Month: August 2008

Screenshot of Video Conference

Here is a screen shot of a meeting with video from 2 computers while one computer was sharing the desktop.  This is a new feature of our eLearning Platform.  We are using Open Meetings which is open source and available on Google Code.  It wasn’t really that difficult to setup and get running.  I really … Read more

Open Meetings and Moodle

I have been experimenting with both Open Meetings and DimDim  to deliver live instruction and video/audio communications for our eLearning Platform.  I really like the dimdim VMWare install, but they currently do not allow recording of meetings.  Just the other day I gave open meetings a shot and got it running on my local machine.  … Read more

New Moodle Activity: Google Maps

I just downloaded and installed a new Moodle Activity where you can add interactive google maps!  Students can add markers to a dynamic map and then fill out the description that appears when you click on the markers.  This opens a whole new area for creative learning opportunities.  You can even embed videos.  Imagine being … Read more

More on Moodle & Mahara

It has been an exciting couple of years since we first launched Moodle.  There have been many teachers who jumped on board right away, those that were curious, and those who just wanted to explore the features.  What is surprising is that I hear from students who rave about the system.  They like the social aspects of Moodle.   They like chatting with friends in their classes and working on assignments.  They enjoy the freedom to access information when they want to… which according to the moodle logs is often at 11pm, 1am, 2am, etc.

Read more

Function = Service

I feel that this is going to be the year of Training.  I think I will need to sit down and really work to help teachers understand the need (coming from students) and the functions that our web technology can be useful for.   I am going to try and create a rubric of functions on the side and then web services at the top and what each product can do.  What really needs to happen is that I create an advanced “ideal” online classroom to showcase how to integrate all the stuff we offer.  Below is the beginning of a rough draft I jotted down today.

Read more

Short URL Update

Well, after one day of tinkering, I think I have the system in place now to take long urls and convert them to shorter and easier to type into a browser urls.  I was even able to change the code so that only websites with the domain dearbornschools.org are able to be added to the service.  This makes it better because we wouldn’t want outsiders using the service inappropriately.  The software used was from a great site I found called plusphp.com.  If you’d like a copy of what I created with domain filtering, just contact me and be sure to thank the creator at plusphp.com.

Read more

URL Forwarding Service

With the launch of the new Community add-on to iLearn, many students and staff may be using this service to create custom websites with their information and resources for everyone to view.  The issue with this is the URL that is generated such as: https://community.dearbornschools.org/view/view.php?id=1 This is my URL to my page I created in … Read more

One More Feature Added

In community you can now add videos from D-Tube to your profile or View.  I added the So Help Me Hannah video to my Profile page.  This will be very useful for teachers who were uploading videos as they can now organize them in one spot rather easily with the video widget.  We only support … Read more

Things are coming together!

I have been working on a new theme for Moodle.  I got most of the CSS tweaks done and I added several graphics and what not to the Moodle home page to make it more interesting and easier to navigate.  I know I am heading in the right direction with the theme because I caught a student comment in moodle saying, “doesn’t ilearn look cool now”.  I also have worked out several issues with Mahara.  One issue that we have is that you cannot login directly with Mahara.  You must first login to moodle and then access mahara.  I think in the future we will need to allow people to login at both sites, but to start off with the service, we are considering it an add-on to moodle and not seperate from moodle.  Students will surely let us know what works best for them.

Read more