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Posted
3 days
ago
One of the strongest reasons for using an Open Source GPL application is the freedom to bend it to your own requirements, to configure and customise it to your organisation’s business or process needs. With Moodle that often means using add-ons
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from the community. There is a wide variety of plugin types; some are simple and some are complex in both their installation and use.
To keep up-to-date with new add-ons, a few years back I started to active review them on this blog. Based on the reviews and on the experience of working with organisations using Moodle, I put together a list of “Essential plugins for Moodle”, which I have regularly updated and presented at conferences, including the recent Ireland & UK Moodlemoots and the iMoot in 2012.
Michael de Raadt is the Development Manager at Moodle HQ and has been actively developing Moodle plugins over the past few years including Progress Bar and Unanswered Discussions. In 2010 Michael wrote the book “Moodle 1.9 Top Extensions Cookbook” which showed examples of how the plugins could be used in teaching.
For the past year I have collaborated with Michael to write a book on Moodle add-ons and today we are delighted to announce that our book “Moodle Add-ons: Using add-ons to enhance your Moodle site” is now available to buy.
The book is available to buy on Createspace and on Amazon and other online retailers. For now it is just the paperback version but we will have the Kindle version formatted soon.
Our new book goes beyond the work we have done before, extending the presentations and reviews into a new context, providing more reasoned background about add-ons, their format and function, and on the process of evaluation.
Book Summary
The first three chapters explain Moodle add-ons in general, including the different types of add-on plugins available, how they are contributed and why people write an add-on. The book continues with a guide on how to install a Moodle environment to safely test add-ons, away from your production site, and explains how to install a sample add-on. Perhaps most valuable is the third chapter, which describes the many aspects an institution should consider before installing an add-on.
The rest of the chapters include comprehensive reviews on Add-ons broken down into the following areas:
Resources and Activities
Navigation
Course Tracking
Interface
Course Administration
Site Administration
Course Formats
Virtual Conferencing
Hope you have as much fun reading the book as we had writing it.
Order now on Createspace [Less]
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Posted
3 days
ago
… my next challenge! If there are any JQuery / JavaScript experts reading this, I could do with some advice. In OU Annotate the Manager part of the system uses the SilverStripe language pack system so that we could potentially offer the
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user interface in other languages if we wanted to – or if we ever open-source it.
The toolbar javascript up until recently had a fairly limited number of language strings and so they were all gathered in the definitions.js file. But when I started integrating the code for the history pane and the search feature I realised that we’re now scattering language strings in a number of places in the system:
in the definitions file
in the views
in the controllers
The first two are arguably OK, but the latter really got me. So I’d like to do something a bit more consistent about internationalization support for the toolbar. I’d like to have a language file and use code like _t(‘thing’) in the views and controllers to display the appropriately translated text.
Which leads me to my dilemma.
The OU Annotate toolbar is based on JQuery, which doesn’t include language pack support by default beyond number formats, as far as I can tell. There are a number of candidate plug-ins available that would add this functionality but I have very little JavaScript experience and don’t feel confident working out which one to choose.
There’s only one in the JQuery plugins register. It’s only a couple of months old so its hard to tell if it is a flash in the pan, buggy etc.
I thought jquery-i18n-properties looked good at first. But the issues list has some nasties in it with problems like support in IE and on Android not resolved.
I did some more searching and found a handful of other libraries and DIY instructions that might be useful but I haven’t dug into in any detail yet.
http://www.ab-weblog.com/en/internationalization-how-to-localize-html5-projects/
http://i18next.com
https://github.com/jpjoyal/jsperanto
https://github.com/recurser/jquery-i18n
So, if you have experience with JavaScript internationalisation and JQuery, I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this.
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Posted
6 days
ago
As promised Moodle HQ has now released the much anticipated Moodle 2.5. It is already available to download from the Moodle.org site and from GIT. The Moodle Docs for 2.5 are also available. There are a lot of cool new things and improved
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old things in this release which are sure to make many users admins and teachers alike very happy. These include:
Badges (see blog/video post)
Installing Add-ons from inside Moodle UI (see blog/video post)
Forms improvements (see blog/video post)
UI Improvements (see blog post)
New themes (see blog post)
Drag and Drop updates
Assignment enhancements
Templates for essay questions in Quiz
Performance improvements
Starting with this release Moodle Docs will now have a page outlining the new release key feature improvements. Check out http://docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features
For details on how to upgrade to Moodle 2.5 see here -> http://docs.moodle.org/25/en/Upgrading_to_Moodle_2.5
For the full release notes check out -> http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Moodle_2.5_release_notes [Less]
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Posted
6 days
ago
As you may remember I released a Moodle 2 version of Moodle Tool Guide which was created by Joyce Seitzinger (@catspyjamasnz). Now Mark Glynn of the Learning Innovation Unit at DCU has adapted it for Dublin City University.
