Posts Tagged ‘Mahara’

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Twenty Ten

Posted by Joel Kerr on 30 Dec
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It’s said so often (and I’m not afraid of a good cliché so I am going to say it as well) where did the year go? It seems like yesterday since I was walking through the doors of Synergy Learning for the first time and since I was sitting down to my first blog post.

In fact it was a year ago!

So as we get ready to see in the New Year I am going to give you ten of my highlights from 2010 – things that stood out in my mind at the time of writing (bearing in mind I am still in the grips of my Christmas recovery!).

In no particular order…

The BETT Show

A great start to any e-learning calendar I was lucky enough to get over to BETT for a day trip. Roy, Alex, Jonny, Ian and Andrea were the core team manning the Moodle stand at London’s Olympia from 13th – 16th January and as always the response was mighty

iMoot

2010 played host to the first iMoot where the who’s who of the Moodle glitterati presented to Moodlers around the world. Among the presenters were Synergy Learning’s Technical Director Alex Büchner and Moodle Trainer Ian Wild.

The World Cup

Vuvuzela’s weren’t the only thing that caught the attention of the Synergy Learning office. Our heated Fantasy Football League was a close one and I was delighted to come out on top and very disappointed for Jonny McAlister who spent so much time at the bottom of the table he contemplated making it his permanent address.

Moodle 2.0

Is it this month? Next month? No, tomorrow you say? Yes that’s right – with more ‘will they, won’t theys’ than a soap extra-marital affair Moodle finally released the much anticipated Moodle 2.0. The biggest Moodle release to date with more new and improved features than could be mentioned in this short post (don’t forget to visit our ‘Route to Moodle 2.0’ page to see how we can seamlessly facilitate your upgrade).

Our Fifth Birthday

Although not the fifth year of Synergy Learning, 2010 was the fifth birthday of the company under the ownership of Roy Kerley and Alex Buchner. We celebrated in style…that’s all I’m saying!

Race for Life

We were very proud of our girls who raised a non-to shabby £700 for Cancer Research by taking part in the Race for Life up at Stormont (Belfast) in May. Inspired by photos they had seen from previous years of girls stumbling over the finish line looking red, sweaty and like they were on their last legs, our girls finished the 5k with dignity and grace – and then swore never to put themselves through a similar agony again!



Award-winning Theme Design

While I am being proud I may as well mention Caroline Kennedy who won Moodle 2.0 Theme contest, hosted by New School Learning, with her ‘Splash’ Theme. Caroline won herself an iPad and Splash can now be found as part of Moodle 2.0’s core code.

iPad

It is worth mentioning that 2010 was the year the newest addition to the Apple family was released and a number of iPad‘s have found their way into the Synergy Learning offices. Received with a mixed response the tablet is sure to impact the future of elearning one way or the other.

New Hosting Platform

This was also the year our Senior Networks Engineer, Peter Hinds, built our new Hosting Platform from scratch. Optimised for Moodle and Mahara, “it is a fully resilient platform comprised of hardware manufactured by industry leading vendors.” Click here to read all about it in Pete’s blog post. Not bad Pete!

Scotland

Our Belfast office is just a stone’s throw from Scotland so everyone was delighted for our Managing Director, Roy Kerley, who was appointed to the Board of the eLearning Alliance – a member-based organisation that supports Scotland’s elearning community. We have enjoyed a lot of new business from that direction and met some great people.

And one lowlight…

We were sorry to say goodbye to Fearghal Murphy who left us for sunnier climes (Florida to be more specific). I would like to wish Fearghal all the best for the future, and given that he’s prone to sunburn I would like to wish him good luck for the present as well!

So there you have it – ten memorable moments from the last 365 days… obviously it is difficult to fit a year into one blog post but not a bad list!

Here’s to the next 365…in the meantime I would like to thank you all for reading and wish you all a very happy and prosperous New Year!

Joel

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New Moodle and Mahara Hosting Platform

Posted by Joel Kerr on 07 Oct
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Synergy Learnings Senior Network Engineer, Peter Hinds, has been locked away in his office for the last few weeks, tirelessly building our new hosting platform.

Synergy Learning host Moodle and Mahara sites for a number of clients, from individual trainers to large universities and organisations. I managed to catch up with Peter to find out what he was up to and what benefits it will offer.

Hello Peter, could you tell us a bit about the hosting platform you are building?


Yes, it is a fully resilient platform comprised of hardware manufactured by industry leading vendors. The application tier, which resides on the hardware, allows us to assume full control of all services.

The advantage of building from scratch is that it has allowed us to standardise our operating system and installed packages, which will lead to a quicker diagnostic process and further optimisation for Moodle and Mahara hosting.

As a Senior Network Engineer creating a new hosting platform must be right up your street. What do you enjoy most about a job like this?

It really is, I’m not just saying that either!

I enjoy working with the latest technology and adapting it to best suit our needs. I take great satisfaction in the planning and implementation of the project. On a day-to-day basis working with Linux servers and Cisco brand network devices is excellent.

What are the benefits of the new hosting platform compared to the current?

The primary benefit is that the platform is engineered to be resilient from top to bottom. Every network device is redundant and every server is multi-homed in to the appropriate switches. Our firewalls run in a High Availability (HA) configuration with stateful fail-over, meaning should one firewall drop offline the other will maintain sessions without any noticeable switchover.

We already monitor our current platform 24*7 but improvements on the new platform will allow for even finer tuned monitoring.

