Moodle in English: Learning standards: Open Letter to King Martin and his seven Hats

Learning standards: Open Letter to King Martin and his seven Hats

by Ger Tielemans - Sunday, 20 February 2005, 11:18 PM

Dear Martin and dear, very wise, developers of Moodle,

While you are developing and preparing the next releases of Moodle, the outside world did not sit still either in the last five years: If you are considering the Invention of an engine for Moodle that can handle roles, scenario's, acts, role-parts, embedded activities (services), conditions and even can parse notifications, I can now tell you: That is no longer needed, others did it, spare your resources, do not invent that wheel again, jump the IMS/LD wagon and put your effort in implementing it in Moodle.

As you can see elsewhere in the forums: The current status of the IMS/LD documentation and their proof of concept with the Coppercore services engine and the range of elegant end-user-editors under development is in my opinion a very convincing set of arguments to start with the serious development of the LD version of Moodle.

Bringing version 2.0 to the market without integrating LD would be at least, well... sad?

Looking at all the efforts of the current developers and users of Moodle I forsee that we will hit the wall very heavily if we progress on the current track: To many manual settings, no way to keep overview of them, no way to share concepts of elegant courses design other then backup/restore etc:

1. Lots of users are looking for conditions in Moodle. People like Bernard Boucher come up with very clever tricks. I admire his and others' creativity, but all these tricks must be implemented by hand: If I need it on 20 places in my design, I must implement it with my own hands on 20 places. No scope, no combination, no leveling.. (No designer's overview!)

2. Other users come up with solutions for the wish to show different groups different resources (like the nice set: trick from John Ryan, but again it is all handwork: For every resource I have to set the status by hand, I cannot say: "these resources are only visible for group B" on a more global level)

3. The lesson module becomes more and more sophisticated, but what a pitty, the cleverness is only available inside that lesson-modul..

TO MUCH HANDWORK AND THE LACK OF OVERVIEW WILL KILL/OR AT LEAST DISTURB THE GOOD USE OF ALLL THESE OPTIONS IN THE SECOND YEAR OF USE...

4. Of course a clever Moodler like Mike Churchward could implement the services that are offered by the Coppercore engine in the way he implented eWiki or the nice new release of the Questionnaire. (please, do) Again I am astonished how clever you guys are...
....Or Michael Penney can integrate it in his next generation lesson-module (Please please).
.....Or our HTML-wizzard will even integrate it in his editor, who knows, nothing suprises me anymore in this Moodle world...

5. But talking with the proud designer of the Coppercore-engine about combining the engine with Moodle (and doing the same with the new QTI-engine) he advises us to start with the implementation documents of IMS/LD - as he did - and integrate LD in the heart and soul of the new Moodle.
(Buildling Coppercore, starting with these documents costed him only several months, including the simple demo-player. You guys are clever and with more people, so...)

From the continuity point of view I see:

MoodleLD will be delivered with three default LD/course plans: Social, Weeks and Topics (as three "patterns of good practice")
The swithes of the activity-structures in LD for these three templates have as default setting: selection.
where services are needed in the LD design, like "start now a forum on this topic", these are integrated as in the current Moodle edit-mode.
Moodlers can stick to the current structure and export it as Moodle-backup or even as IMS/CP.
Moodlers can also open the role-part, the condition-states, the notifications (For example open/close the blocks that are needed during a certain acrivity etc..) and export it in LD/CP format
Importing LD-designs from publishers and other platforms becomes also possible. (In The Netherlands Publishers will never choose a certain platform as theirs, so LD will be their choice, the platform that offers the first LD will profit from their "tryouts")

Read the book, visit the IMS/LD site and start to live in the future. (I hereby declare my own words saying "to wait for an other three years with LD" to be foolish and outdated: I forgot also to look more closely the last three years, spending all my time to Moodle)

So Dear King, what is your answer?

