Moodle.org: "Moodle 1.9.1 was recently released and is recommended as an upgrade for all Moodle users. There were no security bugs but over 400 issues were dealt with and there are a few minor new features, such as support for captcha during email registration."

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Amy Stephen, OpenSourceCommunity.org, commented recently Blackboard's patent claims to the learning management system. Amy's comments and references are well worth reading in her post, Campus Technology: Interview with Blackboard Chief Legal Officer Matthew Small. Don't you just love it when Amy goes Groklaw on all of us? Hooray for Amy.

I missed the announcement early last week, but Moodle 1.9 was made available in early March. Since I haven't mentioned anything about Moodle since last October, I have some making up to do with the open source project responsible for this course and learning management system.

Significant new features in this new version of Moodle include:

• An all-new Gradebook designed from the ground up for expansion and integration with other systems
• Integrated support for Outcomes, so that learning goals can be tied to individual courses and activities, and can be graded against.
• Performance improvements due to review and refactoring of many parts of the Moodle code.
• Tagging is now a core function allowing users to easily link things like users, blogs, courses etc as well as external sites like Flickr and Youtube through the use of simple tags.

See the Release notes for full details. A copy of Moodle 1.8 can be obtained via the Moodle download server.

Recieved an e-mail a couple days ago from ATutor.ca that that there is a new version of ATutor available, version 1.6. ATutor is an open source learning content management system (LCMS or sometimes just LMS). As the project describest, with Atutor "educators can quickly assemble, package, and redistribute Web-based instructional content, easily import prepackaged content, and conduct their courses online. Students learn in an adaptive learning environment."

The two most significant changes with Atutor 1.6 include:

• Adoption of a single character set, UTF-8, which provides universal language support.
• A new look-and-feel changes and updates to the default themes

You can visit the ATutor 1.6 Demo to try out new features in 1.6 and download ATutor 1.6 to install a version of your own.

"...what's more important is that Moodle is every bit as good as any other CMS/LMS product on the market -- and better than many. Just being available, supported and free is not enough to be compelling; being all of those things and being better than the alternatives is."

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Link found via Open Source Community

"A learning management system (LMS) is a big investment, and one not to be taken lightly. Mike Morrison has some advice on how to choose the one that is right for your organisation."

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""Every term I would get someone coming up and saying 'Dr. Hartman, here's the paper from the five of us, but I did most of the work.' Short of rolling out the Spanish Inquisition, there's not much you can do about it at that point," said Hartman. "With wikis, I can see who pulled the load and who didn't do anything."

User-friendly multimedia communication servers are also being used for more efficient uploading and distribution of educational multimedia to specific people without the need for IT help, according to Blackburn."

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A new version of Moodle is released with the developers stating that Moodle 1.8 is "a very high standard" and is "highly recommend production sites using older versions to upgrade to Moodle 1.8".  Moodle is a course management system (also called a learning management system) and used by educators to build online learning communities.

The most significant new features in this version of Moodle include:

• Accessibility improvements (Complies with all major international standards in this area, including XHTML Strict 1.0).
• Moodle Network (Allows for cross-site roaming)
• Roles improvements

Additional changes and enhancements can be found in the Moodle 1.8 Release Notes.  Downloads of Moodle 1.8 can be found on the  Moodle Downloads page.