Hi all,
The history of Chamilo 2.0 can be traced back all the way to 2000 and
the Claroline project. Based on their own experiences and specific
needs involving e-learning, the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL)
started developing a new open-source learning management system, which
soon attracted many other interested parties.
By early 2004 a split occurred in the Claroline community and the D0ke0s
project was started which built upon Claroline's foundations and focused
on ease of use. After the initial launch, the new LMS is gradually
adopted by institutions like Hogeschool Gent, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
(VUB), Universiteit Gent and Erasmushogeschool Brussel (EhB).
Over the years Hogeschool Gent, joined by Erasmus and VUB, started
developing the concept of "2.0" as the next logical step in e-learning.
Over the years numerous other institutions joined us as well. In early
2010 the entire 2.0 team, together with the majority of the people
involved with the legacy 1.8 branch, decided to start a new project
called Chamilo.
Goal was to make Chamilo 100% open source (GPLv3) and to start an
association which controlled the trademark and was open to all
stakeholders. Chamilo as a project was launched on January 18, 2010 with
the Chamilo Association being formally launched as a non-profit
organization in June 2010.
Saying that Chamilo 2.0 is different from Chamilo 1.x would be a serious
understatement, as the 2.0 branch is following a radically different
path from the legacy project.
*Courses, courses and some more courses*
Chamilo 1.8 is a so called LMS of the first generation, which means that
it is in essence a collection of tools which have been loosely
integrated to form "courses". Everything in 1.8 revolves around courses
and is as such stored in courses. This makes it very hard for an
end-user to reuse content without duplication vast amounts of data. On
top of that storing everything in virtually isolated courses makes it
very hard to perform a search throughout your entire platform.
More problematic is the fact that the courses metaphor is too
restrictive in many cases. E.g. projects, communities, general
communication channels and collaboration outside the course context. It
is of course possible to abuse the courses for these ends, but it is far
from the ideal solution.
Anno 2010 most institutions run a plethora of different (online)
software suites: some open-source, some closed source, but all serve a
very specific need within the institution and often complement one
another's functionality. Because of the complementary nature of these
applications it's only logical that some degree of integration has to be
achieved. In Chamilo 1.8 this integration is possible, but exceptionally
difficult, especially if the external application doesn't truly fit into
the courses context of Chamilo.
*Users and content repositories*
After much deliberation on how to address these issues, a specific
approach was adopted: Chamilo 2.0 would be user-based instead of
course-based. But what does that imply? In essence it all revolves
around ownership of content. Whereas previously content was explicitly
linked to a course, now we explicitly link content to a user who is then
considered it's owner.
Linking everything to a user implies that the user will need a place to
manage all his content and that's how the "repository" was born. The
Chamilo 2.0 repository enables a user to create and manage his own
content without it being linked to any specific context. The added
advantage of such a repository is that it also allows us to implement
additional tools for version management, collaboration (sharing),
integration with external content repositories and last but not least: a
virtually unlimited amount of content types.
Because of this separate, manageable repository it also becomes possible
to create several additional layers of abstraction and functionality on
top of that core.
*Basic principles*
The intention and basic principles of the entire system can be
summarized in a few keywords.
* /Abstraction:/ We want to avoid depending on specific vendors or
systems at all costs. While implementing various levels of
abstraction may be more time consuming, it also avoids having to
start all over again when, for a variety of reasons, the back-end
of a specific piece of functionality needs to change.
* /Flexibility:/ Users should be able to adapt the platform for
their own needs in an easy way. This implies that they should be
able to do so without breaking the system and in an intuitive way.
The system should adapt to the user and not the other way round.
* /Extensibility:/ No single piece of software is ever complete, so
it's essential that Chamilo 2.0 can be extended to offer
additional functionality whenever needed. Adding this new
functionality should not require any technical knowledge.
* /Modularity:/ While individual modules might be closely linked
together, removing one or more of them should not break the
system. The system has to be able to intelligently determine what
is and what is not possible based on the modules that are
currently available on the platform.
* /Dynamical:/ Using the basic building blocks of the system, both
the content and the modules, users should be able to create their
own combinations of content.
* /"KISS"/ is an acronym for "Keep it simple and stupid" and implies
that simplicity should be a key goal in the design of the
platform. Unnecessary complexity should be avoided at all costs
whenever possible.
*Why use Chamilo 2 ?*
What are the advantages of using Chamilo 2 for one of your projects?