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Re: Open Letter to Martin and his co-developers

by John Gone - Sunday, 20 February 2005, 11:38 PM

Ger, why would you offend a socialist by labelling him a king? Especially a socialist who helps so many people. I don't get it? Maybe it's a translation thing, if so my apologies.

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Re: Open Letter to Martin and his co-developers

by Ger Tielemans - Monday, 21 February 2005, 12:05 AM

Please read the message and do not start a flame on my light ironic comments. I admire Martin and his design principles behind Moodle maybe even more then you (we could fight about that).

For the moment stick to the important message in this thread and start another thread about your socialist King.

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Re: Open Letter to Martin and his co-developers

by Martin Dougiamas - Monday, 21 February 2005, 12:34 AM

Thanks, Ger, you obviously had a good conference and have come back quite excited by what you saw. I'd be happy to hear more about exactly what impressed you.

You know I'm open towards the LD concept already, but some concrete working real-life examples would be good to look at while we think about how to fund and implement this sort of interoperability within the Moodle framework.

A caution though, be careful about getting swept away by one standard as "the answer to everything", in my experiences they never work out that way.

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Re: Open Letter to Martin and his co-developers

by Ger Tielemans - Monday, 21 February 2005, 1:59 AM

Martin, I see you know me very well.

But I cannot stress enough how far they came and how supprised I was by that! What impressed me most was their switch to leave the idea to build a system of their own (like Edubox) and build based on the LD-specs as proof of concept the Coppercore engine, showing other developers how it could look like. Realise that Coppercore is only a spin-off of a bigger project. If you compare the current generation of visual editors that is avalaible in comparison to the old abstarct lady Framework in the past... almost a Moodle spirit I would say..
Attaching the services (And not the insecure webplayer!) of the Coppercore engine to Moodle could be a good start for showing the way it could help us to solve the growing complexity by design. (this variation of editors was another eye-opener: Why trying to do this all on our own in Moodle, when you also could profit from endeavours of others and feed Moodle with their results?
For myself I saw the possiblity to use with different levels of developer teams different tools: starting with the tool from Pythagoras, then do the final things in Reload and the run against Coppercore inside Moodle, really impressing.. (I used the player, but wish me the services version, Especially because I then can call the power of Moodle from an LD design..
Looking with your team of developers to the design documents of LD and study the way you could implement easily a completed plan with a sophisticated combination of scope, roles, conditions and notification instead of constructing one on your own.
(I presume your team is already doing this, but I can nowhere find enthousiast stories of your staff in the forums. Please publish some amd feel free to ask the Coppercore guys for help, they are very helpfull. Publish also stories with less positive experiences to put me back on the ground again, if you think that that is necessary.)
In the long run: follow their advise and build your own LD-engine under the hood of Moodle and give Managers reasons to choose Moodle and not aTutor (with all these so called standards in it)

To become more concrete: are their Moodlers already working on or considering to:

Build the Coppercore services into Moodle?
Create a MoodleLD version, that will stay compatible with the mainstream of Moodle?

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Re: Open Letter to Martin and his co-developers

by Martin Dougiamas - Monday, 21 February 2005, 9:04 AM

1. No, Coppercore is Java and so 99% of Moodle users could not install it or use it.

2. No, when Moodle supports LD it will be in the main version, in PHP. I will not be forking Moodle just to support another standard. I suspect the changes required will be fairly deep, though I haven't looked into it much yet.

You still haven't shown me any working examples

... you keep talking about their "player" ... was the demo all about content only?

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Re: Open Letter to Martin and his co-developers

by Ger Tielemans - Monday, 21 February 2005, 5:11 PM

Now everybody is awake, lets go back to the boring details of everyday life. I will join the initiativ of Don, stopping my charme campaign, thanks Don and Martin.

answer to 1.

