myMobile extends campus services to students anywhere they might be.  As part of the suite of mobile services provided at LSU Eunice, access to myCourses provides students with on-the-go access to online coursework.

http://www.lsue.edu/site.php?pageID=281

Looks good.

Check out a few of the screenshots:

mTouch+ ( mTouch for iPad ) In Review

We have uploaded mTouch+ , mTouch for iPad, for review on the AppStore.
mTouch+ will be available for download within couple of days.

Stay tuned…

From http://www.pragmasql.com/133/section.aspx/124

Should be a great alternative to mPage and mBook.  I’m excited to see it.

For more information visit: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Moodle_2.0_release_notes

Here’s to hoping.  Stay tuned for QA testing information to find out how you can help out.

Angel Learning Management System was acquired by Blackboard in May 2009 for approximately 95 million USD [link].

http://www.conversionthingy.net

ConversionThingy 2 is a program that reads ANGEL 7.3 and 7.4 course archives and converts their course content into native objects in Moodle 1.98 backup files. The conversion brings in as much as it can reasonably translate from the one LMS to the other: most of the items ordinarily located under the ANGEL Lessons tab get shifted, including folders, pages, url links, files, discussion forums, dropboxes, assessments, and WIKIs. Also included in the conversion are gradebook categories and assignments (along with their content linkages and weights), grade scales (mapping number/letter grades), chat rooms, team ids (and descriptions), and question banks…

Converted materials turn up…as native Moodle objects that can be further manipulated, configured, and edited as though they had been created in Moodle [link]

According to Dr. Peter Friesen who submitted the resource,

After countless cups of coffee and many many late nights, I’m pleased to let you know that “ConversionThingy 2″ – a tool for migrating ANGEL 7.3 and 7.4 files to Moodle – is now available. Documentation, license info, and the program itself are all to be found at http://www.conversionthingy.net.

In the world of course conversion this seems to be a great step in providing easy transition from one LMS to another.  If you’re a current Angel user looking to migrate, give it a test and let us know how it fares.

1. Moodle.org Module Repository:   The Module and Plug-in repository has well over 600 Modules, Plugins and Blocks that you can add to your Moodle to do any host of tasks, tricks and additional functionality.  Though they are unsorted and unranked, it’s a great place to start if you know what you’re looking for.  To get a better feel for what the most popular modules are, consider reviewing the Moodle.org download statistics: http://download.moodle.org/stats.php.  As you can see the top four most popular modules and plugins are the Questionnaire, Certificate, Presenter and Book.
   
2. University of Iowa plugin Matrix: This site documents the features of some of the best modules available in an easy to navigate format.  While it was primarily for internal use in evaluating the desired functionalities of a Virtual University for UofI, the site offers a peek at the characteristics of over 50 extensions (acting as a clearing house of many other sites that have reviewed plugins and modules in the past).
   
3. Lambda Solutions top 20 Modules:  This Moodle partner provides a sneak peek of the most sought Moodle modules available and includes a quick screen shot some.  All are listed in alphabetical order.  It’s a great list of some of the modules they’ve learned to be the most popular, presumably through the relationships with their clients.
4. Moodleman’s Playpen: This site maintained by Julian Ridden (@Moodleman) has an awesome combination of Moodle extensions including the Accordion Course format, a sharp custom theme, and around 10 great 3rd party extensions (including the Book, Nanogong, WizIQ and several image storage plugins).  If  this were a production Moodle site it certainly would make it’s users happy.

If you’ve got a favorite source for Module/plugin/block information, leave it in the comments!

James Chan, a developer at Mass Media alerted us recently that mBook 1.1 has been released into the app store [http://mbooks.hk], which doubles as a support and development site].  mBook provides a fully immersive Moodle experience for the iPad [iTunes store link].  According to the store page, the app provides a fresh approach to displaying Moodle on an iPad and supports the most Moodle activities and resources compared to any app for iOS in the iTunes app store.

mBook supports multiple languages (currently 5), has been tested with all of the standard Moodle activities (omitting flash based resources such as found in some SCORM packages presumably) and certainly looks promising.  From the Apple landing page:

mBook supports at Course level course listing, course teachers and course costs, enrollment key to courses, topic descriptions, ”visible” sections and modules viewed by student users, ”invisible” sections and resources viewed by teachers, editing course and personal events in calendar, Topic and Weekly course formats.