Reinventing the wheel every single time is an expensive and tiresome
thing, so if you could avoid it, why not? For any and every project or
application which you want to develop, Chamilo 2 already offers:
* A content repository system with version management and
collaboration functionality
* User and user group management
* Integrations with some of the most used single sign-on systems
* Advanced rights management
* Frameworks to enable tracking of users and reporting in a variety
of formats
* A flexible and easy way to create links between individual
applications
* A multitude of general libraries to handle layout, forms,
translations, tables, import, export, calendars, mailing and much more
*So ...*
After 4 years of development, working closely with the community,
end-users and all other interested parties, the entire development team
and community proudly present the first release of Chamilo 2.0. Download
it now from our download page
<http://code.google.com/p/chamilo/downloads/detail?name=chamilo-2.0.zip&can=2&q=>.
Chamilo 2.0 is distributed under the terms of the GNU/GPLv3 license
<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html>.
*Why Edison?*
So why did we choose "Edison" as the name for our first release. Thomas
Alva Edison was born in the United States in 1847 and is without a doubt
one of the most prolific inventors of all time inventing among others
the phonograph, the motion picture camera and ... the lightbulb. Like
the lightbulb we hope Chamilo 2.0 will bring light to the darkness of
the next generation of e-learning. We thought it would only be fitting
(no pun intended) to make the first release of Chamilo 2.0 a tribute to
the man who brought electric light to a dark world.
*Included applications:*
* Assessment
* Chamilo Translation Application
* Courses
* Forum
* Personal Calendar
* Personal Messenger
* Portfolio
* Profiler
* Reservations
* Search Portal
* Wiki
*Course tools:*
* Announcements
* Assessments
* Blogs
* Calendar
* Chat
* Descriptions
* Documents
* Forums
* Geolocation
* Glossary
* Learning Paths
* Links
* Notes
* Streaming Video
* Video Conferencing
* Wikis
* ... as well as tools for groups, sections, settings, maintenance,
reporting, rights and users
*Connectable external services:*
* Flickr / HQ23
* Google Docs
* MediaMosa
* Photobucket
* Picasa
* Soundcloud
* Vimeo
* YouTube
* BigBlueButton
*Content types:*
* Announcements
* Assessments with matching questions,matrix questions, multiple
choice questions, open questions, rating questions, select
questions, fill-in-the-blanks questions, hotspot questions and
ordering questions
* BigBlueButton meetings
* Blogs & blog items
* Calendar events
* Dailymotion videos
* Descriptions
* Documents
* External Calendars
* Feedback
* Forums (with subforums, topics and posts)
* Glossaries and glossary items
* Hotpotatoes
* Introductions
* Learning paths
* Links
* MediaMosa videos
* Notes
* Personal messages
* Physical locations
* Portfolios
* Profiles
* RSS feeds
* Soundcloud audio tracks
* System announcements
* Tasks
* Templates
* Vimeo videos
* Wikis and wiki pages
* YouTube videos
*The end?*
Is this the end of the line? Most definately not, it's more like the
beginning. The basics are there and now we want to hear from you, our
users! We want YOU to tell us what you need. We want YOU to get involved
in whichever way possible. We want YOU to give us valuable feedback on
our product in terms of bugs, feature requests, usability remarks, etc.
So, did you like what you read? Do you have interesting ideas or
suggestions for us? Are you interested in Chamilo 2.0 in general? Is
your project interested in collaborating with us? Don't hesitate to
contact us via e-mail or let us know about your project(s) via the
community website located at http://www.chamilo.org. We're looking
forward to hearing from you.
*One final thing*
The only thing that remains now is to thank all those involved over
these past few years and who, in one way or another contributed to the
realisation of this release and Chamilo 2.0 in general. Please know that
your efforts were and are very much appreciated. Special thanks go out
to the teams over at:
* Artevelde hogeschool
* Beeznest (Latino)
* Erasmushogeschool Brussel
* Het Perspectief
* Hogeschool Gent
* Hogeschool West-Vlaanderen
* Scholengemeenschap Sint-Pieter Beringen-Lummen
* Université de Genève
* Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Best regards,
--
*Hans De Bisschop*
Hoofddeskundige ICTO | Lead Developer Chamilo 2.0
Software Coordinator Chamilo Association
Erasmushogeschool Brussel
Nijverheidskaai 170 | B-1070 Brussel
T 02 559 02 54 | i 254
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> |
www.erasmushogeschool.be <http://www.erasmushogeschool.be/>
Kom eens langs: www.erasmushogeschool.be/infodagen
<http://www.erasmushogeschool.be/infodagen>
of lees onze elektronische nieuwsbrief: ehbrief.ehb.be
<http://ehbrief.ehb.be/>
P Before printing, think about the environment
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