Finally bitten by the Mahara e-portfolio Bug

That's the Mahara 1.7.1 website that I set up this week. I really dig (like) the Primary School theme. I've had an epipheny. I've finally understood the significance, importance and usefulness of Mahara in an educational setting. Prior to this week, my knowledge of Mahara was that it was a repository of student work that sounded like a North African desert. I did know that Moodle is where a teacher stores her lecture and tutorial resources, and that Mahara was where a student would store his or her work. However, I didn't really appreciate Mahara then.

Making the Moodle User Interface Look Good

Cartoon by: Hugh McCloud

This post is dedicated to great resources on the Net on how to make your Moodle site look good.
I start off with an excellent post by Smarter Made Designs. Below is a PDF iframe embed of their article entitled  "Make Moodle Look Good using HTML- Quick Guide PDF".

Moodle? Frog? Others? A comparison of VLEs.

A very instructive read on choosing a VLE. Check out the table listing the pros and cons of each VLE researched by Andy Kemp. This is actually a 2009 post. You can read the html version here.

Here's nother good discussion on whether to use Moodle or another VLE. See window below.

PhpChess and Moodle

Mikhail Tal (November 9, 1936 – June 28, 1992)

Can Moodle be used to teach chess principles online? I believe it can. If you have or are thinking about setting up a Moodle page on chess, I recommend you take a look at PhpChess. This software allows you to create a Chess Management System, complete with an A.I. chess player for games. 
I recently took the challenge to install phpchess version 4.1 on my web server.