Hi all!

You may have seen the news that we are holding our first official Moodle conference dedicated to research on and around the Moodle platform:

    Moodle Research Conference - research.moodle.net
    14-15 September 2012    Heraklion, Crete

The purpose of the conference is to support networking and sharing among those who are researching Moodle and thinking about ways to improve it for different learning scenarios.   It will also directly inform the development of Moodle in the future.

We've had a good number of papers already submitted for the conference, so it's looking pretty exciting!  Submitted papers range from in-depth case studies of how Moodle can be applied and used in various environments to interface design experiments and the development of whole new modules to introduce new techniques.

(Personally I love detailed and rigorous case studies.  There are so many ways to apply even a stock Moodle but it's important to understand what patterns best achieve our goals of improving education and why they work)

We've had requests to extend the submission date a little, so we've done that.  You now have until 28th May to submit your papers!

If you had been undecided until now and missed the deadline this week, or have only just heard about it  - send in your paper and come along!   It's going to be two days of fascinating and meaningful discussions and debate!  And it's in a beautiful location too. 

I'd appreciate you spreading this message to any relevant communities of practice that you are part of - thank you!   You can send them to this URL:   http://goo.gl/eWcH2

Thanks to all the students who applied to work with Moodle for Google Summer of Code 2012. As in previous years, it was very difficult deciding which project proposals to accept.

Congratulations and welcome to the four students whom we choose, who will be working on Moodle projects over the next 3-4 months:

• Mayank Gupta - Improving SCORM 2004 Support
• Kanika Goyal - Plagiarism API improvements
• Isuru Madushanka Weerarathna - Email reminders for calendar events
• Ankit Gupta - Video/audio capture repository plugin

For details about the projects see GSOC/2012.

Please give our new Moodle developers help and encouragement wherever you can!

(Edited by Helen Foster to add profile link - original submission Tuesday, 24 April 2012, 11:54 AM)

Moodle 2.2.3, Moodle 2.1.6, Moodle 2.0.9 and Moodle 1.9.18 have been released.

In addition to a number of bug fixes and small improvements, security vulnerabilities have been discovered and fixed. As always, we recommend that you upgrade your sites to these latest versions as soon as possible. All admins of registered Moodle sites have been notified with security issue details.

Upgrading should be very straightforward. Full details about the releases can be found in the release notes:

• Moodle 2.2.3 release notes
• Moodle 2.1.6 release notes
• Moodle 2.0.9 release notes
• Moodle 1.9.18 release notes

The releases themselves are available via the Moodle download page as packages or direct from our CVS and Git repositories.

Please note that Moodle 2.0.9 and Moodle 1.9.18 are no longer fully supported. They are supported for security fixes only.

Please pass this on to people who may be interested.

1st Moodle Research Conference

September 14-15, 2012

Heraklion, Crete-Greece

http://research.moodle.net/

Call for Papers

Prospective authors are invited to submit:

• Research papers - of up to 8 pages, including figures and references.
• Posters and research in progress, that should be up to 1000 words in length.

The papers' submission process will be facilitated by the EasyChair conference management system (soon available). Papers should be formatted using this template.

All submissions will undergo a blind peer review process involving two program committee members.

Accepted papers will be published as conference proceedings in an open access, online-only version. The proceedings will be available online approximately one month prior to the conference opening.

Note: The deadline for submissions of papers is 14 May 2012.

(Edited by Helen Foster to add submissions deadline - original submission Wednesday, 14 March 2012, 01:20 AM)

I'm pleased to announce that Moodle is taking part in Google Summer of Code 2012 - our sixth year of involvement in the program!

The GSOC program pays students to work on open source software products for 3-4 months (over the northern hemisphere summer), mentored by existing developers.

Please see Projects for new developers for our list of suggested GSOC projects and Applying to work with Moodle for GSOC for details of our application process.

If you're a core Moodle developer and are interested in mentoring a project, please contact our development manager Michael de Raadt.

We are now following a release calendar with minor releases every two months.

Moodle 2.2.2, Moodle 2.1.5, Moodle 2.0.8 and Moodle 1.9.17 have been released.

In addition to a number of bug fixes and small improvements, security vulnerabilities have been discovered and fixed. As always, we recommend that you upgrade your sites to these latest versions as soon as possible. All admins of registered Moodle sites have been notified with security issue details.

Upgrading should be very straightforward. Full details about the releases can be found in the release notes:

• Moodle 2.2.2 release notes
• Moodle 2.1.5 release notes
• Moodle 2.0.8 release notes
• Moodle 1.9.17 release notes

The releases themselves are available via the Moodle download page as packages or direct from our CVS and Git repositories.

Please note that Moodle 2.0.8 and Moodle 1.9.17 are no longer fully supported. They are supported for security fixes only.

Happy New Year to everyone in our Moodle community!

