Lambda Solutions e-Learning 2.0 Online Training and Moodle Experts

Lambda Solutions is pleased to host and sponsor “half hour how to Moodle" webinars in support of the Moodle community.

Webinar Registration - Moodle 2.5

What: Moodle how to webinar. Short, topical webinars on Moodle features, facilitated by Ben Young and Chad Leaman of Lambda Solutions, a certified Moodle Partner.

When: Thursday, May 30, 2013, at 10:00 am PDT.

How: Session delivered via Abode Connect, details provided upon registration.

Topic: Moodle 2.5 was released on May 13, and this release is packed with new features and capabilities that will make a difference in the lives of students, teachers, course designers and administrators. If you’re considering to upgrade your Moodle in the months ahead, this is a must watch.

Open Badges: Content creators can design and award badges to acknowledge achievements and learning, and provide learning certifications that can be published to the web as these badges are compatible with Mozilla’s Open Badges.

Bootstrap for cross device Moodle experience: Responsive design with Moodle Bootstrap is the foundation of an improved experience across devices and screen sizes.  The new “Clean” theme is a great step forward. Consider what this means for your future course design.

Usability: A number of great usability improvements were made including drag and drop, shorter forms and quick “jump-to” options will help you get the job done faster.

More details in our recent blog post on Moodle 2.5 and Moodle 2.5 Features.

All of this and more will be covered in this month’s half-hour how to, so you are prepared to move to Moodle 2.5 as part of your summer upgrades.

Cost: Free

Moodle 2.5, the latest scheduled release of the world’s most popular Learning Management Solution, is out this week. For many of those thinking about upgrading Moodle (official support for ver. 2.2 ends in June), or switching from another LMS over to Moodle, now is a very good time, before the summer rush.

The new features of Moodle 2.5 for eLearning administrators, teachers, trainers and students include improvements in usability, design and functionality. Some highlights include:

We're proud to support the healthcare community with online education and training solutions. This is definitely an area where we can see immediately how online learning can translate into real-world healthy outcomes for trained staff, health organizations and -- most importantly -- patients. We help our healthcare sector clients with online learning implementation, managed hosting and support for the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) and partner with Totara for workplace learning and compliance certification, in healthcare and beyond. 

Attending a screening of the film Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare, and subsequent panel discussion completely reinforced our ideas about the challenges facing the healthcare sector -- and how online training can help.

We see that costs are crushing the US and Canadian healthcare systems and patient outcomes have plateaued. The movie highlights that over $1 billion was spent by health related lobby groups trying to ensure Obama-care worked for them... rather than patients. 

Global Accessibility Awareness Day is coming up on May 9 – but what is it and what might that have to do with you, fellow education technology innovator?

Global Accessibility Awareness Day is a community-driven effort whose goal is to dedicate one day to raising the profile of and introducing the topic of digital (web, software, mobile app/device etc.) accessibility and people with different disabilities to the broadest audience possible.

Lambda Solutions hosted another Moodle "Half hour how to moodle" in April 2013 in support of the Moodle community.

Moodle Webinar – Theming and Customization

Moodle provides educators and trainers with a robust toolbox of educational tools. Moodle offers various options to tailor the design to the organization, the learner and learning devices. There are a variety of prebuilt themes that can be modified to customize the look and feel of Moodle on desktop and mobile devices to conform to the style and esthetic of your brand. You can modify the course listing on the front page, and personalize settings to change the user experience.  Learn how to adapt the look and functionality of Moodle to meet your needs in this month’s “half hour how to Moodle” webinar.

Please see the following recording of the webinar, slides, and additional links, which focus on which aggregation methods support your grading structure.

Moodle Theming and Customization from Lambda Solutions on Vimeo.

Giving the hospital a learning management system and capabilities to train nurses in a specialized area of medical care.

About Mt. Sinai Hospital

As one of the top teaching hospitals in North America and one of Canada’s pre-eminent patient care, research and academic health science centres, Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto has a well-earned reputation for excellence.

Lambda Solutions recently host another Moodle "Half hour how to moodle" in support of the Moodle community.

Moodle Webinar – Taming the Gradebook

The Moodle Gradebook can be a teacher’s best friend or worst enemy. It has so many features that it can feel overwhelming. Learn how you might approach to building your gradebook as part of the course development process. We’ll cover some tricks to grading your students, as well as how to export those grades to external student information systems. Put the reins on the Moodle Gradebook and get it working for you.

Please see the following recording of the webinar, and slides, which focus on which aggregation methods support your grading structure.

It’s one thing to believe in your business – and quite another for a top tech organization like Rocket Builders to be recognized for delivering real value to clients. We’re extremely proud to be named on Rocket Builders’ Ready to Rocket list of companies that are positioned for fast growth in 2013.

We know that the companies that have made the list in the past have gone on to great success in following years, winning new clients, investment, and world-class reputations – we’re looking forward to a bright future.

“With the growth of mobility and cloud computing as major drivers of the ICT sector, there are many market opportunities that BC companies are capitalizing on,” said Reg Nordman, Managing Partner at Rocket Builders, “And despite slow economic growth in most global markets, ICT companies are finding ways to win customers in the United States and abroad.”

The Canada Moodlemoot 2013 in Vancouver was an incredible opportunity for those already involved in the Moodle community to share knowledge about pushing the frontiers of eLearning. But as fun and useful as it was, it didn’t quite reach everyone who might have benefited – Vancouver has a large technology community and B.C. has a very diverse education sector, yet outside of the Moodle community, the Moodlemoot sometimes seemed a bit niche.

What is Moodle, anyway, and why should educators and techies be excited about it? What does an official Moodle Partner like Lambda Solutions do? Moodle Founder and Director Martin Dougiamas was kind enough to spell it out:

“While you can get Moodle for free and run it yourself, if you need help -- if you need support, consulting, training, hosting or certification or things like that, then you go to a Moodle Partner company. There's one here in Vancouver, Lambda Solutions. We have others around the world, 54 Moodle partners… they provide those services!”

• Martin Dougiamas explains Moodle, Moodle Partners and how people get paid for all the good stuff they’re doing

The next part of our chat with Moodle Founder and Director Martin Dougiamas following the Canada Moodlemoot 2013 in Vancouver was about where Moodle came from.

It was no random event. Martin grew up in the distant hinterland of Australia, educated through a program called the School of the Air – where as a child, he join a class 1,000 miles away via shortwave radio every day for an hour and he would receive and send back school assignments by airplane. It was a special kind of distance learning, pre-Internet, that inspired his life’s calling. Today, he continues that tradition of education by air, flying to conferences around the world to spread the word to eLearning educators and LMS technical admins. Listen to his story:

• Martin Dougiamas talks about old-school distance education and how it helped shape today’s Moodle Learning Management System