D2L and Webdrive... Why all the fuss.

Boy it's been way too long since I first opened up this blog:) my New Years Resolution is to start blogging... so here goes.

Some of you may be wondering why
I have been tweeting about Webdrive not working with Desire2Learn. Those of you out there who use D2L are well aware that D2L has the ability to upload content items as either individual files or as zip files... if there are multiple files. It works okay... but in bandwidth compromised locations, and when going through firewalls, it can be slow and even timeout. As well when you have files that need to go in different folders inside D2L it can be a very time consuming process... like returning student work to individual student folders. Try it sometime if you are a D2L user... Multiple clicks :(

When using Windows XP this was not a problem since we could connect to our file structure within D2L and simply drag and drop files wherever we wanted. If students revised their work and we, as teachers, assigned a new grade, a simple drag and drop was all that was needed. Same thing goes for late work, updating content, etc... the links are not broken and overwriting files is easier.

It was only when we, as an organization, moved from XP (which was necessary as it won't see support for much longer) to Windows 7 that this inability to WebDAV files occurred. This ability to connect to our file structure within D2L was no longer possible... hence the need for the 3rd party tool.

When we started the school year this year Webdrive worked with D2L for a few days and then stopped. For me, I had individual student folders created and all ready to use Webdrive for the return of student work. The dragging and dropping of files from my computer to the D2L server was going to make my life so much easier... and time efficient too. Alas such was not the case.

So why the tweets? One reason really

1) To see if there was someone out in twitter land that had encountered this problem... and help with the solution

I am pleased to say that the problem has been identified and the powers that be are working towards the solution. What lesson did I learn?

It was amazing to learn that so many people all over the planet read tweets... even those sent from a DE teacher from Newfoundland ;)

I am looking forward to the time when Webdrive works with D2L, I can return work from students with greater proficiency and speed... and spend more time doing what all teachers should be doing... trying to improve on teacher best practices.

I will tweet as soon as the Webdrive issue is resolved... and if it doesn't.