Chamilo - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Chamilo is an open-source (under GNU/GPL licensing) e-learning and content management system, aimed at improving access to education and knowledge globally. It is backed up by the Chamilo Association, which has goals including the promotion of the software, the maintenance of a clear communication channel and the building of a network of services providers and software contributors.

The Chamilo project aims at ensuring the availability and quality of education at a reduced cost, through the distribution of its software free of charge, the improvement of its interface for 3rd world countries devices portability and the provision of a free access public e-learning campus.

History

The Chamilo project was officially launched on the 18th of January 2010 by a considerable part of the contributing community of the (also GNU/GPL) Dokeos

Dokeos

Dokeos is a company dedicated to open source Learning Management Systems. Its main product is a SCORM-compliant open source learning suite used by multinational companies, federal administrations and universities....

software, after growing discontent on the communication policy inside the Dokeos community and a series of choices that were making parts of the community insecure about the future of developments. As such, it is considered a fork

Fork (software development)

In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...

of Dokeos (at least in its 1.8 series). The reaction to the fork was immediate, with more than 500 active users registering on the Chamilo forums in the first fortnight and more contributions collected in one month than in the previous whole year.

The origins of Chamilo's code date back to 2000, with the start of the Claroline

Claroline

Claroline is a collaborative eLearning and eWorking platform released under the GPL Open Source license. It allows hundreds of organizations worldwide ranging from universities to schools and from companies to associations to create and administer courses and collaboration spaces over the web...

project, which was forked in 2004 to launch the Dokeos project. In 2010, it was forked again with the publication of Chamilo 1.8.6.2.

Community

Due to its educational purpose, most of the community is related to the educational or the human resources sectors. The community itself works together to offer an easy to use e-learning system.

Active community

The current (as of October 2011) active community of Chamilo is considered around 500 people. Community members are considered active when they start contributing to the project (through documentation, forum contributions, development, design).

In 2009, members of the (by then Dokeos) community started working actively on the One Laptop Per Child project together with a primary school in the Salto city in Uruguay. One of the founding members of the Chamilo Association then registered as a contributing project for the OLPC in which his company would make efforts to ensure the portability of the platform to the XO laptop. The effort has been, since then, continued as part of the Chamilo project.

Passive community

The community is considered passive when they use the software but do not contribute directly to it. As of October 2011, the passive community is estimated to more than 700,000 users around the world.

Chamilo Association

The Chamilo Association is a legally registered non-profit association under Belgian laws (a VZW) since June 2010. It was created to serve the general goal of improving the Chamilo project's organization and to avoid a conflict of interest between the organization controlling the software project decision process and the best interests of the community using the software. Its founding members, also its first board of directors, is composed of 7 members, of which 3 are from the private e-learning sector and 4 are from the public educational sector.

Main features of version 1

courses, users and training cycles advanced management (including SOAP web services to manage remotely)
SCORM
SCORM
Sharable Content Object Reference Model is a collection of standards and specifications for web-based e-learning. It defines communications between client side content and a host system called the run-time environment, which is commonly supported by a learning management system...

1.2 compatibility and authoring tool
multi-institutions mode (with central management portal)
time-controlled exams
international characters (UTF-8)
timezones
automated generation of certificates
tracking of users progress
embedded social learning network

Technical details

Chamilo is developed mainly in PHP and relies on a LAMP

Lamp

Lamp is a light source, while LAMP is an acronym.-Lamps:Lamp may refer to one of the following:*Oil lamp, the original use of the term*Kerosene lamp, a lamp burning liquid petroleum...

or WAMP

WAMP

WAMPs are packages of independently-created programs installed on computers that use a Microsoft Windows operating system.WAMP is an acronym formed from the initials of the operating system Microsoft Windows and the principal components of the package: Apache, MySQL and one of PHP, Perl or Python....

system on the server side. On the client side, it only requires a modern web browser (versions younger than 3 years old) and optionally requires the Flash plugin to make use of advanced features.

Interoperability

The Chamilo 1.8 series benefits from third party implementations that allows easy connexion to Joomla (through JFusion plugin), Drupal

Drupal

Drupal is a free and open-source content management system and content management framework written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. It is used as a back-end system for at least 1.5% of all websites worldwide ranging from personal blogs to corporate, political, and...

(through Drupal-Chamilo module), OpenID (secure authentication framework) and Oracle (through specific PowerBuilder implementations).