Security is arguably the most important aspect of any network and on the new platform we have a really robust solution in place using the Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA’s). Our data centre also has ISO270001 accreditation, 24*7 physical security, redundant power supplies backed by diesel generators, strict environmental controls and fire suppression.

What differences will our customers notice?

Our high standard of service will be maintained when clients are migrated to the new platform however the new platform does have unique benefits.

One of particular interest is the ability to adjust server specs as required. For example, if it’s a particularly busy time of year for the client they could increase the CPU and RAM available to their server which would allow them to ensure the smooth running of their moodle application under heavier load than usual.

Increasing storage space will also be very straight forward which means the flexibility of our packages can be adjusted and refined to a particular clients needs.

Will there be a crossover period between the two systems that will impact upon the operations of our clients Moodle sites?

There will be a period of crossover but thankfully not one that will impact upon the operation of our clients Moodle sites. Each client will be contacted in due course and provided with details of when their site will be migrated and any actions they may have to undertake. The migration process is very straight forward and isn’t any cause for concern.

Peter is hoping to have the new system up and running by November, keep posted to the blog for more information. For more information on Synergy Learning’s hosting packages visit Hosting with Synergy Learning.

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Mahara 1.3 Release Candidate

Posted by Joel Kerr on 03 Sep
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The Release Candidate of Mahara 1.3 is out now, with a load of new features, improved features and bug fixes.  In order to get the final release of 1.3 out as quickly as possible the Mahara team need users to test the release candidate and report any bugs they come across.

You can expect the following new features in Mahara 1.3:

  1. Plans and Collections
  2. Simplified navigation
  3. Gravatar support
  4. RSS feeds for public blogs
  5. Pluggable anti-spam system
  6. View themes
  7. Email bounce handling
  8. Moodle 2.0 Porfolio API support
  9. View/artefact feedback enhancements
  10. Statistics in the Admin area
  11. New blocktypes: notifications, recently modified views, recent forum posts
  12. Configurable forum post indentation
  13. Personal dashboard

For more information on Synergy Learning’s Mahara services click here.

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An animated introduction to Mahara

Posted by Joel Kerr on 29 Jun
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I found this short animation about Mahara and thought it was a nice, simple introduction.  Created by Southampton Solent University for the Mahara Community.


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An Introduction to Mahara

Posted by Joel Kerr on 18 May
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Mahara is an eportfolio system that works in tandem with Moodle.  Like Moodle, Mahara is an open source software with developer support available through it’s own community and peer support available through blogs, wikis etc.

Why use Mahara?

As an online portfolio, Mahara is a place to store institutional and personal learning articles or ‘artefacts’.  Students can use these artefacts to demonstrate their development over time to various audiences including prospective universities and future employers.

Mahara also provides a comprehensive blogging tool, social networking and a CV builder.  Users have their own personalised profiles which they can use to add employment and education history, accreditations, achievements and goals.

Communities can be built within Mahara – users have the ability to connect with other users, create and maintain lists of friends. One of the features that differentiates Mahara from other ePortfolio systems is that users control which items and what information within their portfolio other users see.

Moodle and Mahara.

Mahara is designed to compliment Moodle, in fact many of the Mahara development team have also been involved in major Moodle development.  This means it is simple, straightforward and cost effective for Moodle educators to integrate Mahara as an eportfolio system.

A Moodle to Mahara network is very similar to Moodle to Moodle networking with the Mahara system being built on top of the Moodle network.  The networks can be set up to connect one Mahara system to one Moodle system, many to one, one to many or many to many systems.

A single-sign on capability allows users to be automatically logged in to both their Mahara and Moodle accounts by providing a username and password at only one of these sites.

Once set-up any Moodle content created could potentially become a Mahara artefact with students easily being able to export from Moodle to Mahara.  The Moodle content appears in Mahara rendered to HTML or a file that can easily be read by common applications (eg PDF).

Most importantly, like Moodle, Mahara is constantly being developed and updated thus providing a very solid framework for which to build on.

If you are interested in finding out more about Synergy Learning’s Mahara services visit www.synergy-learning.com/mahara or email info@synergy-learning.com.


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Introduction to Synergy Learning

Posted by Joel Kerr on 06 Jan
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I want to give you a very quick overview of what we do at Synergy Learning.

Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) and ePortfolios have become increasingly important in education with Moodle and Mahara emerging as the front-runners for flexibility and cost saving.

Since 1997 Synergy Learning has concentrated on developing content for online learning and have worked to become the leading Moodle and Mahara Partner in the UK and Ireland as well as the only Partner to offer full service solutions (hosting, training, support, consultancy, design services and content development).

As experts in Moodle, Mahara and bespoke content development Synergy Learning removes the burden often associated with implementing VLEs and ePortfolios.

This is a very simplified explanation and more information can be found on our website www.synergy-learning.com, again feel free to leave any comments,

Joel


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The First Post!

Posted by Joel Kerr on 04 Jan
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Hello and welcome to my first post on the Synergy Learning blog.  I am relatively new to the world of eLearning so I will be using this blog to keep you informed of my own discoveries as I go along.

Don’t worry though; I am surrounded by experts in Moodle, Mahara and content development for online learning, so for those already in the know I will also be keeping you updated with the latest eLearning developments.

My intention is to provide a blog that will be useful to all those interested in the services offered by Synergy Learning no matter what stage you are at.  For more information on Synergy Learning visit www.synergy-learning.com.

Feel free to comment or give feedback on any of the posts, I only ask that you keep it clean and keep it constructive.

That’s it for now,

Joel


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