Aside from your Java point you also realise - i think - that Coppercore is offering services as soap. Not bad if you call it now and then, but according to the builder of the Coppercore engine, to slow for real flow-control for many users in a system like Moodle: "Build on the inside of Moodle on the specs of LD your own engine like we did for Coppercore, is his advice."

for the specs of the services see:

http://coppercore.sourceforge.net/documentation/javadoc/coppercore/index.html

- question from a humble user: does your java argument also count for the soap interface of Coppercore? -

The current Coppercore demoplayer is nice for a demo on your laptop: embedded in Moodle 1.4.3 you can impress others with parsing the userid and the runcall to the coppercore-engine in the Moodle weblink-form, but it should not be visible from the internet: users grabing the link from inside their demo-webplayer can change the call to the engine into another account, so on a real system only Moodle should access the engine and make the calling link under water:

...."Calling from Moodle" means that you should first rebuild the webplayer inside the protected area of Moodle. So here we have our chicken-egg-problem .

As a nice try-out the combination of the engine with a version of lesson would be a very good start, to feel the power and to wonder if it is worth all the effort. I think it is, because we have so many appealing new services growing in Moodle that make sense in a LD-context.. (I think especially the notification part, but I still have to read that chapter too.)

answer to 2.

You ask for the answer you already know.
Of course there was no connection to services in Moodle, like "start now a forum on this subject". To be able to do that someone must first implement / map these documented service-calls in Moodle.

From a Moodle perspectiv:

During the demo's they said sorry for showing the activity-tree in the player, but I as Moodleman liked that of course.

What was also appealing in the demo's was that the user could place checkmark on the frontpage,in the tree, behind the resources he did read, another old wish of me..
(But I can live with the workaround in Moodle: create a quizz with the resource in it and one question: "did you read it yes/no)

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Re: Open Letter to Martin and his co-developers

by Martin Dougiamas - Wednesday, 23 February 2005, 11:32 PM

Here's an example you can try. You'll need to sign up to the Moodle and then request another account via email.

Maybe I didn't spend long enough in the "Learning Jazz" screen but I seemed to get lost after doing some of those quizzes at the beginning. One would hope we can get a simpler faster interface than that example. wide eyes

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Re: Open Letter to Martin and his co-developers

by Ger Tielemans - Thursday, 24 February 2005, 1:22 AM

This is in EML the predecessor of LD, playes in a standalone box without connectins to the outside world.
You better download the Coppercore-engine on your laptop, create a Quick LD with Reload, verify and publish it and then play it in the Coppercore palyer to get an idea.

You even can republish a design without loosing the data from the runtime session. You can design an XML-tree and publish that, but the interesting products are the reload editor that helps you during the design steps and the ASK LD from Pythagoras that even uses a drawing interface for the program flow.

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IMS-LD: Open Letter to Martin and his co-developers

by Josep M. Fontana - Wednesday, 23 February 2005, 5:36 PM

I just wanted to say that I attended the same IMS LD workshop Ger attended and I was also very impressed. I must confess that up to then I had been very skeptical about standards. I just saw them as something that made sense in the abstract but I couldn't see their real usefulness for somebody like me. After seeing the wide range of possibilities LD offers and the ease with which one could build nice sets of varied and self-contained activities using different combinations of different types of available resources and without being constrained by any particular pedagogical theory (LD allows you to be traditional, social-constructivist or whatever you want to be) I was convinced that LD is the future.

I agree it might not be "the answer to everything" (there is no such thing) but it will certainly make life easier and, above all, better for course designers at all levels. I don't know what the best way is to implement this, whether incorporating Coppercore or by building an engine from scratch. But Im convinced of one thing: that it would be a real pity for Moodle to miss this train. Certainly a pity from the users perspective, but also a pity from the business side of things: basically diminishing rather drastically the chances of being able to obtain major funding for Moodle.com and for many independent developers from big institutions and from a growing pool of users of all kinds. Or what I think would be equally undesirable, losing users to other LMSs that decide to adopt those standards earlier.

Im not saying that people who are working on the continuing development of Moodle should abandon everything they are doing now and make the adoption of the IMS-LD standards their first priority. Im just saying that it would not be a good idea to just sit around and wait to see how it works for the rest of the people. A more proactive stance is more advisable. Somebody should start seriously looking into what Ger has suggested and start considering the implications it has for future development of Moodle. This is a strategic decision and if taken too late it can have some undesirable consequences.