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Download Moodle 2 Tool Guide - DCU Version (pdf) - 763.85 kB
Download Moodle 2 Tool Guide - DCU Version - PPT (pptx) - 306.47 kB
The other available versions of the Moodle 2 Tool Guide are:
English version by Gavin Henrick (@ghenrick)
Spanish translation by Alfredo Ruiz.
German version by Ralf Hilgenstock and Susanne Gebauer and Gerald Hartwig
Czech version by Bohumil Havel & Jan Trávnícek
Dutch version by Gerda Flim
Simplified Chinese Version by Sun Zhigang
Japanese version by Mitsuhiro Yoshida of Mitstek.com [Less]
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Posted
8 days
ago
As on the Moodlemoot.ie site: It has been only a few months since Moodlemoot Dublin, but things have been progressing quickly. We are delighted to announce that we will be running a Moodlemoot Edinburgh 2014 in partnership with
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Edinburgh Napier University. We aim to have a similar format to the two Dublin Moots, with training workshops, two days of presentations and then a developer hackfest.
We are currently working to finalise the dates and the venue and have narrowed down the decision after visiting a number of venues in the last few days.
However, we can confirm that the Moot will be held in Spring 2014 - more information as soon as this is confirmed.
The following have generously agreed to be the Moodlemoot Edinburgh chairs:
Dr Keith Smyth
Senior Teaching Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Higher Education
Programme Leader MSc Blended and Online Education
Office of the Vice Principal (Academic)
Edinburgh Napier University
Dr Mark Glynn
Head of Learning Innovation Unit
Dublin City University
We will be announcing the programme committee in the coming weeks too – we already have a number of people accepted as members and are in discussions with others.
As with the last two moots, the programme committee will be doing three tasks:
Setting the themes/formats for the Moot
Assessing and rating the submissions
Chairing sessions at the Moot
So if you want to put yourself forward for the programme committee on behalf of your institution – please get in contact with me in the next two weeks on info@moodlemoot.ie
See you in Edinburgh. [Less]
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Posted
10 days
ago
by Eloy Lafuente (stronk7). Cold numbers: 91 issues have been successfully integrated with 11 rejected and 10 delayed. That is 89% success, great! Notes: QA, completed. Moodle 2.5rc1
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, available.
Moodle 2.2.10, 2.3.7, 2.4.4, to be released next Monday.
Moodle 2.5 final, to be released along the next week. We still need one more integration cycle to add some fixes and improvements and to verify that everything is working together nicely.
Hot topics:
Ha! Everything is specially important these days. Security issues, forms, tests, themes, caches, courses... intense stuff!
Warm thanks:
To Jérôme Mouneyrac, for his amazing work with Moodle web services, hubs and all sort of interesting stuff, well done, man!
Ciao all, stronk7 [Less]
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Posted
12 days
ago
Moodle 2.5 brings the a new theme into core. It is called Clean and it is based on the modified Moodle bootstrap theme which is maintained by Bas Brands which inherits styles and renderers from its parent theme. The Original Bootstrap Moodle
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theme which is in the plugins database has over 8700 downloads since release. It was based on the Bootstrap CSS framework. It has minimal styling and can be used to create User Experience optimised themes. The framework was released by Twitter and has a huge following.
When you are looking at a course with the normal Clean theme enabled it would look like this:
When you shrink your browser (as it would be smaller on an iPad or mobile device) it looks like this (the blocks have jumped below the course sections):
Options
There are a few theme options which can change how it looks.
Navbar
The first option is to invert the navigation bar or not. This swaps the text and background colours for the navbar at the top of the page between black and white.
The two variations are shown below. This is certainly a neat feature.
Standard
Inverted
Logo
The second option within the theme is that you can upload a logo. This will appear below the breadcrumb and above the course content/block area as in the example below. To me the positioning is a bit odd, and would maybe be better being above the breadcrumbs, but I imagine that is not a big change to make when you clone it.
Logo positioning on Clean Theme
You can also specify some CSS here which is useful if you need to have a logo different to the standard 75 pixels in the theme.
Footnote
You can also add some content that will be displayed in the footer throughout your Moodle site. This is a neat touch for those who have to add privacy/copyright and other links or logos to the foot of every page.
Footer Text positioning on Clean Theme
So all in all a nice new addition to the Moodle theme family! [Less]
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Posted
12 days
ago
Moodle 2.5 has improved the usability of Moodle forms with a great step forward in providing the forms in a collapsed format and also providing the html editor in collapsed state by default too. When you have a platform that has been built
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to cater for many different needs, one thing which happens is that there are usually a lot of options available to tweak the set up.
