The MyMoodle Page

The MyMoodle page is a really under-rated page in Moodle.  In fact, many organisations I have come across don't even use it.  We couldn't actually live without it.

When a student enrolls at college they are given a username and password and this single signs them onto Moodle.  During this login process the Moodle server talks with our MIS system and enrolls the user onto the correct course on Moodle.  These courses then appear in on the MyMoodle page.  It's fantastic.

So why change it then?

We quickly saw the potential of the MyMoodle page as an information portal page, similar to iGoogle or a personalised Yahoo page so we set about writing additional code to pull in various parts of Moodle as well as interfacing with Twitter and Flikr.
 

I was not all together happy with the way the default MyMoodle page displayed courses so I re-wrote the query and have now separated the courses into sections, such as, Courses I study, courses I teach etc..  This query looks at the course enrollments in the Moodle database and loads much quicker than the original.

Screenshot

Google RSS

The block on the right uses the Google RSS AJAX Ticker.  The ticker picks up RSS feeds from various parts of our Moodle installation and displays them in an AJAX application.  This allows the user to read all RSS feeds from the front page.

Twitter Integration

When a user adds their Twitter ID to their Moodle profile, their last Tweet will appear at the top of their MyMoodle page and their user profile page.  This is a great way to implement status updates in Moodle.

Quick Links

I have added quicklinks to the left column and a large user picture.  Extra administration options appear here such as Loginas.

From here users can view their profile, add a blog entry, view the groups (tags) and access the student forum.

When an administrator is logged in a few extra options appear, such as Loginas, a link to Moodle Detective and the student ID number is displayed here along with the LDAP authentication of the user.  (i.e. staff or student).

Mobile Access

This page renders on the iPhone and Windows Mobile and strips away the blocks to reveal an easy-to-read course list.