I’ve become disillusioned with Moodle lately and this summer I made the decision to abandon it in favor of a new solution. Here is the process that I went through to make the decision.

1. Ever since I upgrade from Moodle 1.9.x to Moodle 2.0, I’ve been displeased. I was hoping for the new release to bring me new features and new ways of extending the learning into cyberspace. All it brought me was pain. The upgrade itself took hours, and required lengthy trips into the user support forum. I don’t mind that kind of work, but I have to wonder if my time isn’t better spent elsewhere.

2. Version 2.0 is a design nightmare. The collabsible menus are awful, and the site still feels like Web 1.0. The more I used it, the more I realized it was time for a new solution.

3. I had issues with the number of concurrent users. I moved from my shared hosting account to a virtual private server and still could not get any more than about 10 concurrent users. That is too few and was very frustrating. I was facing the need to upgrade further, which was not economically feasible.

So I went looking for something new. I looked at Instructure’s Canvas, but quickly figured out that it is not designed for students as young as mine (by their own admission). I also spoke to the kind folks at Schooltown, but by that time I had already settled into my new solution, which I am thus far quite pleased with.

But first, it’s worth noting that I wanted something not free. I want to pay for it. I want the right to call and fuss and get help from the folks who work there.

So let’s talk about my new solution

I’ve been using Haiku Learning for a month or now and have been pleased. It has some limitations that frustrate me but the folks there have been very open about their DNA.

And I’m paying for it. I’m paying a bit less than five US dollars per month and I get what I need. I like the features that it has, including

• automatically graded quizzes
• discussion forums (the Latin teacher in me wanted to put fora)
• snazzy polls
• easy embedding of outside content (they have something called embed the web which allows me to easily embed most anything)
• good support

We shall see what the future holds, especially as I begin to use it with kids. After all, they’re the ones who will help me really decide whether to continue to use Haiku or not.

Another note, this software is currently NOT available for Mac OS X. Although if you use a Mac, you’ve already got a great product in iMovie.

With that said…

I’ve been interested in free or open source video-editing software for some time. Years ago I played with a build of Jahshaka, which has been recently reinvented as Cinefx. I found it sorely lacking and very difficult to use.

Given my bent towards all things open source, I have been a big fan of VLC for my media playing and sometimes transcoding needs. VLC aptly handles streaming (both the sending of a stream and the receiving of it) as well as it can rip a DVD with the best of them. This is a preview of the new VLMC video-editing software, put out by the same folks as VLC.

First, download and install the software. Find the most recent release, which is easy to do since they are dated.

When you first run the software, it will warn you, much like I did at the beginning of this post.

Provided you are OK with that, click on I understand.

Most of the time when I open the program (despite my best efforts) it tells me I didn’t close it nicely. Again, it’s pre-alpha code so this stuff is normal.

I click No each time. Not sure what would happen if I clicked Yes. It’d probably eat my car or something drastic.

So then you get the create project screen.

Then you move to the New Project Wizard.

You can then fine tune the settings for your new project.

Once inside the program the main editing window looks like this:

You’ll need to import some video. For the purposes of this demo, I used some footage from archive.org.

Click Import, then move the files you want to import to the panel next to the file list using the blue arrow.

Once you get them imported, drag one to the timeline on the right side.

To remove a section, simply use the scissors to place two cut marks and then use the mouse button to move the clip around.

I hope you have enjoyed our tour of VLMC. I am thrilled at the possibilites for this application.

Recently, I’ve been getting an error that says “There are no Lightscribe devices found on this system”. The error seems to be without cause, but prevented my software program from detecting the drive.

The solution? I updated the Lightscribe System Software, which you can download here.

I updated, didn’t even have to reboot, and it works fine. Here’s hoping that if you are having the same trouble this fix will work for you.

If you’re reading this, then the upgrade worked!

Sorry to break such a long streak of linkblogging, but hey, this warranted something other than.

Here is what they said:

Hi Chris,

We’re sorry to hear we contributed to what sounds like a very rough day. Here are a few things we’ve got in store at Wikispaces we think will help a lot:

1. Allowing guest page creations. This makes good sense. We’ll add it as an option in the manage space section, defaulting to “off”. The reason we haven’t had this in the past is that it’s something spammers pounce on — but with active space organizers and our spam protection systems, we think it will be useful for many wikis.

2. Account creation for schools. Every week, we create thousands of accounts on behalf of teachers for students who don’t have email addresses. Right now, we do this based on requests sent to us, but we’ve got plans to streamline this process for organizers. We want you to be able to create 20 accounts for your wiki in a heartbeat — ideally, in the time it takes to go from Plan A to Plan B while your students are in the room.

3. Our editor. We’ve got some frequently-requested formatting features we’re testing right now. We think you’ll love them, and find they fill some gaps without making the editor overly complicated (or slow!).