Blocks features: ”Calendar” and “Upcoming events”,  ”Section” block, ”Inbox” block is a new block to collect all News from the user’s enrolled courses, ”Activities” block at course level.

Users will find it convenient to access the above resources from this “Activities” tab on the course tab bar.

mBook has our own interface for most Moodle resources, which include: internal web pages, internal text pages, labels, directory display, playing back of MP3 (8 to 320 Kbps) audio files, playig back of .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats videos, external web pages, and all forums and site news.

mBook also opens documents in the following formats:
- .jpg, .png, .gif (images);
- .doc (Microsoft Word);
- .htm and .html (web pages);
- .pdf (Preview and Adobe Acrobat);
- .ppt (Microsoft PowerPoint);
- .xls (Microsoft Excel).

mBook does require a server side installation of some files, for more information visit http://mbooks.hk for all details or  to download the web service Moodle files.

Check out the screenshots for a better look:

While you won’t be able to login or use the site, you can check out the app at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ilearn-for-csumb/id386364172?mt=8#.  An archive of CSUMB’s Moodle is available at http://archive.ilearn.csumb.edu/

Home page view:

Course view:

However, if you’re going it alone, these resources might give you a hand converting courses to your shiny new LMS.

1. bFree: http://its2.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree/

bFree is a file extractor for your Blackboard course archive files. Basically it sets up a way for you to manage the complete course file system of Blackboard courses that have been archived and exported.  While it won’t help you recreate the course structure, any of the resources, activities or test banks it will let you manage the files you’re extracting and also claims that it can create a new webpage format of your course that will mimic the original Blackboard format (if that’s the case, you can simply use the link to a file/website to link to “index.html” to recreate the uploaded course and files within Moodle.

While I haven’t used this utility to convert a course personally, I have seen it in action at the Moodle Moot in Austin and it works as described.

2. LSU Course Converter: http://moodleconverter.lsu.edu/

Louisiana State University’s web-based course converter is one that I have used in the past.  While it creates a very easy to use interface, the shortcomings are similar to bFree (activities and quizzes won’t be recreated).  However with LSU’s utility you can convert the pages/content folders into topics or weeks in a Moodle course (which is handy); after the conversion you’ll have more than just a file directory to work with.

3. Colgate Moodle/Blackboard Comparison Matrix: https://sites.google.com/a/colgate.edu/moodle/moodle-for-blackboard

If you’ve been a long time Blackboard user, all the terminology and the variety of Activities and Resources within Moodle can certainly make your work more daunting.  Luckily Colgate has created and published a simple “matrix” that helps to illustrate what if a feature in Blackboard has a Moodle equivalent.  So if you want to know what Moodle feature accomplishes the “drop box” or “announcement” feature, this is a great site to visit.

Bonus: Moodle itself: http://moodle.org

Believe it or not, one of  the best conversion tools exists in Moodle’s quiz engine.  The quiz activity quite easily converts exported Blackboard question pools (I can attest to the ease of use).  So while activities and resources might need a little manipulating to set them right within your new Moodle course, exam test banks should be exported individually from Blackboard and imported to Moodle’s “questions” area (you can even keep the same pool format).  Moodle.org also has a great Blackboard migration page (on which some of these resources are highlighted) http://docs.moodle.org/en/Blackboard_migration.

Know another resource that teachers in the midst or planning a migration would find helpful?  Share it in the comments.

For more information and videos check out Moodletouch.com: http://goo.gl/qjJw

• learn the “sent to” zip file process (Windows)
• how to upload
• how to unpack in Moodle

Here’s a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs7P3GOe7DI

You also might enjoy the same video creator’s video covering how to embed video in Moodle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeN98WEX8hc

If you want an even easier way, consider the multiple file upload module (Enhanced File Upload): http://www.moodlenews.com/2010/module-enhanced-file-resource/