-- Plugins developed by Microsoft Open
Technologies and Remote-Learner provide speed and efficiency for
Moodle users.
LONDON, Jan. 19, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft Open
Technologies Inc. (MS Open Tech), a subsidiary of Microsoft Corp.,
together with leading Moodle partner Remote-Learner.net Inc., on
Monday announced integration between Moodle and Microsoft Office
365, bringing a more productive experience to teachers and students
by harmonizing login credentials, calendar management and course
content creation, in addition to other workflow improvements for
education institutions and other Moodle users.
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"Working closely with Remote-Learner, we're delivering a
technical solution for one of the most popular open source learning
management systems that aims to provide seamless workflows for both
Moodle and Office 365 users," said Jean
Paoli, president of MS Open Tech. "By working closely with
the open Moodle community, MS Open Tech will continue taking
feedback and maintaining, improving, and adding new features."
The open source Office 365 and Microsoft Services plugins for
Moodle include integration with OneDrive for Business, OneNote and
Office 365 Outlook calendar. The integration allows students and
instructors, as well as enterprise users, to sign on to Moodle with
the same ID, making single sign-on easier and faster for education
institutions and other Moodle users with Office 365 accounts. In
addition, events created in Moodle will be stored in teachers' and
students' personal Office 365 calendars, enabling them to easily
track course events and due dates. Previously, instructors needed
to update their Outlook calendars manually, or send event
invitations separately to students.
Integration with OneNote enables instructors to create
assignments in OneNote, students to complete the assignment in the
digital note-taking application and submit their work via Moodle,
and instructors to provide feedback in the same OneNote
document.
Additional integration between Moodle and Office 365 allows
instructors to easily embed interactive online lessons created in
PowerPoint with Office Mix through an open format standard. These
lessons may contain audio, video, digital ink, interactive
simulations or assessments. Documents stored in OneDrive for
Business can be associated automatically with Moodle courses.
Updates to those documents will appear automatically in links in
Moodle, streamlining version control and simplifying integration of
content stored in the cloud.
"We are thrilled to be able to work with Microsoft to integrate
Moodle with the Office 365 platform. With the Office 365 plugins
for Moodle, Microsoft continues to demonstrate its commitment to
open source software and education," said Jason Cole, CEO, Remote-Learner. "Educators and
trainers who have both Moodle and Office 365 create new learning
experiences that leverage the power of both platforms. Moodle
administrators can deploy these new features knowing they have the
support of both Microsoft and the Moodle Partner community."
On Jan. 21 at the BETT Show 2015,
MS Open Tech will officially release version 1.0 of this project,
which kicked off last September, on GitHub under GPLv3. The plugins
will also be available for download from the Moodle plugins
directory, via Azure-certified Virtual Machine image and VM
Depot.
During the BETT Show, attendees can learn more about the
integration of Moodle on Office 365 from Anthony Salcito, vice president of Worldwide
Education at Microsoft, who will present a keynote at 2 p.m. GMT on Jan.
21, titled, "The Role of Technology in Transforming
Education." Following the keynote, BETT Show attendees are also
invited to attend the Learn Live session, "Moodle and
Microsoft: Better Together," presented by Jason Cole, CEO at Remote-Learner, and
Doug Mahugh, senior technical
evangelist at MS Open Tech.
More information and updates about MS Open Tech are available by
subscribing to the MS Open Tech blog. More information on
Remote-Learner can be found at http://www.remote-learner.net.
About Remote-Learner
Remote-Learner has been providing educational technology
services since 1982 to its business, educational and governmental
clients. Today, these services include support for best-of-breed
open source programs. Remote-Learner is an official Moodle Partner
providing support and hosting services, custom programming,
workforce development training, instructional design and strategic
consulting services for organizations planning online learning
programs.
Remote-Learner maintains corporate offices in Waynesboro VA, Overland Park KS, Fort Collins, CO, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada and Oxfordshire, UK, and serves clients throughout
the US, Canada, Mexico, Caribbean and the UK.
About Microsoft Open Technologies
Microsoft Open Technologies Inc. (MS Open Tech) is a wholly
owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corp. dedicated to advancing the
company's investment in openness including interoperability, open
standards and open source. MS Open Tech is focused on providing our
customers with even greater choice and opportunity to bridge
Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies together in heterogeneous
environments, because we're convinced that openness is good for our
customers, good for the community and good for our business. For
additional information on MS Open Tech, visit
www.msopentech.com.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide
leader in software, services, devices and solutions that help
people and businesses realize their full potential.