VPN driving me mad

Today something different than usual Moodle ramblings ;-).

I use VPN connection on one of my projects. VPN is for Virtual private network. You can picture VPN as small, safe island in rough sea of the Internet ;-). It combines conveniences of private network - security and global network - access from anywhere, you can mount disks from server as local disks etc.

Set up VPN is fairly easy, you can see tutorial with pictures for example here. I created VPN connection without problem, only thing that bothered me (I am used to restarting IM services - skype, icq when connecting to the VPN) was annoying popup window demanding me to login to VPN even if I didn't want to use it.

It jumped on me on random moments, I noticed, that this may have something to do with problems with internet connection. If there were some hiccup when loading web pages, VPN thought there is a problem with net, jumped in to save the day...which has happened to be very bothering and unnecessary.



I am using Windows XP and Firefox 3, I tried to find where is the problem. Checked the network setting to disallow VPN to redial, checked Firefox setting for connection, but without luck. At last I found solution where I have never expected it. You have to go to Internet Explorer setting and set VPN connection to never dial. Windows thinks VPN as dial-up connection and Firefox takes this setting directly from Internet Explorer (strange, I know).



You can find how to set this up for example on this page .

I hope this will help someone with same problem, saves you some needed time, nerves and hairs :-)

Ugly category names on front page? Pimp it!

Did you ever take a look at your Moodle front page and thought: "This looks bad, lame textual category names everywhere, it's so boring" ?

You can change that easily and add some appropriate images instead of dull category names.

• turn on Include topic section (see here how - don't forget to turn off displaying old categories list)


• create or update Label in topic section on the front page


• create or download some fancy icons, web is full of them (search www.iconarchive.com, use www.iconfinder.net, www.webappers.com has nice selections or just Google it :-) )


• add icons into created Label


• place them into html table or use css to position them correctly
  


• select icon and Insert weblink with url to selected category to it


• save changes

With little effort you can create beautiful Moodle front page. See examples here and here

Idea from http://www.edugeek.net forum, icons used in my examle: Lord application icon by FixIcon

Moodle failed my trust

I read today this blogpost about author's experience with "overwhelming" teachers with Moodle rich features on the training, on the presentations, just to confuse or even scare them..

I found I am guilty with that too ;-).

But another idea crossed my mind. Did you ever "hype" some Moodle feature that didn't work as you expected later? Did you say to yourself: "Oh man, I wish I have never installed this, I wish I have never spoken about that, this is so much pain in ...". Did you ever regret you went with Moodle?

This article is not about blaming Moodle, unfortunate events happen all the time everywhere. I am just interested in situations, features that didn't go well or as you planned and how did you solve that? I love happy endings ;-).

I am looking forward to your comments :-).

Alfresco and Remote-Learner.net Partnered

I am more and more looking into Java language and CMS Alfresco, that is very powerful as a repository, content version tracking system etc. and I am glad to hear, that Alfresco is going to collaborate with Moodle more (see Alfresco tie-in in Moodle 2.0 on moodleman.net blog ).

Today I found that Alfresco made a connection with a Remote-Learner.net, who is a provider for Open source e-learning solutions, Moodle partner by the way, and together they will provide new Enterprise Learning Intelligence Suite for Moodle (ELIS) that, I hope, will solve some problems with content sharing, content management and security Moodle is having.

And here is a LINK where I found this news.

How is Moodle developing?

Did you ever wondered, how it is going in Moodle development? What is being done right now, when you will be able to try new features?

I found today on moodleman.net (btw really fine blog) link to Google doc with constantly revised Moodle development planning.

So take a look, it is really interesting and it will put you in the picture, how much work Moodle is ;-).

LINK

Dimdim out of Beta

Dimdim is a startup who promise easy conferencing platform without need to install additional desktop client, looking for hosting, anything. All you need is a browser :-). You can create online conference, share your desktop, voice and video (imho for for sharing your desktop is some plugin needed to install).



It's been a while Dimdim successfully integrates in Moodle, now the company releases new version, it's out of beta and will be releasing its source codes under GPL3 license.

Basic, free version, allows 20 attendees in the room, but if you need create bigger conferences you have to pay.

I saw some captures from Dimdim usage, it is looking very promising. Maybe it is a time to check it too, it is on my to-do list for a long time.

Some goodies here, if you will sign-up through this Techcrunch arcticle you may be awarded with Pro version (worth $99 annually, room for 100 attendees etc) for free :-).

Did you try Dimdim in Moodle? What's your experience?

One Minute Video: Adding Youtube clip to the Moodle course

Online video sharing servers are on the rise. YouTube.com is one of the biggest and most known. Many teachers found this site useful for learning, they are uploading their's videos, homemade screencast etc to this service and are inserting these clips to their Moodle courses.

This screencast is first (I hope that it won't be last ;-)) in series of One Minute Videos where I want to show some basic things you can do with Moodle in just one minute.

It's without sound for now, I am little bit shy about my spoken English(not native as you already learned ;-)) and my voice (do you hate hearing yourself on some recordings too?), but in the future... :-D.

Feel free to ask if something is not obvious, I tried to not move fast to everything stays distinguishable.