Now, having said that, Martin asked Ger for something neither Ger nor I have been able to provide: some concrete working real-life examples. He is totally right in asking for that. Seeing is believing. Now, Ger, maybe you can help here. I dont know how one could go about testing concrete real-live examples remotely. In the workshop I attended I was able to examine and test different examples that had been previously prepared and to construct my own examples but I dont know how this could be done on-line. Bear in mind that what is really interesting about LD is not only the final product but the enormous flexibility it provides in the structuring of those activities: creation of different environments for different roles, assigning different tasks for different users, sequencing, conditions, etc. Ger, you have more direct contact than me with the people in the Open University of the Netherlands that have developed Coppercore and who are working on promoting the IMS-LD standards. Could you arrange for some kind of demonstration so that Martin and other interested people could really be able to see in a more practical way the possibilities of the whole LD scheme and realize how close it is of becoming a reality?

Josep M.

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Re: IMS-LD: Open Letter to Martin and his co-developers

by Martin Dougiamas - Wednesday, 23 February 2005, 9:11 PM

> a pity from the business side of things: basically diminishing rather drastically the chances of being able to obtain major funding for Moodle.com and for many independent developers from big institutions

Actually, from my experience what business users with money most want is student management in a holistic way (tracking/reports from start to finish over multiple courses, including reminders for followup courses at regular intervals), better overall reports and statistics, and the ability to share/re-use entire courses including data. I get requests for these weekly.

> Or what I think would be equally undesirable, losing users to other LMSs that decide to adopt those standards earlier.

The main point of these standards is interoperability between LMS systems, so I don't feel too much pressure to rush into this. I do take your point that sooner is obviously better than later.

I am very interested in LD and have been for a long time, since looking at the old EML stuff (unfortunately a lot of other practical stuff in Moodle had to be done first

). Such a Moodle-compatible language of pedagogy and learning patterns will fill a big hole. The changes required are fairly core, but I think it could be implemented as a new course format without TOO much restructuring in Moodle.

I appreciate you guys working to increase the buzz around this though, don't stop!!

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Re: IMS-LD: Open Letter to Martin and his co-developers

by Ger Tielemans - Thursday, 24 February 2005, 1:32 AM

The point is that for demo resaons the Coppercore engine must be hidden in a Moodle environment: using teh Copercore player is insecure (but may for demo's ) Better is it to connect the services, because only then you can connect to Moodle power.. ..and that got my attention:

an integration like eWiki or questionnaire as a first step.. (or more alike webwork?)

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Re: IMS-LD: Open Letter to Martin and his co-developers

by Tony Hursh - Thursday, 24 February 2005, 2:09 AM

I just downloaded the Coppercore demo. Sadly, it doesn't work out of the box in OS X (it doesn't like tcsh, and if you start bash it fails because OS X doesn't have the KDE "konsole" program. That's as far as I got, though I'm not giving up yet).

They really should consider writing their startup scripts in a more portable way, so they work on Unix variants other than Linux. There are lots of OS X, BSD, and Solaris machines out there, particularly in U.S. academia.

JBoss itself definitely works on OS X (it's actually included with the server version).

If I get it working, I'll send them some diffs.

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Re: Open Letter about IMS-LD

by Don Hinkelman - Monday, 21 February 2005, 10:03 AM

1. The decision to build Coppercore in Java is a startling one. Why did they do this?

2. Don't worry, Ger, I think all of Moodledom is in consensus here that IMS-LD is the best future of international standards for Moodle (SCORM and IMS-QTI are mostly useful for traditional paradigms of education). Of course, some specific implementations of LD may be wrong (the Java Coppercore scares me), so these points have to be sorted out. And you are right, the issue is not "if" but "how fast".

