Comments for Barry Sampson

Comment on Open Source LMS – 10 Alternatives to Moodle by Christian Franck

Christian Franck — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:38:26 +0000

Hi Barry, If you are interested you can add another alternative on your list. We just created the new open source initiative OpenOLAT which is a fork from OLAT. The University of Zurich decided to redesign OLAT for the next years and because we added so many new features to OLAT which will not work anymore, we founded OpenOLAT. Also open source with Apache lisence, with many additional features. Information you can find at http://www.openolat.org. Christian

Comment on Open Source LMS – 10 Alternatives to Moodle by Rachel

Rachel — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:42:58 +0000

Thanks for all the great suggestions everyone!

Comment on Open Source LMS – 10 Alternatives to Moodle by Jeff Walter

Jeff Walter — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:26:26 +0000

The Latitude Learning LMS is based on .Net technology. It is available on the cloud at http://www.LatitudeLearning.com or installed with a free internal use license. You can sign up for a 100-user Forever Free LMS at LatitudeLearning.com

Comment on Open Source LMS – 10 Alternatives to Moodle by Yannick Warnier

Yannick Warnier — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 01:56:39 +0000

Rachel, if that helps at all (although I’m obviously biased as I know my solution – Chamilo LMS – more than others), I was recently invited in a country-side primary school in Uruguay (=Latin America, developing world) using those little green laptops from the One Laptop Per Child project. I was invited there by the father of the teacher who taught a multi-grade class of 15 students from 6 to 9 years old, and as I presented myself the teacher suggested I presented the software I helped building (as it was related to learning anyway). In less than one hour and with the help of those (quite slow) little laptops, the pupils knew how to create courses, how to create documents and how to create a mini-exam inside the platform. They tend to learn faster than adults, obviously, but apparently they really loved it (to my surprise). You can guess how much less trained these kids were to using technologies in comparison with children in California. Some of their parents have cellphones with texting capability and a TV, but that’s pretty much it. Only at school do they have a small laptop to play with (and I was said they only used it 2h a week). I don’t want to extend much on the subject, but as far as I understand Chamilo is quite suitable for primary schools (we have at least 50 of these reportedly using it in Latin America, but we don’t have much reports from the US, although it is completely translated to English – actually it’s the source language).

Just for the fun, here is the school: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=salto,+uruguay&hl=en&ll=-31.391217,-57.71553&spn=0.001969,0.004128&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=58.946508,135.263672&hnear=Salto,+Uruguay&t=h&z=19

Comment on Open Source LMS – 10 Alternatives to Moodle by Barry

Barry — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:09:28 +0000

If you want something built on MS technologies you’re limited for choice. I believe that Open Elms is built on asp/net and SQL server but it’s difficult to find out much from their web site. There was also a project to ad LMS capabilities to DotNetNuke called DotNetSCORM, but their website currently says they’re moving to new servers.

Comment on Open Source LMS – 10 Alternatives to Moodle by Barry

Barry — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:03:23 +0000

Hi Rachel,

I can understand why some people might find Moodle difficult to learn at first; I was the same. However, if you're new to LMS I think they're all a bit scary, and that includes the commercial systems.

A few people have recommended eFront as being a more user friendly solution, but it isn't as 'open' as Moodle.

To my mind, the most important thing to do is to clearly identify all of the requirements of the scholl district (and that will include ease of use for teachers) and then prioritise that list. Compared to some other types of software, there are relatively few open source LMS solutions and it's likely that you will have to compromise somewhere. A prioritiSed lost will help you to do that.

There's also no substitute for a proper evaluation, so you really need to get all of the posible solutions installed and try working through as many scenarios as possible to see how they cope. You may want to get a group of teachers to help you do this, and they can feedback on the usability.

Good luck, and do let us know what choices you make.

Comment on Open Source LMS – 10 Alternatives to Moodle by Rachel

Rachel — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 02:54:55 +0000

Thank you for all this wonderful information! Very helpful. I am a education consultant looking to help school districts in California find low-cost, easy to manage LMS systems to replace the for profit ones they are currently using. In some districts, they are interested in introducing new programs to students (and teachers) who have never previously been exposed to online learning. One compliant that I have heard from teachers is that Moodle is a bit confusing and daunting to someone new to LMS. Is there a particular system that you recommend that is less “scary” for those teachers and administrators just now coming into the light of online learning? Thank you.

Comment on Open Source LMS – 10 Alternatives to Moodle by jeiem

jeiem — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:11:37 +0000

Is there LMS that based on .NET? and it’s OpenSource?.

Comment on Open Source LMS – 10 Alternatives to Moodle by Kate

Kate — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:41:57 +0000

We need an LMS that is good at publishing quizzes and tallying and reporting answers. Any recommendations?

Comment on From iOS to Android – Week 2 by barrysampson

barrysampson — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 18:47:18 +0000

You should be able to get swype on pretty much any android device I think.

Start here - http://beta.swype.com/android/create/

Then follow the instructions here - https://beta.swype.com/android/welcome/detailed/

It's a bit convoluted, but you only have to do it once.

I don't know what you mean...