Seems like the blog was one of the things that slipped away from me this past semester--where did the time go?! But it's time for a reboot...and look for an exciting announcement this week on a spinoff project that is a long time in coming... I mean besides the gingerbread...
One of the real frustrations of this past semester was the "upgrade" to Blackboard 8--I liked to think I was pretty adept at our previous platform, but the new version wreaked havoc with my ability to provide live and accurate grade information for students. Further, it appears that sending students email from Bb from my Mac is a non-starter (of course, that could be a 10.6 glitch too, I suppose). In short, several key aspects of my online platform have fallen, and they can't seem to get up.
So this might be the tipping point to move me to Moodle, I thought to myself. I even went onto the Moodle site and set up an a/c for myself last night, starting to poke around and see if I was getting myself into deeper doo-doo by trying to learn a new platform in a few weeks rather than the summer (I might just pilot one class this spring)...
Thing is, I opened my BSC email this morning, only to be confronted with no less than three dozen spam emails for Viagra, penis enlargement, and what have you. Aha--the downside of open-source software! So if I go the route of Moodle, is this something that my students and I have to look forward to every morning?! Yeesh.
I love the idea of open-source software for online media studies classes (ready-made self-reflexive opportunities and all that), but is spam the price we have to pay? If our IT wants us to migrate, we need way better filtering.
My question to You The Reader: What experience do you have with open-source software and/or institutional spam protection? Also, if any of you have Moodle experience (good or bad) I'd love to hear about it!
