This story details how Microsoft tried to recuit Eric Raymond, one of the most public advocates for Open Source Software. I found it on David's blog.

This thread describes a module that allows one to adjust the due-dates of all (or a subset of) Moodle assignments at once. This means that when you import a course and need to update every assignment's due-date you can do it from one page instead of havin g to go to every single assignment to fix them all.

eSchool News has linked to a National Teacher Survey published by CDW-G. It's a little interesting that it's funded by a computer products vendor. It says that more teachers are interested in and comfortable with technology and that 31% of teachers have received no technology training in the past year. I'm still on my Technology Training is a Waste kick, so I'm wondering how many non-teachers have had technology training in the past year. My wager is that more of them haven't had training since they have computers that work. (I think that teachers need training, but that technology should be a means rather than an end.)

The Free Software and Open Source Symposium is to be held October 24 in Toronto. From their site:

The Symposium is a one-day event aimed at bringing together educators and other interested parties to discuss common free software and open source issues, learn new technologies and to promote the use of free and open source software in our classrooms, labs and educational infrastructure. At Seneca College, we think free and open source software are real alternatives.

The deadline for proposals is August 31.

There are a couple interesting threads on EDUCAUSE's CIO Listserv that talk about using and Moving to Moodle. This one talks about the decision to choose a Learning Management System (LMS) and asks about Blackboard, Jenzabar and WebCT. Many of the responses talk about choosing Moodle. This one talks about the pains of switching from one LMS to another.

Changing from one system to another is a very expensive proposition, not because of the costs of licensing the software and its care and feeding, but in the re-training of thousands of users. In one post, someone says that if Blackboard doubled the $75K/year that it's costing this school now, he'd probably keep paying it, as the current price is half what he's currentlly paying Microsoft and provides similar fractions for lots of other very expensive stuff. That's all true, but the fact that once you've gone with a proprietary system you're forever beholden to their whims is what I get from this line of reasoning.