Course Menu Block on Moodle

I think Moodle does have the fresh look with the non-Blackboardish design, but, interesting enough, while the Course Menu Block to enable Moodle in structured format is getting more popular. Does that mean "Bb like" is really what people want?

So, can whether Moodle or Sakai provide the capacity of Bb for the Universities and providing Enterprise level integration with the campus Student Information System and Library System?

LMS does not stand by itself. It needs to be part of Campus Learning community!

Mac Learning Environments

http://maclearningenvironments.org/

"MacLearningEnvironments.org is a community of educators, technologists, IT professionals, developers and change agents dedicated to transforming learning environments through innovation built on open standards. As a group, we are chiefly concerned with creating, implementing, and deploying leading open-source and community-source, standards-based, learning infrastructure solutions on Apple's UNIX-based server platform and integrating Apple's Digital Hub into these newly created digital learning environments. We also support commercial products that ...."

Why you have to pick?

While some people are still debating on what web programming language to use, why you have to pick ..http://phpbuilder.com/manual/en/ref.java.php#java.servlet

(There are two possible ways to bridge PHP and Java: you can either integrate PHP into a Java Servlet environment, which is the more stable and efficient solution, or integrate Java support into PHP. The former is provided by a SAPI module that interfaces with the Servlet server, the latter by this Java extension. )

or

http://php-java-bridge.sourceforge.net/

Now, I am happy!

Jim Farmer's "On the Cost of Selling an Enterprise Learning System"

Jim Farmer did a very interesting analysis on the Cost of Selling an Enterprise Learning System!

http://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/GENERAL/IMM/I060108F.pdf

Also,

Re: Presenting Moodle within a Portal/CMS by Jim Farmer
by Jim Farmer - Tuesday, 16 August 2005, 11:19 PM Originally posted on Moodle Site http://www.maxtsai.com/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=759

Welcome - Moodle and Sakai and other other Open Source LMS implementations.

I enjoy seeing varieties of choices on Opensource LMS implementations. More research oriented universities will need something different form the universities that focus on general education. Or, K12 will need something different from Universities. (I am sure my 3 yr. old daughter is not going to learn 'A, B, C, ..' thru Bb/Moodle/Sakai :)). I would see it is the benefit for the campus CIO/CTO to get to decide what fits the university culture. That's why there are pedagogical difference between Moodle and Sakai in the design level and should be welcome. LMS is more than just a software - it is a platform for teaching and learning online. I would believe the birth of Moodle was Martin's implementation of 'the' idea for online teaching and learning. Why not Sakai or others?

Moodle's success is not mainly due to the PHP - it is the design concept and openness of Moodle!!

What is wrong in this picture?

I realize something is odd in the OpenSource LMS world. It looks like Moodle people leave Bb/WebCT alone, but focus on competition with Sakai. What is wrong with this picture? OpenSource != Open Minded?? Instead of looking at the good features of each Opensource application and merge the good features for a better product, are they competing for the 5% of market? Do not forget, the beauty of opensource is "OPEN!" Go figure ..

(previously posted on my another blog, i think it is more suitable here!)

An interesting comparison of Moodle and Sakai ..

An interesting comparison of Moodle and Sakai at
http://www.zacker.org/sakai-project-vs-moodle

I would think the number of deployments really based on the needs and cost that customer can (or wants to) afford, but it should not imply one product is better than the others in general. Also, For example, MS Windows and Linux/OS X. Also, people should compare PHP with JSP/J2EE, not LAMP to Java .. I thin

(previously posted on my another blog, but found it more suitable here ..)