Archive for the ‘Open Source’ Category
New year’s plans…
I’m thinking about trying several things in the following year. Apart from using Moodle still more and perhaps getting more of my colleagues hooked up to it I’d like to try some kind of classblogs. I’m still not sure if I do it from within Moodle or get some free blogs from Blogger et.al.
Moodle will offer a protected environment for my students. This should help to limit fears and get them to actually write something.
On the other hand, a blog on the internet definitely increases motivation – especially considering that strangers can post comments.
What to do?
h.264 to mpg
The following will probably not mean anything to you:
mplayer -vo dummy -ao dummy -identify your_video.avi 2>&1 | grep AUDIO_FORMAT | cut -d ‘=’ -f 2
hwac3:
mencoder -oac copy -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd -vf scale=720:576,harddup \
-lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=5000:keyint=15:aspect=16/9 \
-ofps 25 -o your_video.mpg your_video.avi
everything else:
mencoder -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd -vf scale=720:576,harddup \
-srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000 \
-lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:vbitrate=5000:keyint=15:aspect=16/9:\
acodec=ac3:abitrate=192 -ofps 25 -o your_video.mpg your_video.avi
Yes, I needed to convert a video file. No, I can’t remember the options by heart.
Moodle web 2.0 or not?
Over at Moodle News they are having a poll whether Moodle is web 2.0 or not.
Frankly speaking, I don’t care. Moodle is a fine LMS, period. I couldn’t care less if it is or isn’t web 2.0. It suits its purpose perfectly and that is what counts!
Moodle Plugins (a lot of lists)
You can pimp improve your Moodle with numerous plugins. The official Moodle website lists hundreds of them, ready for your or your pupils’ enjoyment. To give you a starting point, here are three shorter lists of the best or most used plugins:
- Best Moodle Modules & Plugins : Part 2
- What are the most sought Moodle Modules/Plug-ins?
- 5 Moodle Modules
Our Moodle uses the following plugins:
- Lightbox Gallery Resource (To give the students some eye candy. LMS don’t need to look boring!)
- Book
- Feedback (Very good for surveys and feedback.)
There you have it: Four lists of plugins. Now explore and enjoy!
Drag’n'Drop in Moodle
In case you are sick of all those clickable arrows you usually use to arrange your resources in Moodle, why don’t you enable drag’n'drop?
I simply wonder why this isn’t turned on by default. Or, to be more precise, why AJAX is turned on but deactivated for course editing by default.
Moodle 101
I just love this (old school) introduction to Moodle by Steve Williams (@MrHSIE):
(via Moodlenews)
Another day, another Moodle install
Let’s see:
- new hosting provider for our school-website: done!
- new domain name for our school-website: done!
- contents transferred from old to new site: done!
- installing Moodle on new sub domain: done!
- configuring the freshly installed Moodle to our preferred settings: done!
But: Why on earth does it take around a million clicks to setup Moodle with sane (for our school) settings? I wish there was an option where I could set these things during installation. Or maybe even something like: “Do you want to install full multimedia (+links to Youtube) support?” and/or “Is this Moodle for your institution/school only or for a broader audience (=guests allowed)?”
This would make it much quicker and less painless to set up a Moodle. With most school-Moodle-admins being teachers–who might not be computer science experts–security might benefit, too. I hope that Moodle 2.0 will offer significant advancement in this area.
1st thing to do after installing openSUSE
The first thing to do after installing openSUSE is to turn your install into a multimedia machine. Luckily, things have advanced so far that it only take a click of a button. (The necessary buttons are right here for your convenience.)
Enjoy!
Kernel panic after upgrading to openSUSE 11.3
If you, too, suffer from a kernel panic after upgrading to openSUSE 11.3 adding
- nohz=off highres=off
to your boot options will let your beloved OS come back to life.
MoodleMoot 2010 Dokumentation
Die MoodleMoot 2010 Dokumentation ist hier online einzusehen.
Falls mich jemand sucht, ich bin dann mal ein paar Stunden lesen.
