In order for us to track a one-to-one relationship between a Moodle course and an Elgg community we first need to create a mapping table. The table definition I used is as follows:
The eportid column corresponds to the Elgg community id for a particular course; the courseid is the one that tracks the Moodle course.<TABLE NAME="block_eportfolio_course_map" COMMENT=""> <FIELDS> <FIELD NAME="id" TYPE="int" LENGTH="10" NOTNULL="true" UNSIGNED="true" SEQUENCE="true" ENUM="false" NEXT="courseid"/> <FIELD NAME="courseid" TYPE="int" LENGTH="10" NOTNULL="true" UNSIGNED="true" DEFAULT="0" SEQUENCE="false" ENUM="false" PREVIOUS="id" NEXT="eportid"/> <FIELD NAME="eportid" TYPE="char" LENGTH="128" NOTNULL="true" SEQUENCE="false" ENUM="false" PREVIOUS="courseid"/> </FIELDS> <KEYS> <KEY NAME="primary" TYPE="primary" FIELDS="id" COMMENT="Primary key for block_eportfolio_course_map" NEXT="courseid"/> <KEY NAME="courseid" TYPE="foreign" FIELDS="courseid" REFTABLE="course" REFFIELDS="id" NEXT="courseid_uniq" PREVIOUS="primary"/> <KEY NAME="courseid_uniq" TYPE="uniq" FIELDS="courseid" PREVIOUS="courseid"/> </KEYS> </TABLE>
Since our code already supports single sign-on, we just add to that to track whether an Elgg community needs to be created. Let us reuse the signupredirect.php page and just add an extra variable that tells the system to create a corresponding community. The significant section is as follows:
2-3-98 Moodle Recap [confluence.delhi.edu:8443]
I attended the 2-3-98 Open Discussion on Technology in Education conference last week. In many cases, Open Source is becoming just another option when evaluating software for use in education. Of course, there are still objections from some, but more and more software in compared on the solution it can provide, without regard for the license. One day of the conference was devoted to Moodle, and it was clear that Moodle was regarded as a superior solution by those that chose it. There was not any bias in choosing open source or proprietary solutions noted by those that chose Moodle. That is, they chose Moodle for the the features it provides.
LAMS on the XO [wiki.lamsfoundation.org]
LAMS - The Learning Activity Management System is one of the open source eLearning systms we support. They recently met with One Laptop per Child people (OLCP). LAMS learner runs fine on the XO laptop (pictures here) and they are developing a version to go on the servers that will be at each school.
2-3-98 Conference: An Open Discussion on Technology in Education [confluence.delhi.edu:8443]
2-3-98 Conference: An Open Discussion on Technology in Education will address Open Source in Higher Education, and include a second day Moodle Moot. I'll be attending the conference June 19 & 20, 2008 as SUNY Delhi. SUNY Delhi is using Moodle for their unversity LMS.
One of our clients, Stephen Wilmarth, from the Center for 21st. Century Skills will be giving a presentation on how they are using Moodle to conect high school students in CT and in China!
This should be a good opportunity to both learn more about Moodle, spread the word on LAMS and ELGG integrated with Moodle in an amazing setting. According to the web site: "Delhi, NY is nestled in the Catskill Mountains in a land of wooded hills and fertile green valleys with streams, covered bridges, well-tended dairy farms and beautiful vistas. Join us in a great setting for a great conference!"
(photo by Elgg Social Networking)
The highlight of Chapter 1 of Elgg Social Neworking is a concise features list - What can Elgg Do?
- Blogging
- File repositories for individauls and communities
- Podcast support
- Full access controls
- Supports tagging
- User Profiles
- Full RSS support
- RSS aggregator
- Create Communities
- Collaborative community blogs
- Create friends' networks
- Import content
- Publish to blog
- Thorough pricacy controls
- Multilingual
- Branding/Customization
- OpenID
- Import/export friends with FOAF
In addition to introducting the features, Chapter 1 covers the basics of social networking as a foundation for understanding Elgg. However, this is probably not how most of our educational users come to Elgg. My observation of educational users is that Elgg's first role is as a simple ePortfolio, then to support blogging for reflection.
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.
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.
Youtube-like Moodle Tutorials [moodletutorials.org]
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.
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.
This is a double learning experience for me. It is a reflective on the reading for this week's class, Chapters 1-3 of The Innovators Dilemma by Clayton Christensen, and how it relates to my project, which is a business plan for our MEL product. It is also my first video of this type as I continue to try to keep up with the average high school student level of video production!
The end result is a custom e-portfolio block that presents the following user experience:
A few weeks ago, I posted how Solution Grove implemented Moodle to ELGG Single Sign-On. That was only the first phase. The client also needed it to seamlessly auto-create users on ELGG using credentials from the user's Moodle account. We searched for a solution for this and found his ELGG-WebCT integration solution from Aperto Elearning Solutions. Even though the other component was WebCT, it was still interesting to us as the concept is similar - the user is automatically created on the ELGG side. Solution Grove emailed Aperto and their contact person was kind enough to point to us the Aperto download server, where the code can be downloaded, and added a few tips in the email as well.
For this particular implementation, we will be working with the following software versions: Moodle 1.8.3 and ELGG 0.8.1.
The assumption is that Moodle and ELGG were already properly installed and is confirmed to be working.
Here are the steps:
One of our clients, The Center for 21st Century Skills, is a leader in this arena and we are supporting the ELGG–Moodle Personal Learning Solution they are using in high schools in Connecticut.
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- thanks
- Using clickpass
- Should we put this on Solutiongrove.com, .net, .info??
- How about redirecting users to setup password for elgg
- Great job!
- Bandwidth (the human kind)
- ns_zlib on OpenACS
- Thanks Mark
- svnmerge.py saves you the pain
- Mosio, Yahoo Answers on Mobile ?