We sort of changed our mind with the upgrade and decided to install a fresh version of 2.x which will be used for new staff development courses and a few super Moodlers. Part of that reason is that prof development/training. We plan on getting feedback from Moodlers about what is most different and make our trainings include those things. We may open the 2.x up to more after 6 months and within a year have everyone moved over. We want to make a good Moodle training course and face to face training so it eases the "pain" of learning a new Moodle. The one thing that I would try getting across to staff is reasons why they WANT to change to 2.x - all of the awesome new features. Try and make them see how much better it is..I mean if you tell them they can have a quiz hidden until they get 85% on the practice quiz...they'll be first in line to learn 2.x! http://www.moodlebites.com/enrol/index.php?id=116 is a course for 1.9 to 2.0. I have not seen how good it is.

Yes, I forgot to mention that. Very helpful and active Moodler!

Good question. From what I can remember I do not believe the book covered much of this. I know throughout the version updates they specify the security risks that have been fixed, most notably implementing salting the password (not a security/server expert). I don't want to give out bad information, the moodle.org forums would be a great place to start if you're seriously looking into this.

I agree with waiting to upgrade until 2.1 (comes out today). If you are starting fresh and have not been using Moodle 1.9 then I would install Moodle 2. I'm not quite sure what appointment scheduler you're talking about but I would just use the new Google Appointment feature! Use whatever tool works best! Moodle's good at some stuff and other things are better at other stuff!

I'm not sure what you mean by "course creation" - what you can do IN a course or the actual creation? If you're talking about mass creation you can already do that by importing files. We have all of our staff automatically assigned the Course Creator role so they can do it by themselves. Something that may be of interest is "cohorts" or site-wide groups and the ability to enroll an entire cohort into a class. Ex: make a staff cohort and enroll them in staff dev courses. Most notable improvements in course creation tools is conditional activities and course completion tracking. Filters set by individual course is a small, yet powerful improvement. It allows you to turn on media filters for better/easier embedding of media. The ability to clone an activity or resource will also be a big favorite for course creators.

In no way did I get "paid off" to read or review this book. Unless getting a free copy of the book means getting paid off..I'm an active Moodler on moodle.org, twitter, have a Moodle blog and participate in a lot of networking with Moodlers. I enjoy reading Packt's books and this book was no different. I hope it will help others and like I said if I can help in any other way I'd be happy to.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that you should research into the files that are "lost" if they are not attached to a resource when you import a 1.9 course into 2.1.

Hi guys, I just wanted to make a comment on the latest with Moodle 2.x. I submitted this review on March 25th and in those few months there has been a lot of activity and progress made regarding performance issues, patches and bugs. Moodle 2.1 comes out today and the biggest (most important) improvement is the ability to import 1.9 courses into 2.1. Other updates include the ability to clone activities and resources and a question engine rewrite. I highly recommend admins to use http://tracker.moodle.org/ . See 2.1 release notes here: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Moodle_2.1_release_notes I hope this will help ease the transition/upgrade and if you have any questions I'd be happy to discuss and help out.

And with that post, I have finally given up on Slashdot. I will allow it to continue to sink into the small echo chamber of people spouting illogical arguments and unquestioned articles of faith at each other that it is determined to become.

Adios, Slashdot. I'm done here.

H.

Well the only modding seems to have been a -1 so I guess not everyone feels that way. You have my permission to sig it if you like. ;) :D

Cheers,
H.

I have to ask what "fixing it" means. Because if it means making less money, then artists don't have a good financial incentive to sign on with Google's label and that would very quickly lead to the collapse of Google's music label.

Okay. There exist "natural monopolies" which is the usual term for these things. I'll rephrase my comment to the more accurate, but less pithy: "Except in the case of natural monopolies, of which the music industry is not one, monopolies are bad."

If there were only one company that artists, sound engineers, et al, could go to for employment, that would be a seriously fucked up situation.

Well, copyright law and the public's general willingness to pay the asked for price for the music. Copyright law does not produce a mandatory tax that everyone must pay. The companies exist because people have considered their product something they are willing to give money for.

Also, monopoly isn't really the right word. Copyright law doesn't grant a monopoly on producing music to anyone. It limits the rights to reproduce specific pieces of music. Apple doesn't have a monopoly on O/Ss because copyright law grants only them the right to reproduce their own O/S. They can't call up Bill Gates or Linus and tell them they're not allowed to produce an O/S. A "monopoly" on reproducing a particular song is no more a "monopoly" than that given to Oracle being the only company allowed to distribute the Oracle database.

I think your faith in Google's benevolance is quite alarming if you're suggesting they might buy a major music label without the intent to make money off it. I also think you'd be very disappointed to learn that music still cost money as if Google wasn't making a decent profit of it, the artists would sign up with a different label that did make them some money.

I consider the "if" in the above statement a pretty big one. I doubt at £5 a month, they're pricing themselves out of many people's ballpark. I'm an extremely casual listener. I mostly have the subscription for parties and dates. It's been really good to just have the World's music sitting there for anyone to pick from. I think £5 a month puts it well inside the casual bracket for most people.