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The Power of Service in Retirement

1 day 13 hours ago

By dotMagis Editor

Ignatian Volunteer Corps members share some of their experiences in a six-minute video. As volunteer Peggy Gessler says, “I enjoy volunteering, but IVC gives you the opportunity to reflect on your volunteer experience. And I enjoy the camaraderie and the reflection and the opportunity to learn from other people.” Learn more about the IVC by [
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Click through to read the full article The Power of Service in Retirement, which appeared first on Ignatian Spirituality.

IgnatianSpirituality.com Âź is a service of Loyola Press, a Jesuit ministry.

Finding God in the Mess by Jim Deeds and Brendan McManus, SJ, is the perfect tool to help us learn to pause, to take time to be with God, to contemplate our lives, and to recognize God’s presence in all of it, especially the hard times.

dotMagis Editor

Taking Anger to Prayer

3 days 13 hours ago

By Lisa Kelly

I read a Facebook post that said, “I am so angry at God today. This is the sixth day in a row I have sat at my sister’s bedside, watching her suffer in pain, waiting, just waiting, for God to take her. Why doesn’t he? This is so unfair to all of us.” I have [
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Click through to read the full article Taking Anger to Prayer, which appeared first on Ignatian Spirituality.

IgnatianSpirituality.com Âź is a service of Loyola Press, a Jesuit ministry.

Finding God in the Mess by Jim Deeds and Brendan McManus, SJ, is the perfect tool to help us learn to pause, to take time to be with God, to contemplate our lives, and to recognize God’s presence in all of it, especially the hard times.

Lisa Kelly

Helping Children See Jesus as a Friend

6 days 13 hours ago

By dotMagis Editor

Ignatian blogger Loretta Pehanich wrote Loyola Kids Book of Jesus, His Family, and His Friends in the hopes that the book will help children “come to see Jesus as a friend.” She explains in the video below.

Click through to read the full article Helping Children See Jesus as a Friend, which appeared first on Ignatian Spirituality.

IgnatianSpirituality.com Âź is a service of Loyola Press, a Jesuit ministry.

Finding God in the Mess by Jim Deeds and Brendan McManus, SJ, is the perfect tool to help us learn to pause, to take time to be with God, to contemplate our lives, and to recognize God’s presence in all of it, especially the hard times.

dotMagis Editor

God Waiting with a Call

1 week 1 day ago

By Gerri Leder

“The journey of faith is a gift of a loving God who takes the first step and waits patiently, silently, almost shyly for the human response,” writes Vincent Sherlock in Sacred Space: The Prayer Book 2025. One of my earliest memories of a loving God was preparing for my First Reconciliation. The second-grade class at [
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Click through to read the full article God Waiting with a Call, which appeared first on Ignatian Spirituality.

IgnatianSpirituality.com Âź is a service of Loyola Press, a Jesuit ministry.

Finding God in the Mess by Jim Deeds and Brendan McManus, SJ, is the perfect tool to help us learn to pause, to take time to be with God, to contemplate our lives, and to recognize God’s presence in all of it, especially the hard times.

Gerri Leder

Pilgrims of Hope

1 week 3 days ago

By Tim Muldoon

Hope, writes Emily Dickinson, “is the thing with feathers – / That perches in the soul,” by which, I take her to mean, hope is ever-ready to take wing, quite apart from the machinations of our calculating minds. It is good to hold this image, particularly in times when news reports crash upon us rather [
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Click through to read the full article Pilgrims of Hope, which appeared first on Ignatian Spirituality.

IgnatianSpirituality.com Âź is a service of Loyola Press, a Jesuit ministry.

Finding God in the Mess by Jim Deeds and Brendan McManus, SJ, is the perfect tool to help us learn to pause, to take time to be with God, to contemplate our lives, and to recognize God’s presence in all of it, especially the hard times.

Tim Muldoon

Join us for the Moodle Academy webinar “Creating TinyMCE plugins for Moodle” on Thursday 7 November, 03:00 UTC

1 week 3 days ago
by Richard Lefroy.  

Join us for the Moodle Academy webinar “Creating TinyMCE plugins for Moodle” on Thursday 7 November, 03:00 UTC

In this webinar the Moodle HQ and Tiny teams will dive into the integration of the TinyMCE editor within Moodle, now the default editor replacing Atto. This session is tailored for Moodle developers, and  guides you through creating custom TinyMCE plugins and migrating existing Atto plugins to TinyMCE.

Unlock TinyMCE’s full potential to enhance the editing experience and explore valuable resources for  developers. This is a must-attend event for anyone looking to elevate their development skills and make the most of TinyMCE in Moodle.

