Open Source

Moodle Groupings

As a Moodle user have you ever wondered if it was possible to hide an activity from one group of students and yet allow another group of students to complete the activity? Until now that wasn't possible. With the advent of Moodle 1.9 there is a new feature called "Groupings." Through the use of groupings you can now assign specific activities only to specific students. Now that I have piqued your intest lets talk about how to assign activities to a certain group of students.

Making the nanogong html editor icon work in Moodle 1.93 and later.

I have blogged about Nanogong before. It is a great tool for integrating audio into your Moodle course. Nanogong has a number of components including the Nanogong Activity, a Nanogong filter and the Nanogong editor hack that allows you to access the Nanogong applet from any page that has the html editor. You can read my first post about Nanogong here, it talks more about what Nanogong is etc...

Favorite Open Source Applications

Have you ever gone looking for open source software titles? Did you ever wonder if there was a single place where all of those titles could be aggregated with descriptions, license information, links, use categories etc...? Well I have built a page where I would love to have as many open source apps listed as possible. I am asking your help in building a repository of apps that includes things like titles, license types, instructional uses, ratings and other informational items.

Time for a change!

Did you wonder if I was ever going to post again? Well it has been a while but I am now ready to get back on the wagon. For those that have read my blog in the past you have probably noticed a few changes to the site in the last couple of months. I have totally rebuilt my site on Drupal 6 and am now ready to get on with my new life. This post is mainly to bring folks up to date on what I am up to since I left my previous district last May and to describe where I hope that I am headed.

NSBA T+L 2009 Conference

I am sitting here at Denver International Airport using the Internet via bluetooth on my phone. I figured it would be as good a time as any to give an overview of the 2009 T+L conference. Last year we did a couple of workshops and one presentation as kind of a beta test to see if the folks at NSBA wanted to have an open source presence at their annual technology + Leadership conference. This year they gave us our own room and we did about a dozen presentations and two workshops. It was very well received!

Open Source Support Models

In my first post today, Why not OpenOffice, I asked the question; "Why would a company riff staff rather than look at open source solutions that could potentially save a few jobs?" Just over an hour after the post I received a comment from someone who very succinctly pointed out what they felt were the reasons managers would riff staff before considering a move to open source. I replied back to this comment in a very long-winded fashion and said I would tackle the subject of support in a different post. Well, here is that post.

Why not OpenOffice?

During the last few weeks I have had a number of conversations with various individuals regarding the use of open source applications in both schools and in the business place. Let's take OpenOffice as an example.

Organizing Your Website Content: Drupal Views

More and more schools are moving to content management systems (CMS) to more easily manage their websites. While many are going with propietary solutions like Schoolwires, my district decided to use Drupal.

Moodle Server Time Block

Do you ever wonder what the real time is on your Moodle server? Many people have downloaded the Analog Clock block for Moodle thinking that this will show the time on their Moodle server only to find out that it shows the local time on their personal computer.

VLC and the Presidential Inauguration

I meant to post this a long time ago but just didn't get around to it. So, as usual, it is way too late to think, but I have the time and the energy to get it done. I have been using VLC (Video Lan Client) for years now. It is a media player that can play just about anything on any platform. What most people don't know about VLC is that it is a great application for streaming video or audio in a variety of formats. Better yet, it can stream multiple streams using different protocols at the same time.