particular vendor to really get the bugs out of thier export.  Yes, it has to exist on the spreadsheet, work in the sales demo, or the product won't be bought. However, its years after the system is installed before users really start using export and by then the CMS Vendor has thier money.

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(photo by solutiongrove.net)

Any idea what a whiteboard is?

Interactive whiteboards are used in many schools as replacements for traditional whiteboards or flipcharts.  They provide ways to show students anything which can be presented on a PC.  In addition, it allows teachers to record their instruction and post the material for review by students at a later time.  This can be a very effective instructional strategy for students who benefit from repetition, those who need to see the material presented again, for students who are absent from school, for struggling learners, and for those who review for examinations.

For Moodle, you may try a third party whiteboard software.  You can use it either as a single component or as a component of online interactivity suite.

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(photo by HubbleSite - NewsCenter)

In an earlier blog post about branching and merging with subversion, I detailed how I do merging with subversion alone. 

It's great to understand the basics but as Mark Aufflick commented on that same article, you're crazy if you don't use "svnmerge.py".

So, what is svnmerge.py? Why do you need it?

The problem stems from the fact that Subversion, older than version 1.5, do not keep track of your merges.

As a result, the developer needs to keep track of merges manually. This means that a developer will have to take note of which revisions were merged to the trunk or to a branch. If the developer is not organized and diligent with tracking his/her merges, it is perfectly possible to "remerge" revisions that have already been merged before, resulting into lots of conflicts and hours of trying to sort them out.

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(photo by solutiongrove.net)

It's my job as a technical writer to come up with a good documentation or help section of the application our company is developing.  Two resources from the .LRN Community have given me insights on Help Systems:  LMS Help Sections – Comparison and Introduction to Embedded Help and Examples for .LRN.

Most users don’t use the help section or, at least, avoid online help systems because It’s too much effort on the part of the user and the time invested isn’t returned with good results. To add to that switching back and forth between the application and the help system poses difficulty to the user.  Their attention is split between the help system and the application itself.  Thus, users are dissatisfied with the help systems. 

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(photo by by FUNKYAH)

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