Agenda:

  • Overview of TinyMCE editor in Moodle.
  • Steps on creating TinyMCE plugins for Moodle.
  • How to convert Atto plugins to TinyMCE.
  • Maximizing the functionality of TinyMCE in Moodle.
  • Developer resources and TinyMCE premium plugin options.
  • Live Q&A session with experts.

Speakers:

  • Andrew Lyons, Principal Architect at Moodle HQ.
  • Mrina Sugosh, DevRel at TinyMCE.

We recommend checking out these resources to help you get the most out of the session before you attend the webinar:

  • TinyMCE Editor Plugins - Moodle Docs: Familiarize yourself with how TinyMCE plugins work within Moodle.
  • Creating TinyMCE Plugins - Moodle Academy Course: Learn how to create custom TinyMCE plugins through this step-by-step course.

This will provide a solid foundation for the topics covered in the webinar!

This webinar is part of the course 'Creating TinyMCE Plugins'. You have to be enrolled in this free course to register and join the webinar.

Freedom in Gliding Like the Birds

1 week 6 days ago

By Melinda LeBlanc

I’ve always admired large birds such as eagles and Mississippi Kites. They seem to fly so effortlessly, soaring high or swooping low, in search of prey or protection. We’ve been fortunate to have a nest of kites in a neighbor’s tree. They usually appear every summer and put on quite a show for me as [
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Click through to read the full article Freedom in Gliding Like the Birds, which appeared first on Ignatian Spirituality.

IgnatianSpirituality.com Âź is a service of Loyola Press, a Jesuit ministry.

Finding God in the Mess by Jim Deeds and Brendan McManus, SJ, is the perfect tool to help us learn to pause, to take time to be with God, to contemplate our lives, and to recognize God’s presence in all of it, especially the hard times.

Melinda LeBlanc

Discerning Democracy: Navigating Civic Life with the Third Week of the Spiritual Exercises

1 week 6 days ago

Today’s heightened polarization has seemingly erected insurmountable walls in our political discourse. Continuing this miniseries, Ty Wahlbrink, SJ, suggests how the Christian can maintain hope in the midst of uncertain times and proposes how the “rules for eating” in the Spiritual Exercises can help us navigate the fraught weeks ahead.

The post Discerning Democracy: Navigating Civic Life with the Third Week of the Spiritual Exercises appeared first on The Jesuit Post.

Ty Wahlbrink, SJ

Take This Soul and Make It Sing

2 weeks 1 day ago

By Vinita Hampton Wright

A major premise of St. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises is that we human beings were created by God, who creates good things out of love; thus we humans are most fulfilled when we live out the desires and purposes God built into our design. We are created to love, to enjoy life, to exist in loving [
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Click through to read the full article Take This Soul and Make It Sing, which appeared first on Ignatian Spirituality.

IgnatianSpirituality.com Âź is a service of Loyola Press, a Jesuit ministry.

Finding God in the Mess by Jim Deeds and Brendan McManus, SJ, is the perfect tool to help us learn to pause, to take time to be with God, to contemplate our lives, and to recognize God’s presence in all of it, especially the hard times.

Vinita Hampton Wright

The Family Cheerleader and God for Us

2 weeks 3 days ago

By Shemaiah Gonzalez

As a mother, I set the tone for my home. I try to keep the mood upbeat and positive. I am always cheering on my husband’s work at the office, my eldest’s latest foray into jazz, or my youngest’s first days at his new school. “I know you can do it! I’m so proud of [
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Click through to read the full article The Family Cheerleader and God for Us, which appeared first on Ignatian Spirituality.

IgnatianSpirituality.com Âź is a service of Loyola Press, a Jesuit ministry.

Finding God in the Mess by Jim Deeds and Brendan McManus, SJ, is the perfect tool to help us learn to pause, to take time to be with God, to contemplate our lives, and to recognize God’s presence in all of it, especially the hard times.

Shemaiah Gonzalez

Moodle Showcase Shorts - Celebrating your contributions to Moodle LMS 4.5 & More

2 weeks 5 days ago
by Marie Achour.  

Hello Moodlers,

Welcome to this edition of ‘Showcase Shorts,’ where we celebrate the release of Moodle LMS 4.5, our new Long-Term Support (LTS) version, which came out on October 7th.

This celebration is for our community members (and if you are reading this note, that includes you!) without whom we couldn’t do what we do - provide the world with the best open-source LMS solution (and by a mile, in our humble opinion!).

To see how much our community helped, we invite you to watch this video from Jun & Simey (Integration & Testing Leads here at Moodle HQ), who share some of the highlights of your contributions.

