Thursday, June 29, 2006

You dont want to do it like that

I was at the conference recently and my ears picked up during the introduction when the presenter talked about his involvement in a JISC project that used the power of story for sharing of expertise. Now I didn’t get the chance to ask, but this sounds like it came straight out of Daniel Pinks book ‘A whole New Mind’. If like me, you have grown up and now reside in a post war, post industrial, post information age, is that last one a shock, Western country, then you are likely having some unease with all those industries we thought we were good at, getting themselves offshored halfway round the planet. My advice, give the book a go, I think maybe someone at JISC certainly has ? Oh and while I am not on the subject, this week I literally turn my back for a moment and the whole Tracking project had been shut down, working group disbanded, and an offline alternative accepted as a short term measure, please don’t ask. I have this dream of staring into a blank radar screen, but can see no blips, the skies are clear? Then I look up to get smacked full in the face by a black low flying stealth pig, am I concerned? No, “them old dreams are only in your head” :Bob Dylan, yer right. I apologies for the lack of anything technically meaningful in this post, but thats bloggin and be assured normal service will resume.

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Hope for Scormers

If you read my post regarding the crossword generator the other day from Eclipse, then you will know that I was intending using it on my Moodle courses, well I did and it went down very well. The problem I faced though is tracking something that essentially is just a web page. Of course the answer is: make a Scorm package, o yeh. I remember my first attempt at Scorm with Moodle 1.3, some content pages followed by a multiple choice quiz that processed user entry using the cmi data model plus some JavaScript functions to talk to the LMS, it work fine! Then 1.4 came along and so did lots of popup warnings. There seemed to be some changes to the imsmanifest, but OK just modify the way I use Reload and cmi stuff and again it worked. I tried the same package with 1.5 and guess what, multiple popup warnings again, fair enough I start ploughing through and get down to one that is proving a problem and then, and do not ask me why, I remember ExE. I had downloaded ExE some time ago and always thought it would be worth looking at later. Anyway to cut a long story, though its really a Learning Design type tool, is does allow you to export content as Scorm, which I did and it worked first time! I now know how long my students spend on the crossword, brilliant, well done the ExE team for a robust and very promising package, I can recommend it and will definitely be making use of in the future.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

At the moment all systems are go

I went along to a JISC event today in London in order to discover the details regarding the funding opportunity and guidelines for the latest bid call. The presentations and help were extremely useful and I had a chance meet with delegates from other colleges who will likely be joining us in our Collaborative e-Learning project proposal. Our group got together for an hour in the afternoon and drew up contact lists and some initial requirements to go forward with, all is feeling good, and I will get a Moodle site organised for us soon. On another note, it seems after my rather despondent posting yesterday regarding the early demise of the Moodle-ebs tracking project, I arrive back to find that its all systems go again! Which I feel rounds the day off very nicely, so stay tuned for more snippets, progress I am sure surprises.

Conferences and revelations

I presented at the Greenwich University Diverse Practices, Common Futures e-learning conference today and it seemed to be really well received. This is encouraging as I shall be using the case study as the foundation for our JISC bid, more on that to come. The whole day was in fact very enjoyable, going to presentations, plus lots of opportunities to chat with others who like myself are working in HE using VLE’s and trying out all kinds of e and m-Learning technologies and practices, priceless really, well done Greenwich. On a different tack, I had hoped to be feeding back on the progress of the Moodle-ebs project, however from my tone, I am sure you can guess its not going to happen, and neither it seems is Moodle-ebs integration.The questionable benefit from this whole exercise, is that I seem to have acquired a not particularly useful or transferable understanding in the similarities that appear to exist between systems integration projects and hiring a skip! Not so priceless.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Eclipse Crossword

I came across a terrific crossword generator the other day from eclipse. Their blurb states: It's never been simpler—just give EclipseCrossword a list of words and clues, and it does the rest. In seconds, you'll have a crossword puzzle with just the words you want. The application installed fine and I had a crossword running easilly, to have a look follow this link. Being able to publish a crossword in html format, means I can and will use it as part of my Moodle courses. The application is produced by Green Eclipse, their site is well worth a look, so I have dropped the icon into my vle resource list on the right of this blog.

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Integration and bids

With the need to demonstrate Moodle - EBS integration within two weeks of the request, our first meeting was hectic in a coolish kind of way! With conversations switching between the two systems regarding data flow. We did spend a little time on the flow of some data that as it turned out had not even been captured yet, so neither system for that one. Anyway the good news is that Moodle won the day, and is to become the official student portal for the college, superb. I spent last weekend putting together an overview for a JISC bid, that if successful will lead to the funding of a collaborative inter-college project. If all goes well, the project will be extending my initial trial in deploying Moodle beyond its course management role and into the realms of virtual learning, so do watch this space

Saturday, June 10, 2006

The new Tracking Group

Events surrounding the new Moodle-ebs initiative are moving apace, someone, don’t ask me who, has decided we should be referred to as Tracking Group, fine, with our first meeting less than a week after inception! I am looking for a two way workflow here, Moodle-ebs, ebs-Moodle, which I am not sure has been fully appreciated by everyone, but hey a solution like that will likely have a market maybe. On another note, I finally uploaded my presentation for the annual e-learning event hosted by Greenwich University on the 21st June, bookings are open and if you get time it promises to be a really good day.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

System integration

A triple surprise yesterday, it began when I was waylaid by our senior MIS programmer accompanied by the head of ITNS to discuss the technical issues of integrating Moodle with our ebs reporting system! The request originated from SMT no less, and what’s more, could they have a demonstration in place ready for their away-day jolly in two weeks time, now compared to usual geological timescales of the education system, this is good news indeed. Of course the technical issues of Moodle-ebs integration are far from trivial, but this will certainly get Moodle onto much wider radar.

Friday, June 02, 2006

RSC VLE AGM

The other Friday 26/05, I went along the RSC VLE AGM entitled, ‘Playing Institutional Snakes and Ladders’. There was an excellent keynote presentation by Andrew Williams, Director of ILT Support and Development at Kingston College and Regional Coordinator for the Blackboard User Group. Andrew feartured his own institution for the case study, which viewed both opportunities and pitfalls regarding VLE deployment; snakes and ladders. This was followed by breakout sessions where as groups we considered, vision, skills, incentives, resources and action plans, If you are not getting along to these events at the moment then follow this link for a review of the meeting, I can warmly recommend them.