A discussion of Lafayette's upcoming conversion from Blackboard to Moodle leads off this week's edition of the ITS Coffee Break. In Tech News, hosts Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley review “Confessions of a Podcast Junkie”, an EDUCAUSE article by Carie Windham that the discusses the advantages of combining podcasting with teaching and talk about Case Western Reserve University's virtual campus in Second Life. In Help News, they announce ITS's new “Windows Vista” resource page and offer a preview of upcoming summer workshops.

Getting the Podcast

There are several ways to get the podcast:

• Download the MP3 directly
• Subscribe to the Soapbox podcast rss feed using an aggregator (you only need to do this once; subsequent shows should download automatically)
• Subscribe to the Soapbox feed via iTunes

ITS News

• Moodle, Moodle, Moodle
  
  • Quick discussion of the Moodle to Blackboard transition.
  • Current status: Reviewing Moodle 1.8, checking for bugs, working on mass import of course materials.
  • The Moodle 1.9 Gradebook Architecture: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Grades
  • http://moodle.lafayette.edu

Tech News

• Confessions of a Podcast Junkie
  
  • by Carie Windham
  • http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm07/erm0732.asp
  • Quoted from the article:
    • "For teaching and learning, the students saw concrete benefits to podcasting projects, especially when compared with standard modes of testing, such as writing a paper or doing a class demonstration:
      • They were able to get "intimate" with course material, either by relistening to course lectures and supplements or by teaching the rest of the class.
      • They could showcase their projects to the rest of the community, expanding the reach of the classroom to their friends or members of the community.
      • They had the opportunity to review course material during pertinent moments in the semester, such as before exams or during course projects.
      • They learned new technical skills, whether they were downloading files or creating new ones."
• Case Western Reserve U. Builds Virtual Campus to Woo Prospective Students
  
  • http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=gnmZwrjytH4xfsk98fhF9P8fvxQ9H6wf
  • Case Western spends $30,000 to build a virtual campus in Second Life, which they then use to conduct campus tours.
• A new DS addiction? SimCity DS
  
  • http://www.joystiq.com/2007/05/15/joystiq-impressions-simcity-ds/
  • SimCity is coming to the DS, complete with mini-games and tradeable landmarks.

Help News

• ITS Recommendation Regarding Windows Vista
  
  • http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~its/news/vista
  • ITS has been testing Microsoft's Vista operating system since its release and has discovered several incompatibility issues with Vista and key network, academic, and administrative applications used on campus. For this reason, ITS continues to recommend Windows XP Professional as the operating system for all campus computers.
• Upcoming Workshops
  
  • No workshops are scheduled during the rest of May, but look for Moodle workshops to be offered beginning in June. Workshops on web design will be offered later in the summer.

Contacting the Podcast

• Questions, comments and suggestions can be sent to itsblog@lafayette.edu.