Site news

Student migration to new email system is causing problems for some students

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:26:18 UTC

by John Jennings.

Hi Folks,
Firstly welcome to all our new students and welcome back to our old students!

It seems that some students are having problems logging in at the moment. For example if you have forgotten your password the standard practice is to use the Forgotten Password feature of Moodle to get a new password emailed to you.

That is where the problem occurs. There is a new email system being setup for students and the email address is changing to Firstname.Lastname@student.tippinst.ie (e.g. joe.bloggs@student.tippinst.ie) from the old FirstinitialLastname@student.tippinst.ie (e.g. jbloggs@student.tippinst.ie)

The problem is that email addresses in Moodle are still in the old format for some students and any of those who are trying to get Moodle to reset their passwords are not receiving any emails.

So a temporary solution for those students is to email me at jjennings@tippinst.ie and I will manually reset your password.

I would also ask all students to check that their email addresses are correct in their Moodle profile and update as required. We are working on how to automatically synchronise our email lists.

Thanks for your patience

Regards
John Jennings

(Edited by Michael Cox - original submission Wednesday, 26 September 2007, 09:01 AM)

Moodle upgraded to version 1.7

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 10:04:31 UTC

by John Jennings.

Hi Folks,
Firstly a Happy New Year to all !

I have just finished upgrading our Moodle installation to the latest stable version. The Moodle community have again delivered an comprehensive upgrade with loads of new and improved features. The most significant of which is the new permissions feature which allows all kinds of roles to be created and assigned in all contexts around Moodle. This creates a great deal more flexibility in the permissions that can be granted to people. Also a new and experimental Ajax interface has been implemented that really speeds up the user interface.

By and large the upgrade went smoothly but this time there seems to be more problems associated with the upgrade than any prior upgrades. The following are some issues that have been reported and how to fix them:

When a Specialist changes to edit mode a course that uses the weekly outline the dates normally displayed in each weekly panel disappear.

This can be fixed by switching off the Ajax & Javascript setting in your profile. (e.g. click on your name in the top right corner and then the EDIT PROFILE tab, find the Ajax & Javascript setting and change to no, use basic web features)
If anyone is experiencing problems with moodle then please switch this setting off first as it is experimental and may cause other problems. You need to decide if the performance increase using moodle in Ajax mode is worth putting up with these and other problems.

Specialists could not send group messages to their class using the moodle messaging system.

This has been rectified

There have been reports of students and Specialists not being able to access one/many of their courses

Students will need to get the enrollment key from your Specialist and re-enroll on the course again. All students previous work, assignments etc. will be retained
Specialists that cannot access their course just have to contact me and I will sort it out.

If you have any other problems please let me know

Cheers
JJ

P.S. You are receiving this message because you have a Moodle account with Tipperary Institute

Re: Upgrade to version 1.6 went without a hitch!

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 10:19:14 UTC

by John Hannafin.

Hi John,
I have just read the release notes for Moodle 1.6 and there seems to be some nice new additions. In particular I like:
- Each student (and lecturer) can have their own blog
- A lecturer can now build up a repository of questions for each of their modules (or courses as Moodle calls them) and use them in quizes, surveys, etc
- Lecturer can now build a database of "stuff" that they would like students to comment on. For example, I could create and populate a database of code snippets and ask each student to comment on them (with the comments being attached to each snippet)
- The LAMS module (Learning Administration Management System) is very interesting. I have just completed a LAMS online tutorial and it certainly is something worth looking at.

Cheers,
John

Upgrade to version 1.6 went without a hitch!

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 22:50:48 UTC

by John Jennings.

Hi Folks,
I have just finished upgrading our Moodle installation to the latest stable version and by and large the upgrade went very smoothly. The Moodle community have yet again delivered an outstanding upgrade with loads of new and improved features.

It is amazing to think that we have been using Moodle in Tipperary Institute for the last 4+ academic years and we have seen it mature and grow into one of our most useful (if not essential) educational tools.

Cheers
JJ

P.S. Let me know if you come across any problems after the upgrade

Moodle problems now rectified.

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 20:30:16 UTC

by John Jennings.

Some people have reported problems accessing resources in some of their Moodle based courses. I have identified and fixed the problem and normal Moodle activity has now resumed. I apologise for any inconvience caused and will be taking measures to ensure that this will not happen again.

Please email me and let me know if you experience any other problems.

Regards

John Jennings

Tipperary Institute's Moodle installation now upgraded to 1.3!

Thu, 27 May 2004 12:43:21 UTC

by John Jennings.

Moodle 1.3 has now been installed on http://learning.tippinst.ie

For a list of new features included in this update please visit Moodle 1.3 Features

The Major new features are:

New Calendar feature
New Blocks feature, allowing blocks to be added and moved around on course pages
New RSS System allows Forums and Glossaries (and later other modules) to publish RSS feeds
Mediaplugin filter now supports auto-embedding of Quicktime, Flash, and Windows Media files.
A new Activity Names filter will automatically add hyperlinks to other activities in the same course whenever their name is mentioned.

Happy Moodle'ing

Please be patient with the site revamp

Tue, 09 Mar 2004 22:44:18 UTC

by John Jennings.

I am currently in the process of updating the Moodle installation to the latest version 1.2. This update will fix a number of bugs and add some exciting new features like

Automatic embedded audio streaming
New support for groups and cohorts within courses (with many options)
Text filters allow arbitrary processing on all text in Moodle, including automatic linking, mathematics support, multi-language content and infinitely more possibilities
A new Glossary module with many different ways to contruct learning activities based around collecting definitions
A new Lesson module easily creates active content with pathways and multiple-choice questions
A new Label module allows arbitrary HTML in the course page
An improved WYSIWYG editor, faster and more cross-platform than the old one

Along with this upgrade I will also try and create a "better" template and right now you are looking at my first attempt. Please let me know what you think here.

Tippinst Forums online and waiting for your input !

Mon, 24 Nov 2003 11:22:48 UTC

by John Jennings.

Hi folks,

I just thought that I would remind all TI moodle users that a course was setup to allow open discussion of various ICT related topics.

The course is in the Forums Category and is called TippInst Forums, There are already some discussions setup on topics such as Programming Discussions, Applets, Servlet Programming, J2ME and Bluetooth, Games Programming, Software Design, UML, Moodle bugs & problems, Moodle Suggestions, JavaScript, ActionScript, PHP, JSP.

These discussions are waiting for your input, so please post your questions and staff & students are encouraged to reply with answers.

Regards,

John

Moodle offline for 45mins tomorrow at 5:30pm

Tue, 28 Oct 2003 21:19:24 UTC

by John Jennings.

The server that hosts the Moodle site will be offline for essential maintenance tomorrow, 29th October from 5:30pm for 45 minutes.

Sorry for any inconvience.

Moodle update - 17/10/03

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 10:24:36 UTC

by John Jennings.

Hi Folks,

I have made some changes to the discussion forums, most notably moving all the discussions from the site level and creating a new course specifically for open discussion. The main reason for this change is that people were getting swamped with emails that they were not concerned. Also the site level discussion is available to the world and therefore we need to be more confident in our moderation process.

On another topic it is vitally important that you have entered your correct email address in your moodle profile. With the recent change over in student mail server there may be a few isolated malfunctioning email accounts.

Please check that mail can get to you at yourname@student.tippinst.ie

That' all for now.

P.S. I just want to thank everyone for using moodle to in their teaching and learning in TI and especially to the open source developers moodle.org. I think that there are some very interesting times ahead for moodle.