Extensions

Chamilo offers a videoconferencing system as well as a presentations to learning paths converter, which require advanced system administration skills to install.

2011-08 - v1.8.8.4 stable

Although announced a bit later than its real release date, Chamilo 1.8.8.4 was released mostly as a fix version for 1.8.8.2. During the adoption period of this version, Chamilo reached 700,000 reported users. This version also considerably improved certificates generation.

2011-05 - v1.8.8.2 stable

After a slightly flawed 1.8.8 not officially released, version 1.8.8.2 was released with new features like speech to text, online audio-recording, photo edition, SVG diagrams drawer, full-text indexing, certificates generation.

2010-12 - v2.0 stable

The first version 2.0 of Chamilo. Considered to be stable software with experimental web 2.0 and 3.0 aspects expected to analyze the impact of brand new technology on education. Apart from introducing the concept of true content, object and document management, Chamilo 2.0 also focuses on integration with existing repository systems (Fedora, YouTube, Google Docs, etc.) and supports some of the most popular authentication systems (ao. LDAP, CAS, Shibboleth). Its modular and dynamic architecture provides a basis for a multitude of extensions which can be added upon installation or at a later date by means of a repository of additional functionality packages.

2010-06 - v2.0 beta

Chamilo 2.0 beta is not considered production-safe (as its name implies) but implements a series of improvements to get to a more stable and usable release.

2010-07 - v.1.8.7.1

Version 1.8.7.1, codename Palmas

Palmas

Palmas may refer to:* Palmas, one of the two sectors of Cataño, Puerto Rico* Palmas, Tocantins, the capital of the state of Tocantins in Brazil* Palmas, Paraná, a centenary small city in the south of the state of Paraná in Brazil...

was launched at the end of July 2010. It included security fixes to the wiki tool, many fixes to bugs found in 1.8.7 and a series of minor global improvements and new features.

2010-06 - v2.0 alpha

Chamilo 2.0 was originally (first plans date back to 2006 in the Dokeos Users Day in Valence, France) meant to be released as Dokeos 2.0, as a completely new backend for the LMS. The complete team of developers working on this version decided, in 2009, to move to the Chamilo project, thus leaving the Dokeos project repository with incomplete sources. Although Dokeos promised since then to release version 2.0 on the 10th of October 2010 (with a corresponding counter counting down from more than 200 days before that), it is not the total remake it was supposed to be, and it is actually expected to be equivalent in features to 1.8.6.1, mostly adding valuable visual and usability improvements.

2010-05 - v1.8.7

Version 1.8.7, codename Istanbul

Istanbul

Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

was launched in May 2010 with major internationalization (language and time) improvements to the previous version, moving a first major step away from Dokeos. It also added new pedagogical tools to its previous version. This version was the first to be released officially as GNU/GPL version 3.

2010-01 - v1.8.6.2

Version 1.8.6.2 of Chamilo was originally meant to be released as Dokeos 1.8.6.2 in January 2010. Because of the community schism, it was left incomplete and continued (starting November 2009) as the Chamilo project.

Statistics

The free-to-use Chamilo campus registered 100,000 users in October 2011 (15 months after its launch), for 38000 users in December 2010 (11 months after its launch).
The Peruvian Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola reported 1700 users connected in the same 120 seconds time frame in August 2011.
Globally, Chamilo registered 700,000 users in October 2011.

Worldwide adoption of Chamilo

Currently focusing on the academic sector, with many universities and academies throughout Europe and Latin América using it , Chamilo is looking into the private sector market, with latest improvements oriented into the reliability of tracking learners time and efficiency.
Chamilo is currently backed up by a series of small to medium companies which are required to register as members of the association and contribute to the open source software to be recognized as official providers.
Year 2010 was focusing on spreading the software usage in Asia, with translation teams active in the translation to Simplified Chinese, between others.
Year 2011 was focusing on spreading the software usage in Middle-East, with a translation team active in the translation to Arabic between others.
Chamilo is also used in public administrations : Spanish and Peruvian ministries, as well as unemployment services and NGO's.

Security

The Chamilo shows a record of liaising with crackers to detect and fix security issues quickly. A page is dedicated to security issues and serves as a reference any time a new issue is detected.

Trademarks

Chamilo is a registered Trademark protected by the Chamilo Association, declared under Belgian law.