As always, we’re here to help and listen to any suggestions you might have: help@wikispaces.com. We’ve gotten to where we are thanks to thousands of passionate people like you — a huge percentage of them teachers — who tell us where we’ve gone wrong and what we can do better.

Best,
James
jbyers@wikispaces.com

Thanks guys! I’m glad to see that these changes are under way!

Chris

Hi! This is a tough issue. We’ve had a lot of teachers emailing us asking for us to make sure an address gets entered before proceeding so they know which students are making which changes, so several months ago we started asking that *some* address be provided. It sounds like you’ve just discovered that that solution doesn’t work well for you. Can you help us think of a setup that would work better?

What do you think? I can understand the need for some teachers to record at least a name, but I think requiring an email address is too much.

My suggestion to him will be, require a first name (and I think it’s important to note first name only needed) and make the email address not required. I think if kids are not doing this appropriately then it’s more of a classroom management issue and one not necessarily designed to be handled by software.

Or, make it where the user can decide? In some setting somewhere, make it where I can say, “I do not want my contributors to have to share their email address”, etc.

My thoughts, what are yours?

Chris

I had an amazing day planned for my kids, with two days of the computer lab blocked off for our use. I was planning for us to spend our time exploring Ancient Rome in Google Earth and making placemarks, adding descriptions, reading the included Wikipedia articles. Notice I said I was planning…

I got to the computer lab to find out that Google Earth was not available to students. My workaround to that had been “fixed” so now I had no workaround.

And 20 students with nothing to do.

I scrambled and put together a project where they research in Wikipedia (rebellious, eh?) and then put their information into a PowerPoint presentation.

Not much else they can access.

I made sure to talk about the basics of good PowerPoint design, I ruled out clip art use and cheesy backgrounds, and ended up teaching a good design lesson.

It’s still not Google Earth.

I then switched gears after lunch and decided to pilot a wiki-based research project and created a new pbwiki. It used to be that as long as I gave the kids the wiki password they could edit until their hearts were content.

No more.

The recent changes in PbWiki’s login procedures have made it where they have to have a wiki invite key and then enter a name and email address.

Sigh.

Even when I told them the wiki invite key and told them to make up a name and email address I was frought with problems with the software not allowing kids through. A lot of the kids simply didn’t know the basic syntax of an email address. Of course, you can’t not include a name and email address.

I asked for help in pbwiki’s Get Satisfaction page, but as of yet there’s been no answer.

So I switched to Wikispaces. I threw together a new wiki that didn’t have ads and had them go to work. I created new pages for each group and had them edit their own pages. Naturally, there’s a chance someone could edit someone else’s, but hey, it’s a reasonable risk.

Except that I wanted them to create a new page for each of the places I asked them to research.

They can’t create pages. Drat!

So back to the drawing board, they can’t create pages and I don’t have the brain power amidst answering a slew of questions to create five pages for each group (and there are roughly ten groups per block). That would be counterproductive.

They progressed nicely once we got up and running, although I had loads of trouble with them typing in the wiki address.

exploringancientrome.wikispaces.com

How hard is that? Most of them typed exploring ancient rome wiki spaces into the address bar.

This tells me more and more than they know how to play but basic operations are beyond them, at times.

So, I implore you, pbwiki, let my kids edit with only an invite key. Let that happen on the free version.

As for you, wikispaces, please let my kids create new pages. Or let that be something I decide in the manage space section.

And for goodness sake, Wikispaces, it’s time for a more robust WYSIWYG editor. One of the reasons I love pbwiki is due to their integration of FCKEditor. My kids prefer it, too, since it lets you control your text so much more nicely and more fine-grained.

Ok there’s my rant. Am I missing something here?

Chris

Enter Fireshot. It allows you to take quick screenshots, add the requisite arrows and text and save it as a PNG, JPG, or more. I know Jing is against JPG as a format, but Fireshot embraces it.

Here is a quick one I did a few minutes ago…(click to see bigger version)

I like that it integrates seamlessly with Firefox, adding a Superman-esque S in the top right corner of the browser window. There’s no Flickr integration like Skitch, but it’s an easy upload anyway.

Way to go Fireshot! I’ll be keeping this one around.

It’s a bit clunky, and I think the Mac Dock-style animation is a bit much and distracting. In times like this, functionality needs to rule.

So I’ll keep it installed, just to see where it progresses.

When they announced that Filezilla 3.0 had been released, I fired on the Windows machine to download it. Once the dust settled (it’s been a while since XP has run in anything other that the virtual sense) I was liking me some new Filezilla.

I checked to see if a Mac version was available and found the build server to be down. I sighed, and forgot about it.

I checked a few days later to no avail, but today, lo and behold, it works!

So check me out, runnin’ Filezilla on the Mac. And it looks and acts just like the PC counterpart, save for the fact that the download is 12 megs for Mac and only 2.6 for the PC (or thereabouts).

Either way, you can download Filezilla here. Of course it’s available for all PC, Mac, and Linux.