#Angel to Moodle course converter (ConversionThingy 2) released #lms #Blackboard
This resource was recently submitted to Moodlenews and is worthy of a share. Please note that we have not tested this (but if someone does have access to Angel and wants to let us know the process, perhaps with a video, it would be welcome).
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.
Last day to participate in the Moodlenews Moodle Feasibility Study
Today’s the last day to participate in the Moodle Feasibility Study survey at Moodlenews. Already nearly two dozen sites from around the globe have submitted their information. Help us put a real price on the cost of hosting Moodle for a school or organization.
http://www.moodlenews.com/feasibility-study/
The survey will be turned off at the end of the day today and analysis will start shortly thereafter.
Thanks to all of our participants!
@digidoug shows how to restore last year’s Moodle course backup
Doug, (@digidoug) the author “Reflections on Distributed Learning” (http://distlearn.wordpress.com/), published a quick post that highlights the process of restoring a previous term or year’s Moodle backup file.
Here’s a link to the great post: http://distlearn.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/restoring-last-years-moodle-backup/
Doug also created a handy video to show the process: http://screencast.com/t/M2FiOWQ3ZTU
This process goes well with the backup files you can get through MoodleShare (as highlighted in today’s earlier post): http://www.moodlenews.com/2010/new-at-moodleshare-11-more-courses/
New at @Moodleshare: 11 more courses
Jon Fila at Moodleshare.com has been posting new courses on almost a daily basis. Over the last two weeks alone almost 20 new titles/short course modules have been added at http://courses.moodleshare.com.
Titles include:
- Art history
- Moodling: Using Online Courseware for Ubiquitous Learning
- Sloodle Demo course
- Creative Writing Online
- Writing a Children’s Book
- Knowledge of College
- Elementary School Orchestra
- and More!
Download them all to restore to your Moodle at http://courses.moodleshare.com.
12+ Moodle Screencasts and Tutorials
Moodle In Schools, NZ has a great list of screencasts to help you learn and manage Moodle. No registration is required:
http://www.moodleinschools.org.nz/screencasts.
Videos include:
- Introduction to Moodle
- Embedding
- Mashups
- feedback surveys
- Glossary
- Microsoft Office Add-on for Moodle
- and more!
4 Great sites for module/plugin research
Extending Moodle is one of the best options for providing your organization and users a robust and unique learning experience within Moodle. There are 100s of modules available on the web, showcased on Moodle.org and available to checkout and tryout at sites around the web. Here are a few of my all time favorite sites for checking out and learning about new Modules and Plug-ins.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
- 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!
mBook: the paid #iPad App with full Moodle functionality
Note: we have no affiliation with Mass Media, makers of mPage of mBook for iOS at this time. mBook is not a free app, it costs $3.99 in the iTunes app store.
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:
Moodle by Colby – A Moodle Video from the Student’s Perspective
I really like this simple video that was created by a student to describe the why, what and how of Moodle [direct link to the video]:
Enjoy!
