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[Tom Hoffman <tom.hoffman@xxxxxxxxx>]

FYI...

Sent to you by Tom Hoffman via Google Reader: openSIS Preps for Release
of Moodle Integration via Education Talk by Casey on 12/22/10
Last week, I previewed the final beta of the openSIS Moodle integration
and my first reaction was "Wow, that is really cool!" I have seen some
other SIS systems integration, which typically amounts to an automated
user login and then the display of the Moodle application, typically in
an iFrame. To me, this does not really represent integration, which I
define as a robust exchange of data and functionality between two
different applications. So what does "integration" really mean for
openSIS and Moodle? Let's review:

openSIS ==> Moodle


- User Integration - When you create new users, teachers, staff, etc.,
in openSIS, these users are automatically created inside of Moodle.
- Students Integration - When you create new students, they are
automatically created inside of Moodle.
- Courses - Courses created in openSIS are automatically created in
Moodle.
- Course Periods/Sections - Like courses, individual course
period/sections and the enrolled students are all automatically created
in Moodle.

Moodle ==> openSIS


- Assignments - Once created inside of Moodle, assignments are created
in openSIS grade book
- Quizzes - Just like assignments, quizzes are automatically created in
the openSIS grade book
- Tests - Just like assignments and quizzes, tests are automatically
created in the openSIS grade book
- Grades - Grades given in Moodle automatically transfer to the openSIS
grade book for the given assignment.

Other benefits include the ability to:


- manually create users and students in Moodle,
- include Moodle grades in final grade calculations or
- exclude Moodle grades from final grade calculations.
It is really amazing to see it happen in real time and know that
openSIS is the only SIS company that has truly integrated with Moodle
providing bi-directional data exchange and deep functionality truly
making it easy to deploy and effectively use Moodle in conjunction with
openSIS. The integration has a key benefit of making the teacher's
tasks easier and less time-consuming enabling them to spend more time
doing the important things, teaching that is.

Are you a Moodle hosting client? This next piece will be interesting to
you. Final testing is being done now to ensure performance across a
wide area network with integrated versions of openSIS and Moodle. What
does this mean for you as a Moodle hosted customer? You can install and
use openSIS locally while integrating to a remote hosted Moodle
instance. How much easier can it get?

openSIS is on the move and continues to add functionality further
enhancing the solution and offering real usability for a very low cost.
It has been exciting to watch the growth of this dream and even more
exciting to think of what the future holds for openSIS and OS4Ed. Stay
tuned to the openSIS website as we release some videos in the next
couple of weeks showing it in action.
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