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Gamification of learning continues to be a hot topic for education (and as with most things within the education system, there's plenty of divided opinion on how it could be used in the classroom with students). But it's not limited to conventional education systems – we're also seeing gamification being...

There's a case study from the UK that I'd recommend reading. It's the story of a college that has enhanced their learning management system – Moodle – with integration Microsoft's OneNote to improve assessment and feedback processes for students and teachers. And their experience is that the system ...

Two years ago we introduced Office Web Apps – browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. They appeared in a number of places – for example, you could work directly with them in the cloud, using SkyDrive. And they also ran on SharePoint servers, so that you could be opening and editing...

Moodle, a popular Learning Management System, is widely used across education. And Microsoft's SkyDrive is also widely used by both teachers and students (although in some government systems, the access is blocked to SkyDrive when in school) as a cloud-based storage drive. So you may be interested to...

I just got an embargoed press release from the UK Learning Possibilities team for 15th June – and luckily for us, I can write about it already as we’re half a day ahead of the UK In a nutshell, LP+ is a rich Virtual Learning Environment for schools built on SharePoint 2010, which is...

Over the last six months I’ve written about Learning Management Systems (LMS) quite a few times. I’ve asked questions like “ Do you really need a Learning Management System? ” and “ Are SharePoint Composites the future of the Learning Management System? ”, and shared...

I was reading a blog post from Jonathan Rees earlier – a Professor of History at Colorado State University – where he discusses briefly the usage of the Learning Management System (LMS) (‘ An uncharacteristically subtle post for me ’). It was accompanied by a chart showing the...

It’s been a bit of a ‘big news week’ in the Moodle community this week. On Monday, it was announced that Blackboard had bought two of the world’s top 5 Moodle partners – MoodleRooms and NetSpot . NetSpot is Australia’s largest Moodle partner, and has been the partner of choice for many of the Australian...

The Microsoft CodePlex site is host to a wide range of open source projects, and just last month the first beta release was made of the project to allow hosting of Moodle 2.0 or Moodle 2.2 on the Windows Azure cloud service. As the project notes say:   The MoodleBuild toolchain patches and packages...

We’ve already said that the full Office 365 for education service will be launched this antipodean winter , and there’s a continuing trend for education customers to move their IT services into the cloud. So if you’re a Microsoft partner working with education customers moving more...

I’ve been reading quite a few articles recently about the future of Learning Management Systems (LMS). These have attempted to look over the horizon - beyond today’s monolithic LMS - for a future where it’s likely that these systems will be comprised of a mash-up of different ‘best in class’ components...

When I wrote about the Australian IT skills shortage ( Where are the IT jobs ) earlier in the week, I highlighted that research had identified a growing need from employers for applicants with very specific Microsoft skills sets - eg experience in virtualisation and cloud computing, as well as product...

The Pew Research Centre are a respected American organisation that shares research on issues, attitudes and trends shaping modern life. Although they tend to be US-centric, much of their research is unique and provides a helpful indicator to issues elsewhere in the world. ( I like their description of...

Do you have a system that your staff and students use to manage learning online? Whilst there are common brand names - Blackboard, Moodle, Desire2Learn etc - there doesn’t seem to be a common term to describe the system. Is it a Learning Management System? Or a Virtual Learning Environment? Or something...

I’ve been keeping an eye on trends in Learning Management Systems for the last few years, and especially in the last few months as potentially big changes have been happening - such as the sale of Blackboard. If you’re interested in the LMS marketplace, and views on the future direction, then there’s...

We’ve just finished the Microsoft World Partner Conference in Los Angeles, which included handing over the Worldwide Education Partner of the Year Award to Desire2Learn for their Learning Management System. The Desire2Learn solution covers a wide range of areas - including learning management, analytics...

Do you want to start creating your own learning packages for use in a Learning Management System? And want to find free tools to create online courses? I might be able to help… The Microsoft Learning team create and publish a wide range of online courses for IT professionals and developers using the...

The World Partner Conference kicks off in Los Angeles next month, and in the build up to it, we’ve just announced the results of the Microsoft Partner of Year Awards for 2011. It’s a tough race, with over 3,000 companies entering from over 100 countries – and the judging process is tough on the entrants...

The Australian Government has set a series of eight Digital Economy Goals - which are being used to drive the economy and public planning forward. They relate to use of technology at home, in business, in health, in government and in education. Digital Economy Goal for Education The Digital Economy Goal...

One of the schools that I worked quite closely with in the UK was Twynham School, a high school on the south coast of England. The school staff were in regular demand as conference speakers, sharing their experiences of enhancing learning and their school community through the work that they had done...

Almost at the other end of the world (well, for those of us in Australia), there's a massive SharePoint in education project providing a learning environment for students and teachers in Scotland. 80% of Scotland's 70,000 teachers are using the system, with a total of 425,000 users. The project is called...

Reading the Distance Education Survey 2010 (from the Instructional Technology Council ) is fascinating. Although the report is only based American community colleges, I think there are lots of parallels to TAFEs here in Australia. First, before I dive into the information on colleges changing Learning...

There's plenty of change happening with Learning Management Systems at the moment in Australia. Some universities are faced with migrating from WebCT, and others are working out their future strategy to support a much more dynamic learning environment than their current existing learning management system...

This week I've written a few blog posts about Moodle, the open source Learning Management System. Part of the reason is to demonstrate that the worlds of Microsoft and Open Source are not mutually exclusive, and another reason is to demonstrate that there are plenty of ways to implement a learning management...

Earlier today I wrote about installing Moodle on SharePoint , in order to improve the capabilities of the system, and improving the experience for your staff and students. Although I summarised some of the benefits of doing this, I thought it was worth expanding the list out (with the help of my friend...