The newest version of Moodle LMS contains a ton of new features and improvements, and we couldn’t possibly cover them all in this note (but you can peruse them here). We did, however, want to share three big highlights of the release by sharing videos of some of the people who built them, our fabulous HQ Product team members, demonstrating these new features.

  • Firstly, we have Matt, our Head of Platform Solutions, & Huong, a Senior Developer in the Platform team, showcasing our new AI Subsystem and the first AI-powered features in Moodle LMS.

  • Then, Ferran, one of our Technical Architects, shows off our new course experience and how it has been improved by the introduction of Subsections in Moodle 4.5.

  • And finally, the start of our improvements to the Assignment Activity, which will continue in future versions of Moodle, presented by Barbie, a UX Designer in our Educational Solutions team. 

For those of you keen to find out more about what is happening in Moodle Workplace, you won’t have to wait long. Moodle Workplace 4.5 is coming out on the 5th of November! We can’t wait to show you highlights from that release during our next Showcase Shorts update. And, of course, our new versions of Moodle Mobile Apps are also coming your way very soon!

Between now and our next note, Moodlers from around the world will be coming together in MĂ©rida, MĂ©xico, for MoodleMoot Global 2024 (visit www.moodlemoot.org to learn more). We hope that we get the chance to say hi to many of you there!

That’s it for this edition of our ‘Showcase Shorts’; we hope you’ve enjoyed the updates.

Until Next Sprint!

The Moodle Product Team

Sacred Space Bookmarks

2 weeks 6 days ago

By dotMagis Editor

In honor of the 15th anniversary of IgnatianSpirituality.com, we’re celebrating with 15 Gifts to Celebrate 15 Years! Read the details here. Gift 12 is a set of bookmarks featuring quotes from Sacred Space: The Prayer Book 2025. The annual book by the Irish Jesuits leads readers into a life of prayer with daily Scripture readings [
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Click through to read the full article Sacred Space Bookmarks, which appeared first on Ignatian Spirituality.

IgnatianSpirituality.com Âź is a service of Loyola Press, a Jesuit ministry.

Finding God in the Mess by Jim Deeds and Brendan McManus, SJ, is the perfect tool to help us learn to pause, to take time to be with God, to contemplate our lives, and to recognize God’s presence in all of it, especially the hard times.

dotMagis Editor

God Holds Me Lightly

3 weeks 1 day ago

By Loretta Pehanich

This story is in the tradition of Ignatian contemplation. “Mima! Are you home?” Jesus called as he knocked rapidly. I recognized the voice of my young neighbor immediately. Of course, no one else calls me by that pet name, which he gave me before he could pronounce Myriam. He lives just a few doors away. [
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Click through to read the full article God Holds Me Lightly, which appeared first on Ignatian Spirituality.

IgnatianSpirituality.com Âź is a service of Loyola Press, a Jesuit ministry.

Finding God in the Mess by Jim Deeds and Brendan McManus, SJ, is the perfect tool to help us learn to pause, to take time to be with God, to contemplate our lives, and to recognize God’s presence in all of it, especially the hard times.

Loretta Pehanich

The Hedgehog Conundrum

3 weeks 3 days ago

By Eric Clayton

Not long after my wife and I got married, we bought a pet hedgehog. Our plan had been in the works since our undergraduate days; no one was more ready to own a real-life hedgehog than we were. We’d done the research, bought the gear, and owned a totally normal amount of hedgehog dĂ©cor: salt [
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Click through to read the full article The Hedgehog Conundrum, which appeared first on Ignatian Spirituality.

IgnatianSpirituality.com Âź is a service of Loyola Press, a Jesuit ministry.

Finding God in the Mess by Jim Deeds and Brendan McManus, SJ, is the perfect tool to help us learn to pause, to take time to be with God, to contemplate our lives, and to recognize God’s presence in all of it, especially the hard times.

Eric Clayton

Announcing Moodle LMS 4.5: Unlocking the power of AI

3 weeks 3 days ago
by Matt Porritt.  

