infosoldier.com

Well I told you how to get your very own LMS, and it was good, fast and cheap.

good (software)
fast (implementation)
cheap (solution)

Now I'm going to tell you how to spice it up. Let's Moodle-in some Flash.

I know what you are thinking, "Now he'll make me bleed money through my nose!". Not true!

There a couple of options, to integrate Flash to our Moodle LMS which are just as good, just as fast and... Over all, just as cheap. The options are Wink and OpenOffice.org.

First, let's talk about Wink (homepage, download). Wink is not, sadly, open source software. It is, however, free of cost for now. It is extremely useful for making computer software tutorials. With some practice and tweaking you can make some really useful flash-based animations that take very little space storage-wise.

What is open-source, is OpenOffice.org new beta version (homepage, download). One of it's components, Impress, has an export to Flash option. And, since Impress can open most PowerPoint presentations with ease this means that any presentation previously created on PowerPoint can be delivered as a flash file by your Moodle LMS solution.

As a side note, you can also open your Word (or most other Microsoft Office files) documents with OpenOffice.org various applications and export them to PDF. Yes, I know that you can actually put MS Office files on Moodle as is, but you miss the point. The point is that all of the applications I have been talking about are available at no cost to you either because they are free / open source software or just plain free of charge.

Maybe I should tell you in my next post how much you would have to spend in non open source software in order to get a comparable solution that is much more complex and harder to implement.

The information soldier is frugal in his choice of weapons...

For the sake of the impatient, the steps are first, followed by more information afterwards:

1. Introduction
• LMS stands for Learning Management System more information can be found on WikipediA.
2. Preparing your environment
• You will need a PC, doesn't have to be that modern.
• The PC's hard disk should have about 100 megabytes of free space (my base Moodle install, that has about ten courses plus other stuff, takes up about 60 megs).
• Windows should be installed; either 98, 2000, XP or 2003 should work.
• No webserver should be running on the machine. To check this out quickly, fire up your browser and enter the following in the address bar http://127.0.0.1. You should see a dialog box saying something like: "Connection refused from 127.0.0.1" and a blank stare in your main browser window.
3. Download Uniform Server
• Download Uniform Server from SourceForge at this link. I've had errors running the .exes, so I suggest you get one of the .zip files instead.
• Make a mental note of the folder where you told your browser to save the zip file.
4. Download Moodle
• Make sure you tell your browser to save the next .zip file in the same place as before (you did make that mental note, right?).
• So, get your Moodle .zip from SourceForge too, go here.
5. Uncompress files
• Go into the folder where you downloaded both the Uniform Server and Moodle.
• Uncompress the Uniform Server file to a suitable location such as "C:" or even "C:Program Files" but not "C:Temp" or any temporary folder.
• Now make a mental note of the folder created when you uncompress the Uniform Server.
• Uncompress the Moodle .zip file, anywhere you want is fine.
6. Uniform Server + Moodle
• Now this may be tricky, so read this step completely before you try.
• Go into the folder created when you uncompressed Moodle, you should see many folder and files, including one named index.php and another named config.php.
• Select all the files inside this folder with control+a
• Cut the files with control+x. Don't worry because you still have the original zip files in case you do this wrong.
• Now navigate to the Uniform Server folder you should see a folder named diskw, go into this folder. You should now see more folders and one named www, go into this one.
• You should see a file named index.html, delete this file.
• Now paste the files that you had cut with control+v.
• All the files that were in the Moodle folder should now be in the www folder.
7. Configure Moodle config
• Open up Notepad
• Drag the file called config.php into the Notepad window, you should now see it's contents.
• If you don't have this file open up config-dist.php instead.
• Change (if needed) the corresponding lines in config.php like so:
• $CFG->dbtype = 'mysql';
• $CFG->dbhost = 'localhost';
• $CFG->dbname = 'moodle';
• $CFG->dbuser = 'root';
• $CFG->dbpass = ''; (note: don't put any spaces between the quotes!)
• $CFG->wwwroot = 'http://localhost/';
• $CFG->dirroot = 'w:www';
• $CFG->dataroot = 'w;wwwmoodledata';
• Save your changes. Or, if you used config-dist.php go to the File Menu and choose save as... then save the file as config.php.
8. Configure Uniform Server
• Go back to the Uniform Server Directory, the one where you found the diskw folder.
• Make a copy of the file start.bat (control+c then control+v).
• Now right click on this file and choose edit from the context menu, Notepad should open.
• In line #20, delete the beginning of the line where it says:
• IF "%2"=="mysql"
• Line #20 should now begin with:
• start usrlocalmysqlb ... etc
• Two more lines down add a new line after the line that says:
• echo The server is working ... etc
• In this new line type the following:
• wait 500
• Close Notepad and save your changes.
  
