The video was created by Clarence Maise of WNC which recently adopted Joule2/Moodle2.

What do you think? Seen something like it before or with another tool?

MootUK11′s video archive from this year is a great collection of resources and videos that highlight some of the most cutting edge Moodle use/practices from around the UK (and world).  Today I got to watch Ross MacKenzie’s presentation in which he highlights Open University‘s move to Moodle 2.0.

Ross highlights a lot of great information about their transition and what’s happened at the OU in order to migrate.  A few takeaways:

• Many challenges in moving from 1.9 to 2.0
• Loads of users and lots of usage on a daily/monthly basis (1.5 million “transactions” daily).  100% growth year over year.  The discussion forums is 1.9 is the most used feature (500,000 posts in February 2010).  Heavy traffic occurs all year long.
• OU has built many modules which are available on Moodle.org in the module and plugin repository, these will be moved to Moodle 2.0 and OU is also providing a total recreation of the quiz/question engine (which was first developed by OU and used on their own 1.9 installation)
• working on Google Apps integration
• adding personalization and organization to learning tools
• working to integrate more mobile usability (mobile use is increasing rapidly)…there are some really keen insights here especially regarding optimization of the browser vs creating/releasing Apps.

The OU has really created a huge Moodle installation and is working a 12 month transition period for moving courses 1 by 1 as they finish on 1.9 and re-commence at 2.0 later.  It’s a pretty interesting transition plan which might be of interest to those institutions who are staff-lean or consistently high-usage.

Check out Ross’s presentation for more about their installation, transition, customization and new features at http://mootuk11.org.uk/videos/.  You can also check out his slides embedded below or here:

CLAMP (the Collaborative Liberal Arts Moodle Project), which is comprised of several liberal arts colleges in the US using Moodle has issued a report recently that they have found Moodle 2.0.1 not ready for production [PDF report].

The report outlines how and why they reached the conclusion for their own institutions/CLAMP version of Moodle.  While the report may not have legs with all Moodle using institutions world wide, it’s a great window into the thought process which many colleges and universities are using when evaluating a migration to a new version of their current Learning Management System. Note that CLAMP has it’s own distribution of Moodle which includes some streamlining and additional features (see our past posts about CLAMP).

From the report,

Major issues that will likely prevent colleges from upgrading to Moodle 2.0 include:

● Grade data is purged when a student is removed from the course
● Moodle 2.0 upgrades from 1.9 often fail or require manual intervention
● Moodle 1.9 backups can not be restored to Moodle 2.0 installations.
● Administrators can no longer perform mass uploads of files to courses.

In addition, several important modules or blocks are not yet ready for Moodle 2.0 and would prevent the upgrade for schools who rely on them.

The report goes onto cite a wariness of system speed for Moodle 2.0 vs 1.9 (the latter being significantly faster in some tasks).

As a second part of the report the Changes and Improvements to Moodle are highlighted with special attention to the new features that students and teachers will benefit from once an upgrade is possible.  These include (but are not limited to), new navigation, conditional activities, file repositories and several additional features concerning the enrollment of student groups (Cohorts) and individuals (suspension of users, non-listed user roles, etc.).

For more information read the report in it’s entirety: Moodle2 Status Report [pdf]

I know it’s taken a long time, it’s been a rough and rocky road.   A huge thank you must go out to all the developers, testers, supporters, teachers, trainers, administrators, artists, friends, researchers and students who have contributed to this release.  Special thanks to our Moodle Partners for providing most of the funding.

The scope was rather ambitious, with hundreds of refactorings and new features.  The release notes have most of the details, but we’ll be continuing to present news about Moodle 2.0 here on moodle.org (and elsewhere) over the next few months.

Download it: http://download.moodle.org/

Release notes: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Moodle_2.0_release_notes

Optimus Prime + Moodle = The Transformers Moodle Theme!

AMAZING.

More on this awesome theme in development soon, or checkout: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=158914

Check out the video about the private resource block below (direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwQcoCOfYlU)

Looks to be a great student portfolio system fully integrated into Moodle “out-of-the-box”.

Gavin has highlighted that and more through narrated screen casts and videos at http://moodle.drupalgardens.com/.  Well worth a visit if you want to see what’s cutting edge from Moodle 2.0 (out this July!).

Release notes can be found here: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Moodle_2.0_Preview_3_release_notes

A few general notes and things you can expect from installing this release:

• lots of bugs have been fixed
• Single Simple discussions are again available
• users now have private files as part of the file repository
• A new theme is available
• some advances on the community hub search, browse, etc. have been made

If you’re eager to help the progress, testing priorities this week remain on the community hub and usability.  Specifically for usability you can try the backup and restore features, navigation via blocks and messaging.  Any bugs found should be reported using the Moodle Tracker: http://tracker.moodle.org/.

For more information: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Moodle_2.0_Preview_3_release_notes

Related:

• Moodle Core Developers Group: http://moodle.org/user/index.php?id=5&group=172
• MoodleMonthly coverage: http://www.moodlemonthly.com/2010/moodle-org-seeks-developers-for-a-coding-sprint-php/
• Helen Foster’s announcement: http://helenfoster.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/moodle-2-sprint-this-weekend/

Are you a Moodle developer with some time to spare this weekend? If so, please join our first ever Moodle 2.0 sprint and help us get 2.0 beta out in four weeks!

To take part in the sprint, simply choose a feature in Moodle 2.0 which needs finishing, or some 2.0 bugs which need fixing, then when you have time at the weekend, get coding! Remember to drop by our Jabber developer chat room at some point and let others know what you’re working on.

Are a PHP developer with a few hours to spare?  If so drop by Moodle.org and lend a hand or get in touch with @Moodlehelen online.

The timetable is designed to deliver Moodle 2.0 in time for the new school year in the northern hemisphere and currently looks like this:
+April 2010: Moodle 2.0 Beta release
+May, June 2010: intensive beta testing and bug fixing (freeze on new features)
+July 2010: Moodle 2.0 production release

Stay tuned for more updates.

More information at the Roadmap page: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Roadmap.

Related:

• http://ismoodle2outyet.com/ (haha)