Hi Everyone,

We're thrilled to announce the launch of Moodle LMS 4.5! We would like to extend our thanks to our incredible community, the Moodle LMS team, and everyone involved in this latest release for their collective efforts.
The new release is more intelligent, intuitive, and inclusive. With over 250 new features and improvements, Moodle LMS 4.5 transforms learning experiences by harnessing the power of AI, refining course organisation, and enhancing essential learning tools.
Guided by our AI Principles, Moodle 4.5 introduces a flexible AI subsystem that allows organisations to choose if, how, and where they want to integrate AI tools into their Moodle site. 
See more about our new features below:

Introducing the AI subsystem: Improving efficiency with AI integration

Moodle LMS 4.5 has a new AI subsystem designed to integrate easily with various AI providers while maximising safety, efficiency, and accessibility. Because a human-centred approach to AI is at the core of our AI Principles, the subsystem allows organisations to have complete control over how AI is used in their Moodle site. 
This subsystem is a scalable framework that supports secure, adaptable AI-powered learning in Moodle’s core functionality.
Moodle LMS will initially support the OpenAI API. This API will work with open-source models such as Ollama, LiteLLM, and LocalAI. It will also support services like Groq, OpenAI itself, and Azure. Additional AI model support will be added in future releases.
This system ensures that institutions are not tied to a single provider, providing long-term flexibility and scalability.
This integration makes the AI tools easier to use, boosts confidence in adopting new technology, and improves engagement among learners – all while ensuring student data remains secure. 

AI-powered content generation and summarisation: augmenting learning and teaching

The new AI subsystem adds the first AI-powered features in Moodle LMS. 
Generating text and images in Moodle's editor simplifies content creation, saving time and effort. This functionality is available to all Moodle LMS users with the appropriate permissions. 
AI-generated content is tagged for transparency, and descriptions for generated images are automatically added, making it easier to create inclusive, accessible learning materials.

When enabled by their instructor, learners can also use AI tools within Moodle to create content and summarise text, with all actions logged for review and continuous learning improvement. Learners benefit from having choice, control, and transparency in AI interactions, elements that help build essential digital literacy skills.

Subsections for more refined course organisation

Moodle LMS 4.5 introduces course Subsections, a new course structuring tool that allows educators to create nested sections, making course content easier to organise and navigate. With Subsections, course designers can visually group related content, making it easier to build clear, sequential learning paths without the need for additional plugins. 
Subsections give educators more course design options, without needing to rely on additional plugins. This feature also improves course management for educators, allowing entire sections of content to be moved and reorganised with minimal effort. 
For learners, Subsections make it easier to see relationships between content and navigate complex topics. Clicking on the title of a Subsection displays a dedicated page with only that Subsection’s content, allowing learners to focus on just that content. This functionality makes it easy for educators to build organised, inclusive course pages that enhance the learning experience for all learners.

Enhanced assignment activity for continuous feedback

In Moodle LMS 4.5, we’ve improved the Assignment activity to facilitate grading consistency, and have redesigned the Assignment submissions page to make it simpler and more intuitive for educators and learners.
Simplified assignment management helps educators by making grading faster and more efficient, with better filtering, fewer clicks and more intuitive navigation. A new option to automatically allow additional attempts makes it easy to create a supportive learning environment by providing continual feedback to learners.
A new site-wide setting allows Site Administrators to set a default for grade type and scale, a change that can mean easier Assignment setup for educators and more consistency for learners.

Preparing for Open Badges 3.0 with badge system improvements

Moodle Badges are an important means of motivating learners and recognising achievements. In preparation for the incorporation of Open Badges 3.0 in Moodle LMS 5.0, our latest version of Moodle streamlines Badge creation and management.
In Moodle LMS 4.5, educators benefit from improved badge management workflows. Copying badges between courses is now simpler, and the ability to have duplicate badge names within a course means more flexibility when tracking and awarding learner progress.

Improved media integration and screen recording

Improvements to media integration in Moodle LMS 4.5 make it faster and easier for educators to create and embed multimedia content into course materials.
All Moodle users now have the ability to record their screens directly within the text editor and easily add this content anywhere the text editor is used. Educators can create dynamic instructional content, such as tutorials or walkthroughs, and learners can illustrate solutions with short screencasts. Site administrators can create brief instructional videos orienting users to the Moodle site, all without relying on external tools.
These improvements in media handling will give students richer, more engaging content, helping them better understand and retain the course material. Also, easy integration and refinement of multimedia content ensures students get clear, well-structured media, accommodating diverse learning preferences.

Help learners stay on track with more notification options

Moodle LMS 4.5 has improved notifications, reminding students of due assignments and upcoming quizzes. It helps them use their time better and meet deadlines.
For educators, automated notifications eliminate the need for manual reminders, freeing up more time for teaching. These improved notification settings can also help learners manage their time more effectively and reduce the likelihood of missed deadlines, a benefit for educators and learners alike.

Interested in learning more about the features of Moodle LMS 4.5? Watch our YouTube videos:

 

Or check the release documentation.

Regards,
Matt Porritt,
Head of Platform Solutions