Moodle 2.0

In September of 2010, Moodle announced a new version of their product, Moodle 2.0, full of exciting new features and improvements. The newest version of our product (currently in development) will be powered by Moodle 2.0 technology.

Here is a 2 minute youtube video highlighting various aspects of Moodle 2.o.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo7hImBMiHY

Global Classroom Security

We are pleased to announce that all Global Classroom product web traffic is now secured with the encrypted communication protocol HTTPS. These types of connections (used with online transactions and transmission of sensitive data) will be available on every page you visit and every action you make with Global Classroom.

If you have links to outside resources, you may see security warnings on your browser. Don't panic! This is a notice that lets you know that a resource on the page is being obtained using the un-encrypted communication protocol HTTP, which is used universally across the internet.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays to all! In observance, the Global Classroom office will be closed on December 24th and January 31st. If you have any questions during these days, send an email to rwillis@globalclassroom.us.

New Feature: Custom Background Color

eSchool Administrators now have the ability to customize their background color! If you click the "My Courses" button on the navigation bar, there is a new link in your portrait block called eSchool Customizations. This will bring up a color picker where you can select any color on the spectrum, or enter your own custom hex code. Click the Set Color button, and your color will be saved!

New Feature: Invite to Your Course

Invite to Your Course, a new course block, has been installed for current and future collaborative eSchools that will help streamline course enrollment for Teachers. eSchool Administrators can request this feature to be added to their courses automatically.

This block will appear in the upper right corner of a Teacher's course page, viewable ONLY by a Teacher. When a Teacher enters a student's email address and clicks the Invite! button, the student will receive an email with instructions on how to register on your eSchool, and all of the relevant course information for your course, including your name, profile photo, and email address.

More information regarding course enrollment can be found here. If you have any questions regarding this new feature, please email rwillis@globalclassroom.us.

Update: Moodle Video with HTML5

Global Classroom is pleased to announce that our Moodle Video resource has been enhanced to use browser-dependent HTML5 video technology for playback! As you upload and play videos in a video-enabled eSchool or on any of our eClassroom solutions, you may see a different display then the default flowplayer playback. This is our new HTML5 and javascript powered video player, powered by http://videojs.com/. It should load videos faster without the need for a third-party plugin. Here are some other features:

• Use of HTML5 technology for video playback, with a flash based flowplayer fallback.
• Can show or hide video for students.
• Allows both teachers and admins to download videos.
• Browser-dependent support for numerous video types, such as mp4, m4v, mov, and limited webm and ogv formats.

For more information on web video, please visit the Web Video Guide on our support site.

For information for instructors wanting to use the video resource, visit our Instructor How-To.

To request video, or for any further questions, please contact us at rwillis@globalclassroom.us.

New Feature: Course Repair

Global Classroom is pleased to announce a new course feature, "Repair", located in the Administration block in a course. This tool is designed to fix malformed references to questions, resources, sections, labels, and events within a course. Previous versions of Moodle have had trouble properly backing up data within courses, and this feature was created to address this problem.

If you have any questions, please contact rwillis@globalclassroom.us.