Thanks to Year 2011 for introducing me to Moodle, and to allow me to finally finish my Masters Thesis!

2011 was the year that I started blogging about Moodle code and innovations.

I began in May 2011 and after 53 posts, I've come to be fond of this Learning Management System, Content Management System and Virtual Learning Environment called Moodle. In this, my last post of 2011, I'd like to rant on what I like, no, LOVE about Moodle, specifically Moodle 1.9.15:

1. Over 700 fully customisable mods, blocks and filters, for my Moodle site. Thus making Moodle a true Swiss-Knife tool for the E-Educator.
2. Themes! Ah.
3. The Moodle community. So many talented people, who despite their full schedules and full plates of work, still manage to make posts on Moodle.org for the benefit of others like myself.
4. Sound recording and playback, specifically Nanogong4 and Audio Recorder assigmnent. I'm still waiting for Moodle 2.x to enable Nanogong in-HTML-editor recordings. Ah what a day that would be!

I'd also like to extend a big thanks to these people from the Moodle community:

• Nicholas Walker for his innovative usage of Moodle in teaching English, and for showing me what it means to be a thinker
• Joseph.Thibault for graciously extending his hand and allowing me to be a guest poster on the fabulous and prolific-Moodle-centric website, http://www.moodlenews.com.
• Dr Won of South Korea (http://www.okmindmap.com) for creating a wonderful Flash-free Mind Mapping tool that resulted in me blogging about it. That led to my most popular post on this blog.
• Mary Evans for her creativity in theme-design, and for creating the isometric theme. That's the theme that I now use for my Moodle 1.9.15 production site, http://www.moodurian.com. I haven't changed that theme for the last, what, 6 months, I think.
• Mary Cooch for being an inspiration to me with her crystal-clear video tutorials.
• Marc Grober for giving me constructive criticism of my thesis - after I had submitted it to the university! Ah, learning never ends, and eating humble pie is difficult but necessary in order to grow.
• The talented, mostly-Malay crew of SKSA Technology (Malaysia), my first webhosting company whom I rented my Virtual Private Server (http://scm.moodleace.com), for their tireless support and help. Especially when my server was down. 
• Martin Dougiamas for making it all happen by writing a thesis on constructionist teaching back in, what, ...before 2001. And for being frustrated enough with the, then existing commercial LMS, to write his own LMS. The rest they say is history.
• And anyone and everyone else whom I missed mentioning in this short list. Thanks.

2011 was also the year that I finally finished my Open University of Malaysia Masters thesis, after four years(!). The title of my Masters In Information Technology thesis is: "The Implementation Of A LMS To Increase Self-Directed Learning In Diploma Students At Stamford College Malacca". That's quite a mouthful. By the grace of God, I managed to finish off the thesis and to graduate on December 20th 2011 at the Putra World Trade Centre in Kuala Lumpur. I owe a lot to my father who helped me to find two co-supervisors in the form of Dr Burairah and Dr Tay of University Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTem). And to my wife, Ju Lee, for being a big, big help in getting me to finish off my thesis. And to my two darling angels, Laura and Leanne for bringing me joy with their giggles and their child-like ways.

I'm sharing with the world the full contents of my thesis out of gratitude for all Moodlers, administrators, educators and students whose lives have been made more meaningful through the use of the world's BEST open-source E-Learning tool.

Do you see just a blank gray box below? Just be patient, that's a 3+ megabyte PDF loading up inside the iframe code. Go ahead, take a break and have a Kit-Kat. It'll be loaded soon.

Thanks for the 2011 memories. Here's to 2012 and all that it affords.
To God be the glory great things He hath done!

Frankie Kam

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