If you'd like to meet up with other Moodlers in person in 2012, there are plenty of Moodle conferences coming up:

• MoodleMoot Japan 2012 - Mie, Japan, 22-23 February
• MoodleMoot Austria 2012 - Linz, Austria, 23-24 February (#mootAT12)
• Louisiana MoodleMoot - Shreveport, Louisiana, USA, 6-7 March
• German MoodleMoot 2012 - Münster, Germany, 13-16 March
• Ireland and UK MoodleMoot 2012 - Dublin, Ireland, 2-4 April (#mootieuk12)
• Australian Schools Moodle Conference - Brisbane, Queensland, 12-14 April
• iMoot 2012 - Online, 26-29 May (#imoot12)
• Mountain MoodleMoot - Helena, Montana, USA, 30 May-1 June
• French MoodleMoot - Nîmes, France, 20-22 June (#mootfr12)
• Ohio MoodleMoot - Mansfield, Ohio, USA, 21 June
• MoodleMoot Australia 2012 - Gold Coast, Queensland, 1-4 July (#mootau12)
• Midwest MoodleMoot 2012 - Goshen, Indiana, USA, 25-27 July (#mootusin12)
• US West Coast MoodleMoot - Los Angeles, California, USA, 31 July-3 August
• Wisconsin MoodleMoot - Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, USA, 6-7 August
• MoodleMoot Brazil 2012 - São Paulo, Brazil, 19-21 September (#moodlemootBR)

If you're organising a Moodle event and would like it added to the moodle.org calendar, please let me know and/or post in the announcements forum in the Moodle Conference Centre.

(Edited by Helen Foster to add additional dates - original submission Monday, 2 January 2012)

I'm pleased to announce a new feature on moodle.org - Developer credits - listing all of our wonderful developers who have contributed code to Moodle since the project began in 2001. A huge thank you to everyone!

In addition to the developer names cloud, you can find out the names of the developers who contributed to each version of Moodle in Contributions.

Thanks to David Mudrak for developing the Developer credits feature, which we plan to extend to include credits for other contributions, such as tracker comments, peer reviews, testing and also translations submitted to the Moodle languages portal. If you have any feedback, please comment on MDLSITE-1663.

As a continuation of its long-term stewardship of the Moodle Quiz, the Open University in the UK is pleased to announce the release of a set of ten new question types for Moodle 2.1 onwards. All are available for download from the Moodle Plugins directory.

The new question types include:

• Variable numeric - allowing random numbers, variables and expressions within questions
• Drag and drop into text - enabling words to be dragged into sentences, lists and tables
• Pattern match - providing sophisticated response matching features
• Marker - enabling markers to be placed on images
• Opaque - allowing the connection of external question engines

The question types were designed by Phil Butcher at the Open University and developed mainly by web programmer Jamie Pratt, with Quiz module maintainer Tim Hunt overseeing their implementation.

For further details of the new question types, see Phil's OpenLearn site on eAssessment at the Open University with open source software and Tim's forum post New question types.

Apologies to everyone who has tried to access moodle.org recently and found the site down. The reason is that moodle.org has been experiencing very heavy usage and denial-of-service attacks.

Please rest assured that we're doing everything we can to find a solution and ensure moodle.org remains available to provide support for Moodle users around the world and around the clock.

I'm pleased to announce that Moodle is now being translated into over one hundred languages!

Recently started language packs include Romansh Sursilvan (spoken in southern Switzerland), Wolof (spoken in Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania), Nepali (the official language of Nepal) and Faroese (spoken in the Faroe Islands, Denmark and Norway). Many thanks to all our translation pack maintainers for their ongoing work.

If you'd like to help with translating Moodle into your language, please see the Translation documentation for further information.

If you'd like to install additional language packs on your Moodle site, login as an administrator and go to Settings > Site administration > Language > Language packs.

To assist us with testing at Moodle HQ, we are keen to know what infrastructure you run Moodle on. If you're a Moodle system administrator, please help us to help you by completing this short survey:

Survey for Moodle system administrators

Many thanks for your help.

Moodle 2.2.1, Moodle 2.1.4, Moodle 2.0.7 and Moodle 1.9.16 have been released.

In addition to a number of bug fixes and small improvements, security vulnerabilities have been discovered and fixed. Thanks to the reporters and to all the people responsible for fixing these security issues.

As always, we recommend that you upgrade your sites to these latest versions as soon as possible. All admins of registered Moodle sites have been notified previously.

Upgrading should be very straightforward. Full details about the releases can be found in the release notes:

• Moodle 2.2.1 release notes
• Moodle 2.1.4 release notes
• Moodle 2.0.7 release notes
• Moodle 1.9.16 release notes

The releases themselves are available via the Moodle download page, either as packages or direct from our CVS and Git repositories.

Please note that Moodle 2.0.7 and Moodle 1.9.16 are no longer fully supported. They are supported for security fixes only.

Hi!

We're looking for more feedback from Moodle users about the features that our core developers should be working on during 2012.

If you have a spare couple of minutes could you please take part?  There's only four required questions and two of them are multiple choice. 

Moodle AAARRGH! survey for 2012

Cheers!
Martin

Moodle is one of the top 10 tools for learning in 2011!

Over 500 learning professionals from around the world shared their top 10 tools for learning recently in the 5th Annual Survey of Learning Tools organised by Jane Hart of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4LPT).

Moodle came 8th in the list of 100 tools for learning, up from last year, when it was 10th. See Top Tools 2011 C4LPT for the full list.