Moodle is no different in this matter. The settings pages when creating a course, or some activities (like quiz) have a lot of options available to enable each type of usage you can probably think of and also enabling you to configure it to how you want it to behave. For example a 1 hr exam no retakes and no feedback, or a 10 minute test with unlimited retakes and lots of question by question feedback.
Taking Quiz as an example it has settings to address so many aspects they are broken down into the following headings:
General (3)
Timing (5)
Grade (3)
Layout (3)
Question behaviour (3)
Review options (28)
Display options (4)
Restrictions on attempts (5)
Overall feedback (5+)
Common module Settings (4)
Restriction of Access (5+)
Activity Completion (4)
The number is the amount of settings under that heading.
As you can imagine, this makes for a long page which can be a bit intimidating.
The new collapsed form shows the required information and then has the balance collapsed into sections that if you want to change the default settings you can expand it to do so. The image below shows the new look and the video demonstrates the change.
Adding a quiz in Moodle 2.5
This is a great move and I know many will like this. [Less]
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Posted
12 days
ago
The user interface has been an area that Moodle HQ has focused on since the release of Moodle 2. Each release has added some nice features and now it has come in for some nice improvements in the upcoming Moodle 2.5. Settings Block –
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Administration Block
For those who have got used to the Settings block being there, it has now been renamed to Administration which really does make sense.
It is where all the module administration, course administration and site administration features were located so now it has a possibly more suitable name.
Moodle 2.4
Moodle 2.5
In addition to this, those reports which jumped out of the course admin block in Moodle 1.9 into the Navigation Block tree in Moodle 2, have been ushered back to the Administration block. Teachers will be glad to see them back where they used to be.
Drag and Drop
At this stage we are all used to dragging and dropping files into Moodle 2 – however now some more improvements have been made.
It is now possible to drag and image onto the course page and to create a label with that image inside it. You can then go in and edit the label as normal too.
Dragging Image to Course in 2.5
Added Image into a label in Course in 2.5
Jump to
One of those features many liked in Moodle 1.9 was the ability to Jump to a section. With the newly implemented Section Per Page feature for course sections, Moodle 2.5 now improves this by adding the Jump To dropdown below the displayed section. The images below show how it was in Moodle 2.4 and how it is now in the upcoming Moodle 2.5.
One Section per Page in Moodle 2.4
One Section per Page in Moodle 2.5
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Posted
13 days
ago
In Moodle 2.3 a new feature was implemented to enable site admins get alerts when a plugin that they were using in their Moodle site had been updated in the plugin directory. This would send the admin an email about the update. It was also possible
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to check for available updates through the admin user interface too. See release notes.
In Moodle 2.4 this was brought a step further. Not only did Moodle tell the site admin that a plugin update was available, but they could now update it through the admin user interface. This was a great step forward.
Now with Moodle 2.5 has take this feature to its next natural step, and enables a site admin to search for and install plugins from the Moodle Plugin Directory directly rather than having to upload via FTP. It is also possible to upload a zip of a plugin and not just pull from the plugins directory.
So what about checking the plugin?
The new system makes it much easier to manage the add-ons in the Moodle site. Once you select the plugin to install it will copy it to the server and validate it. There is a set of technical checks it goes through to validate and once it is complete you can then proceed to install.
Add-on package validation
Moodle then goes through the normal upgrade process.
Add-on Install Prompt
Once installed, it is the same as if you had done it manually.
The below video shows the process by which a site admin installs the block Progress Bar into the Moodle site just using the web interface.
Some things to note.
To make use of the feature requires certain permissions on the server to work which many managed hosts will not provide as it means that code they have not approved and audited themselves can be installed on a Moodle for which they are responsible. This is fair enough as it would be unreasonable to ask someone to stand over an installation that they do not control.
Also, it should be understood that as with any code change to a site it is always prudent to have a full site backup before any change is made. Where this feature is available in other applications like wordpress it always recommends that step too. When installing the add-on you have to tick an acknowledgement about this topic.
“I understand that it is my responsibility to have full backups of this site prior to installing add-ons. I accept and understand that add-ons (especially but not only those originating in unofficial sources) may contain security holes, can make the site unavailable, or cause private data leaks or loss.”
Lastly, it should be noted that where admins are using source code repositories such as GIT to manage their code this feature is not really usable on the live site, however would be useful in a test site where people want to try out a plugin before formally requesting inclusion into the managed implementation.
If you do not want to have the web-based admins install add-ons from the interface, you can just add the following line to your config.php
$CFG->disableonclickaddoninstall = true;
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