And that all comes down to funding, in my mind. The more grants, donations, service fees we can get to Martin, the faster it will happen. Every day I wake up and ask myself, "how can we get more funds for moodle programming?" mixed

Then Moodle will have LD as its core, and may even lead the development of LD. approve

P.S. Irene is waiting to send all of us a button!

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Re: Open Letter about IMS-LD

by N Hansen - Monday, 21 February 2005, 10:13 AM

The decision to build Coppercore in Java is a startling one. Why did they do this?

Isn't the Sakai Project using Java?

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Re: Open Letter about IMS-LD

by Ger Tielemans - Monday, 21 February 2005, 6:32 PM

Coppercore was just a spinn-off project of Alfanet: for other reasons they deciced to use GROOVE and other tools...

In this context...

What is important is that they prove that it is possible to build a working engine based on the LD-specs. Our Moodle magicians are more clever then the Coppercore staff, so... I think that they no longer see need to invent any longer our own roll & condition system for moodle but will jump on the LD-wagon and suprise us all

This will be fun!!

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Re: Open Letter about IMS-LD

by Don Hinkelman - Monday, 21 February 2005, 9:19 PM

Your photo still looks 25 years old! evil

I doubt you look so wet behind the ears. We know what a crusty, knarly person you are, so reveal the true Ger!

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Re: Open Letter about IMS-LD

by Don Hinkelman - Tuesday, 22 February 2005, 8:26 AM

Now your photo looks 35 years old. Come on, show us the real Ger!

If it is really you, please tell us where you found the fountain of youth. Grolsch Beer maybe?

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Re: Open Letter about IMS-LD

by Ger Tielemans - Tuesday, 22 February 2005, 6:43 PM

How Do you know that? The picture does not even show my Stomach.
And yes, I live under the shadow of the nee Grolsch Factory.

By the way Don, how are your plans for the LD-route in Moodle?

Study chapter by chapter the book
Hide Coppercore inside a lesson-modul under the hood of Moodle as a first step?
Creating small examples to show You and the other Moodle Hats how powerfull and flexible LD as educational-logic-engine for Moodle can be?

I hope that the version 2.0 designers are not that far on their design-path that they have to throw away to many love-babies of their own.

(I can nowhere find information about project 2.0 in the Moodle forums, I forgot to ask WP, so only can guess and feed the fears in my head.)

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Re: Open Letter about IMS-LD

by Martin Dougiamas - Wednesday, 23 February 2005, 9:37 PM

Version 2.0 is a myth at this stage ... don't assume too much about it.

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Re: Open Letter about IMS-LD

by Don Hinkelman - Saturday, 26 February 2005, 9:29 PM

By the way Don, how are your plans for the LD-route in Moodle?

Study chapter by chapter the book

Yes, I know nothing about LD except that it is has a technical and visual way to describe blended learning--online and facetoface components of a "learning flow". So the book seems a good starting point. I would imagine that we (the book study group) would not only make a chapter summary, but also write implications for Moodle as we read.

Hide Coppercore inside a lesson-module under the hood of Moodle as a first step?
Creating small examples to show You and the other Moodle Hats how powerfull and flexible LD as educational-logic-engine for Moodle can be?

If anyone can make/demonstrate actual examples that would be great. If we could simply come up with some models or a before/after-LD-list for a particular module that would be cool, too. And if there is a visual learning flow editor, we can use that to model some past courses we have each done and comment on each others' diagrams.

I have a personal deadline that coincides with this study. I have to write a task design framework for second language learning from a *blended* perspective. So far no one has done this in our field--just the computer guys saying what an online task is, and the classroom folks ignoring online tools in the way they describe task-based learning. LD seems like a possible framework for this problem.

I hope that the version 2.0 designers are not that far on their design-path that they have to throw away to many love-babies of their own.

The 2.0 designers are us. Actually, what was planned for 2.0 a year ago is now coming in versions 1.5 and 1.6. A major miracle! That's why you couldn't find any information on it. It was already being worked on!

(I can nowhere find information about project 2.0 in the Moodle forums, I forgot to ask WP, so only can guess and feed the fears in my head.)

