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New! Just in! --no really

For those of you following my blog, I found something that I'm really happy with in terms of a learning management system (LMS).  It's HaikuLMS, found at http://haikulearning.com/. A colleague recommended it to me some time ago, but I shoved it away in my bookmarks and procrastinated about accessing...I am sure glad I did.  Currently I'm developing an online learning environment class devoted just to intermediate algebra.  It's not published for public viewing yet, but you can get a sneak peek by going here.  I totally love the controls, very easy to see (once you've acclimated to the system), and I think tops Desire2Learn as far as interface goes.

I've not explored largely the whole system, still playing with assignments, scheduling, and what not, but I hope to incorporate an active rubric that I can just click on the squares as buttons to give a total for a grade.  To my understanding, "Home" is relative as it largely depends what you put your time and energy into what you want the students to see.  On the link above, you can see the different components of the "Connect" menu, and there are other menus, including Pages for content, (which you can interface just about anything within it), Calendar for class/school events, assignments, projects, etc, and Assess, which handles assignments, grading, rubrics, etc.

Finally there's some cross-over to which you need to get accustomed to, and that happened for with Discussions, which I set up a Intros and Bios discussion, which I had to first create a content page called "Intros and Bios" if I wanted it different from my main page (easy for organization), and Student Cafe in the "Student Cafe" content page.  I've modeled the rest of my discussions after a logical tree in my current class, "Enhancing Online Learning Environments" and I believe Dr. G is quite resourceful in providing that logistical structure.  More to come, but can only leave breadcrumbs for now...

Til I chalk again,

Mr. Shel

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