9. Start the webserver
• Double click on the file you just edited
• After seeing some windows pop up on the screen and waiting a while you should see your browser start up.
• That's it! Easy step, huh?
10. Configure MySQL
• Now click the link labeled PhpMyAdmin in your browser window.
• Below the line that says Create new database type:
• moodle
• Then click the button that says Create
• You should see a message that says:
• Database moodle has been created
• Return to the Uniform Server's administration page by clicking the link at the top of the page labeled Uniform Server
11. Run Moodle for the first time
• In the Uniform Server's administration page now click the link labeled Web Server.
• Moodle setup will start. Moodle Setup will guide you in making the right choices for the installation just remember the following about tour database:
• You are using a MySQL type database
• The database name is moodle
• The user of the database is root
• The user of the database has no password, it is blank
  
12. Stopping the webserver
• When you want to stop the webserver, and moodle too!, type the following location into your browser's address bar:
• http://localhost/a/
• Then click the link that says Shutdown the server.
  
13. Tips and Tricks
• When you want to start your webserver with Moodle just repeat step 9.
• Likewise when you want to stop it repeat step 12.
• You should add bookmarks (or favorites if you use IE) for the main administration page (http://localhost/a/) and the main web server page (http://localhost/).
• If you shut down your webserver (step 12) and then zip the folder that contains the Uniform Server, and then move this zipped file to another computer and uncompress it, you should then be able to run your web server on that computer by performing only step 9. That means this installation process need only be undertaken once!
• You can also make a copy of the folder on your own computer, effectively giving you two installations. Beware however, as only one may run at any one time.
  
14. What if I want to use it for real?
• This way of installing Moodle is better suited to demo it, or learn how to use it.
• You could even go as far as making it available on your intranet.
• But... I do not recommend you use it in a production server (read as: available on the net).
• The reason is that the components used have not been secured for use via the Web.
  
15. Extra Information
• The Uniform Server is comprised of the following components
  
• Apache is a web server.
• MySQL is a RDBMS.
• PHP is a server side scripting language.
• Together these three applications form what is known as the LAMP stack. Or, rather, WAMP in our case.
• Maybe you noticed that we could go get from the web every component that we needed to build our LMS. That is because the Uniform Server with it's Apache Server, it's MySQL database and PHP and Moodle itself, everything we installed, are open source software.
  

The Information Soldier protects information by giving it away...

eWeek has an interesting article titled: Microsoft Customers Criticize Its Licensing Scheme. The article itself doesn't reveal silver linings where we hadn't seen them before. In my opinion, very few enterprises are actually happy with Microsoft's current licensing scheme.

I think Microsoft, as a company, refuses to see that using their software isn't viewed by most companies as making an investment but instead they see Microsoft licensing as paying a fee, or a tax. Deep down, corporate entities know the software is done and paid for; so, why do they pay? For support? Hand-holding?

Maybe, the answer is fear.

Check out this paragraph from the article:

"The only panelist not to weigh in on the licensing issue was Ross McKenzie, director of information systems at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, saying that as a representative from an educational institution who has access to special low Microsoft educational pricing, "I'm not saying a word. I know when to keep quiet."

I don't know any customer that wouldn't speak out negatively, or against for even, about any of it's suppliers. Except, perhaps, those that deal in the sale of illegal goods or services. Should Microsoft feel safe that one of it's customers is not willing to talk against them? I think not, this is a breach in communication, brought on by the fear of retaliation. The next time it can do so, this same company will move on to quieter seas and bluer skies.

But Microsoft, will not know why.

The information soldier knows that communication is a key element for everything...

It's been ages since my last blog posting. I remark on it because I know successful blogs are updated often. When your readership know you will give them something new periodically they tend to stick with you. Still, there's no use crying over spilled milk.

It' not like this blog should add to all my worries, right?

The information soldier seeks peace with a steady mind...  read more »