Two things planned for(hoped for) in 2.0 that I know about are Repositories/Exchange and Flexible Roles. I am sure moving toward LD is also part of it. But nobody knows anything concrete about LD. So let's study it and if a group of four or five of us can come up with a few examples and guidelines as a product, that might help.

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Re: Open Letter about IMS-LD

by Ger Tielemans - Thursday, 3 March 2005, 11:31 PM

I get the message, I hope that Magic Mike tries to bind the services.

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Re: Learning standards: Open Letter to King Martin and his seven Hats

by Enrique Castro - Monday, 21 February 2005, 12:36 AM

Hi Ger,
I must acknowledge that you have a point. Moodle is fantastic, there are a lot of moodle developers doing terrific things. But Moodle is becoming somewhat unmanageable by the standard users (once the selling point). I foresee future months with a dozen of side blocks for each different task or function needed and I see a nightmare.

Much of the beauty of Moodle is in its integrated view. Not a collection of separate tools, but a system raised from ground by a mind with a good city plan. Version 2.0, with the separation of content and display , the introduction of course templates and alike, is an important milestone to stop, think and have an integral overview of the whole system. The excessive proliferation of custom blocks and modules can go against the system as a whole. Other successful FLOSS projects had faced the same problem before.

For complex organizations like Universities moodle is a little bit "too manual" yet. We need ways to organize, share and move content (and enrollments, but LDAP is a big step there) more easily than with backups. I do not mean learning objects or other paradigms quite unsuccessful. But teaches do want to re-use their own content for several courses in the same university. To link one to other etc.

There are many things to consider that require a deep and quiet reflexion.

- Enrique -

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Design by GESTALT

by Ger Tielemans - Monday, 21 February 2005, 1:28 AM

When you design a course on the current central canvas of the section-page of Moodle, you design "by Gestalt".

You place things together on the screen and the user THINKS that these things belong together.
not having the option to create subsections for the current sections helps to guard this on-a-glance-overview. (was that the reason to reject the idea of having subsections? I do not know, I cannot find any documentation about that decision.)
Moving a resource or an activity to another sections breaks the old Gestalt and creates new meaning based on visual associations in the new view... No programming control is forcing/supporting this...
Hiding/showing these things under the control of conditions breaks this simple logic and can be cause of many misunderstandings
To many things on a ovecrowded screen can also block this clear Gestalt view.

Creating your own LD-designs or (for most of us ) using good clean examples of LD-design, carefully created by others, like the current metaphors of the weeks or the sections views could prevent this pandemonium.

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Re: Open Letter...

by Mark Stevens - Monday, 21 February 2005, 1:49 AM

1. Moodle is fantastic.
2. If you don't like a block or module, don't add it to your course/site.
3. Backup and restore work for sharing/copying content.

Sure, things can be better, and thanks to Martin's vision they are getting better. Martin, I admire your patience with this thread.

Sincerely,
Mark M. Stevens

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Re: Open Letter...

by Ger Tielemans - Monday, 21 February 2005, 2:25 AM

Discussion is not about the current handy version of Moodle (by the way, still lacking the possibilty to backup/restore a single section or choosen set of sections of a Moodle, causing lost of extra work for my fellow teachers who want to share content and design parts.. ) but about the new things like groups, conditions and roles.

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Re: Open Letter...

by Mark Stevens - Monday, 21 February 2005, 10:35 AM

I agree Ger. Backup/restore of sections would save time. I also agree with Don, so I pledge $100 (Martin can choose Indonesian, USD, or Australian) to implement backup/restore for sections/weeks/topics. Could someone please send me the non-paypal link for donations?

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Re: Open Letter...

by Don Hinkelman - Monday, 21 February 2005, 11:47 AM

Wonderful, Mark, to hear of your pledge! Unfortunately, Moodle has only Paypal or bank transfer to donate. Recently, I noticed another donation site that had three ways to donate (see screen shot attached). Which way is best for you? Also, do you have any time to research how to implement this? If we ask Martin to do it now, it will delay the 1.5 release.

