Jeff Longland

As I mentioned in my previous post, WebCT has released the Application Pack 1 with a variety of new features.  Included within this pack is the WebCT Portfolio (after you pay an additional license fee).  Again, I think the addition of this tool bodes well for those moving to Vista 4/CE6.  I haven’t had a chance to try any of this yet…  so my opinion may change when I’m on the other side.  If you’re looking for some info about portfolios or blogfolios, you may be interested in the work being done at UBC.  You can check out an archived preview of the WebCT portfolio via HorizonWimba.

Woke up this morning to a handful of automated messages from WebCT about various feature requests that have been included in the Vista 4/CE6 Application Pack 1. I wasn’t aware that WebCT had posted info publically about this pack yet, so I’m pretty jazzed to see an official feature list rather than grapevine mumblings. Some really interesting features coming up:

• Class blogs
• Student journals
• Class roster that allows students to have a profile
• Grading rubrics
• Date rollover for instructors to easily update dates from term-to-term
• Administrator “enroll me option” (LONG OVERDUE!!!)
• Customizable environment/settings

I know a lot of the naysayers will pipe up to say that most of these features can be accomplished using other tools. Yes, I know (d’uh). It’s the integrated nature of these tools that excites me. WebCT listens to their users. WebCT has been paying attention to current trends. WebCT is trying to take the best points of social networks and bring that inside the walled garden that is the average LMS. I see these as positive steps towards a better VLE that puts the student in the driver’s seat.

My happiness is somewhat restrained though. I’ve heard that this pack has been in the works for some time and going through the features I noticed a few that I thought were destined for Vista 5… so I was a little surprised to see them in this application pack. Perhaps this application pack is essentially the culmination of features/plans that were afoot prior to the Blackboard acquisition?

The hard-working folks over at mu.wordpress.org have tagged the first release candidate for Wordpress MultiUser!  Haven’t had a chance to upgrade yet but eager to give it a shot when time allows.

Via Scott Leslie’s EdTech blog, another great use of Google Maps - mapping all of the Sakai users in the world. As Scott commented, it would be great to see a Google Map representing Moodle users - but better yet, a map of all LMS users! Might put some perspective on the whole Blackboard-WebCT situation.

Anyhoo, I’m away from the office this week on vacation. I expected it might result in more blogging but I’ve been relatively non-digitial thus far:

• Hiking (and a turtle burying eggs!)
• Errands, groceries, etc.
• Installing Moodle 1.6
• Upgrading MySQL (and a million dependencies)
• Playing video games and reminiscing: NHL 94, Mario Bros, Zelda, Blades of Steel, Excitebike, etc.
• Catching up on RSS feeds
• Playing with the cat
• Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping

A blog-worthy moment and another recommendation.  I had to make changes across a few hundred files in a WebCT section today.  So I logged into WebCT, grabbed the WebDAV URL for the section, opened NetDrive, mapped X: to the URL and connected.  Opened all of the files and a quick replace-across-all, and my changes were done.  Props to Novell for providing a tool that effectively WebDAV enables older applications that don’t support WebDAV.  Heck, I even opened up a command prompt and was able to navigate around.  NetDrive + WebCT w/ WebDAV + cmd.exe = l33t.  Or something.