On the first ITS Coffee Break of the new year, hosts Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley recap Lafayette's Moodle Hack/Doc Fest, talk about changes to Moodle for Spring 2008, and take a look at the new web-based survey tool Opinio. In Tech News they talk about the MPAA admitting that college students aren't responsible for nearly as much lost revenues as they previously claimed, and experiment with GoodReads, a social networking site for folks who love books. Finally in Help News they explain how to change your name or e-mail address in Moodle, geek out about a Color Palette Generator that choses colors based on pictures users submit to it, and revisit the technology video podcast commandN.

Getting the Podcast

There are several ways to get the podcast:

• Download the MP3 directly [1]
• Subscribe to the Soapbox podcast rss feed using an aggregator [2] (you only need to do this once; subsequent shows should download automatically)
• Subscribe to the Soapbox feed via iTunes [3]

• Moodle Hack/Doc Fest
  • Five NITLE colleges -- Kalamazoo, Lawrence, Lafayette, Reed and Smith -- joined forces for the first Moodle Hack-Doc Fest Jan. 8-10. It was hosted by Lafayette, and we banged through a bunch of projects and bug fixes.
• Moodle in Spring 2008
  • Students enrolled in courses, everything's ready to go.
    
  • Scheduler's new and improved, many bugs have been fixed.
    
  • We run drop/add every morning, so if you're not in, you should be tomorrow. If not, call the Helpdesk.
• Opinio
  • A web-based survey tool that will replace our previous survey tool, Vovici EFM Continuum
  • Lafayette's replacement for Vovici's now in production. Bunch of workshops held in January.
  • http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~its/help/opinio [4]

• MPAA Admits Mistake on Downloading Study
  
  • http://www.newsweek.com/id/98009 [5]
  • Turns out students accounted for 15% of lost revenues from file sharing, not 44%.
• GoodReads
  • http://www.goodreads.com [6]
  • Social networking service for people who love books.

• Updating your first name, last name or e-mail in Moodle
  • Your first name, last name and Email addresses in Moodle are based on your Network ID, and they're locked -- you can't change them yourself.
  • To request a change, call the Helpdesk: 610.330.5506
• Color Palette Generator
  • http://jrm.cc/color-palette-generator/index.php?image=rec%2Flandscape-07.jpg&steps=5 [7]
  • Upload a photo, it suggests a web color palette to complement it.
• commandN
  • Video podcast about technology featuring Amber and Jeff Macarthur, formerly of TechTV.

• itsblog@lafayette.edu [8]