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Re: Open Letter...

by N Hansen - Monday, 21 February 2005, 12:33 PM

That Amazon thing takes a pretty hefty cut-you are better off with Paypal. And either way, it still requires a credit card.

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Re: Open Letter...

by Mark Stevens - Monday, 21 February 2005, 1:07 PM

Don, Martin gave me a link once that accepted Australian dollars... I've got it somewhere... Can I get a button if I make it for $150?

Regarding copying items/sections, I was wondering if it could be added to the current list of move, update, delete, hide, groups for individual items
and for topics/weeks add it to show, highlight, hide, move.

I think we all would like to see a much more refined level of control of copying, and from a teacher's perspective, this is a very HIGH priority. As a facilitator for many teachers, I think the ability to create modules/topics/weeks for importing/exchanging between courses would be fantastic.

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Re: Open Letter...

by Martin Dougiamas - Monday, 21 February 2005, 8:09 PM

Much as I hate to turn down donations I can't promise any of these features just yet ...

Firstly, Eloy is Backup Man, and there is much basic stuff that he has been fixing lately with more to go I think ... secondly, there are interrelations between this and upcoming features such as the activity linking, Moodle Exchange and the Document Management System that need to moodle their way out ... thirdly, I have some other priorities coming up which may provide some seriously big funding ... fourthly, there is an immense amount to do on tidying up what we've already got and I want to put the brake on new features for a while ... etc ...

I'm in this for the very long haul and there is much unsexy foundation work to do (frustrating as that is, sorry).

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Re: Open Letter...

by Don Hinkelman - Monday, 21 February 2005, 9:25 PM

Hi Mark,
Yes, you will get a button and a letter from Irene if you include your physical address in the comment box. That gift will really help. I only hope you can figure a way to set up Paypal.

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Re: Open Letter...

by Enrique Castro - Monday, 21 February 2005, 5:15 AM

Please Mark, do not take this thread as a criticism to Moodle. I do agree with your three points: I am very very happy with Moodle.

If Moodle is fantastic is in good measure by the farsighted vision of Martin. He designed a system years ago that could evolve and grow easily. I have a great respect for many design decisions by Martin, they have proven sound many years after. I am sure Ger, as myself, was not dismissing Moodle, but dreaming with an even better Moodle. Planning is good for design.

I have been lobbying for Moodle at a Conference of IT staff from spanish universities last week. These kind of topics are in the mind of many bosses. But more importantly: can ease the work of individual teachers.

- Enrique -

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Re: Learning standards: Open Letter to King Martin and his seven Hats

by W Page - Monday, 21 February 2005, 1:52 PM

Hi Enrique!

Ger has again caused us to "self-evaluate" and ponder. Although some may have been a bit rattled by the use of the term "King Martin", I think most Moodlers are aware that it was meant to show respect for Martin D's vision and work as well as to bring a bit of humor into the approach to the topic.

An understanding of this approach to humor can be seen in Martin's good natured response to Ger.

I feel I agree with you Enrique that v2.0, as Martin has described it so far, would be a point to take a really deep breath. Everywhere I look around in OpenSource, so much is happening. OpenOffice is close to its v2.0 release and will be more XHTML compliant. It would be nice to see an OpenOffice Authoring tool for Moodle's SCORM as an option. Similar to the one that has been created by iLIAS called iLEX (http://www.boldt-software.de/)

As far as blocks and modules are concerned, it looks as though Moodle will be more and more plug-able. That will allow admins and teachers to more easily customize their site. To me that is a good thing. Also Eloy [Thanks Eloy!!] is working on a better Block and Module Repository. This will make it easier to pick and choose the type of blocks and modules one would want in their Moodle. It is my understanding that some of these may not be issued just from the core developers but by other Moodle developers who share their module and block coding. This will make it easier to find mods and blocks and easier to maintain them.

To me it is just getting more and more exciting to be a Moodler [Thanks Martin!!].

WP1

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