(photo by martin.canchola)

In a not so recent article, it was mentioned that based on a study, online learning tends to be better than the conventional in-person or classroom teaching.  Students in an online learning condition performed better than those receiving in-person instructions. 

Learning Management Systems are widely used in many different countries.  To add to that, the social networking technology also has its share of rapid growth.  These combined allow students to teach each other and share resources online. But according to Philip R. Regier, the dean of Arizona State University’s Online and Extended Campus program, "The technology will be used to create learning communities among students in new ways."  "People are correct when they say online education will take things out the classroom.  But they are wrong, I think, when they assume it will make learning an independent, personal activity.  Learning has to occur in a community."

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(photo by Soulja Boy)

I'm glad I did, its given me a front row seat as YouTube deals with copyright issues.

First the music was muted without warning. Then recently I got an interesting email from YouTube.

Dear Meekshome,

Your video, One Mile Dec 15, 2007, may have content that is owned or licensed by Sony Music Entertainment.

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About two weeks ago, a client raised an issue with their moodle installation.  The client wanted course teachers to be able to take LAMS activites instead of just being allowed to author them.  Then just this week, another client wanted to suppress the emails sent to course teachers when a student answers a quiz activity in moodle.

Both these issues are related in a way since the code logic that determines who can take a LAMS activity and the code for who are notified of quiz submissions both rely on checking moodle roles and capabilities.  If you're familiar with moodle, then you'd be aware of the different roles that can be assigned to a user both on the site level and on the course level.  What some people miss is that there are capabilities as well that's assigned to each of these roles.  In order to resolve the issues that the clients raised without modifying the code, I needed to override these role capabilities so that they would behave as to how the client wants them to.

I'll outline here the steps of what you need to do to change the default roles capabilities in case you are faced with a similar problem.

To change the top-level role capabilities:

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(photo by curiouslee)

Anne Gentle recently announced in her blog the availability of her new book entitled Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation.

The author shares a sample chapter which accounts much about online communities these days and how people are motivated to contribute to documentation.  Regardless of background, training, or education, people who have a sense of belonging in an online community are motivated to contribute information because they feel a sense of freedom in sharing these information to other users.  Much like in Open Source documentation where users of the same interests and goals connect, share, and exchange information.

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(photo by Jacob Rus)

We, at Solution Grove, are advocates of Open Source software.  A good use of Open Source is to teach kids how to program.  One such example of Open Source is the Etoys activity from the Squeakland Foundation.  

Etoys, is an educational tool that teaches kids some powerful ideas.  It is a free software program that runs on almost all personal computers.  Using Etoys, children make their own models, stories, and games.  They learn math, science, and language arts the fun and effective way.

Read the full posts here and here about how children as well as adults at the Squeakfest '09 learned Etoys to explore and acquire more knowledge.

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Last week I looked into automating web-based user interface tests using Selenium Remote Control. This is a Java based server that listens for HTTP requests containing test commands. These commands are used to drive a web browser with a Javascript adapter. It works with IE, Firefox, or Safari depending on which operating system the Remote Control server is running on.

It was very easy to setup, download the Selenium Remote Control  java code. On Linux you can just type "java -jar selenium-server.jar" and the server starts up, waiting for commands on an HTTP server listening on port 4444.

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