Consider Open Source - Again!

OpenDisc - Education version
Many schools have a tight budget. That is often the reason given for them to consider Open Source. However, there is more that Open software than price. Much more. Lately I've found better tutorials, and a better online user base for Open Source alternatives to mainstream software. I would also like to suggest Open source is a better way for all software to go. Even if we paid for it. Yes I said "paid for it". Programmers need to be compensated for their work. Companies that help host and distribute software also need to get paid. What makes the Open Source model better is it allows innovations to be shared and built on, not re-invented.

Enough of my soap box. If you haven't checked into Open Source in a while, you should. No better place than the OpenDisc-Education project. Those people have done a fantastic job of putting many of the great useful packages into one simple iso image. Download it today at

http://www.theopendisc.com/education/

Web Equation Editor

I've been using this over over a year and it's easy to forget that many teachers may have missed this one. What is it? Well, it's an easy to use online equation editor. You can add it to your iGoogle home page (as I've done), use it in place at www.sitmo.com/latex or ebedd the code into any website.

After you build your equation you can download the .png graphic file or copy and paste into just about anything (the .png is better quality). Simple, useful. Enjoy!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

diigo - a great new Delicious like Bookmark service

I'll need to come back to this after a few weeks of really benching this service. However, out of the box it simply expands what I do with delicious. All the usual tagging and sharing tools, but adds on page comments and better social networking tools. If I can get enough people from my PLN to use this, it will really take off.

Also, you can have it auto bookmark to Delicious as well. Perfect. Check it out.

http://www.diigo.com

Tabs in Moodle

I'm just experimenting with this, but looks to solve one of my number one issue with Moodle. If you've used Moodle (a fantastic open source LMS), you may have run into the problem of courses that scroll on forever. Moodle seems to be ok for a short course, but once you've grown a bit, the students seem to do nothing by scroll and scroll.

Enter Patrick Thibaudeau's tab display. Essentially this add-on allows you to roll up various modules in your course, display them in a side menu with content that breaks out along the page into tabs. Very cool.

I hope it works as easily as the good folks from Faculté Saint-Jean made it look!

2009 Canadian Moodle Moot

Not enough time to post something significant, but having a great time connection with good people down here. Check out MoodleMoot.ca for more information. If you wish to pick up the flavour of the conference, hit search.twitter.com and look for canadamoot