Moodle, the software that brings much of the work of the campus classrooms online, has gone through some behind-the-scene changes. Current class materials are now being kept on a new server (accessible at http://moodle.lakeforest.edu/), which should result in a cleaner flow of data to the students and the reduce clutter of previous semesters' materials for the instructors. Marylin Bell of LIT has moved all fall 2007 class materials that were created on the old server onto the new server. Class materials from previous semesters can be made available at this address: http://moodle2.lakeforest.edu upon request; contact Erik Larson x6219. Instructors can contact their Academic Technology Specialists for any other questions about Moodle.
There is an easy method for making slide shows in Moodle, using the database module. In the course, add a database activity and when it says, "There are no defined fields for this database," click on "choose a predefined set." There's a preset already installed called Image Gallery. Select this preset and click Choose. This lets faculty easily upload image files, supply a title, and enter a summary. The gallery will display the images individually and as a group. In addition to allowing faculty to make slide shows, there are a number of features that will allow students to make their own gallery, if the instructor wishes. Contact David Levinson for help with this feature.
Another digitization software that will soon be offered on campus is MDID (Madison Digital Image Database), an open source, grant-funded software. It will allow faculty to store, select, and sort images, and has classroom presentation tools. Contact Academic Technology Specialist David Levinson for more information.
The Library's newly formed Digital Asset Management team is working in tandem with a similar team from Beloit College to scan, organize, and make accessible both text and images from the colleges' archives and special collections. By pooling both monetary and intellectual resources, the two similar colleges will be able to offer collections of archival images for the use of students, faculty, and even the world. Using ContentDM, a system that supports the management of digital collections, images will be classified and ordered into searchable, browsable collections. For example, view the Paddock Railroad Collection of images from the Lake Forest College special collections. Prior to this project, ContentDM was already used on campus for Religion professor Catherine Benton's images of Asian artifacts, which is part of the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE) Image Database to Enhance Asian Studies (IDEAS) collections.
Sharing spreadsheets and other documents will soon get much easier with Google Apps. Logging on through an Internet browser will give you and your colleagues access to the same documents without having to transfer files—no need to worry about losing formatting or data while sharing. Google Apps will also provide a campus-wide instant messenger service that will be private, secure, and have no advertisements. Check back here for news of the arrival of these applications on campus.