New Year Starting

I will start with an apology for the broken links on the blog, the server that I am using here at the College has recently been moved and has since developed a problem with the fan, which eventually failed. The server itself is a little on old side, and so we are unable to get a replacement and so have decided to virtualise the server, hopefully all will be well very soon.

I am pleased to say, that on a personal note, it appears I am being awarded a new job description that will be based around the general theme of eLearning, and that this role will account for half of my usual contracted lecturing hours. This has actually come at a very timely moment for me given the imminent role out of my Moodle phase 3 training that will go considerably beyond the traditional single period sessions of phases 1 and 2. In the third phase of the planned Moodle rollout I will be introducing content design specifically using Wimba Create. The exercise will not simply be on how to create or convert existing Word documents, but equally getting everyone to start thinking in terms of Learning Objects and eLearning for future materials and their long term storage in a content repository; we have been running DSpace for some years now and it will be really rewarding to see it being used in earnest. My ambition here ultimately is to deploy our Moodle system more as a Virtual Learning Environment and not just a Course Management System, so you may like to stay in touch to see how we get on.

Another project that I am pleased to have acquired is to evaluate the integration of Moodle and SharePoint, it was at a recent ILT strategy meeting that a majority vote was carried to run down and close our staff network storage drive and replace it with SharePoint. I spent some time looking around the net for case study material as a starting point and came across a really useful guide from Microsoft Education Labs, this looks very encouraging, so we are giving it a try.

Bye for now