January 2009

My Moodle 2.0 Upgrade Journey Part 1…
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My Moodle 2.0 Upgrade Journey Part 1…

To upgrade or not to upgrade? That is the question.

Well my answer is…upgrade!

I am currently in the process of writing a short paper on a possible upgrade to Moodle 2.0 for Leeds City College.  I am proposing an upgrade during the summer.

Unfortunately, due to the size of the organisation, our custom tweaks, third party plug-ins and staff training needs, an upgrade isn’t going to be easy.

This blog post will be part of several posts during the run up to D-Day!  Or M2-Day as I’ll call it.

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What’s in your Moodle Toolkit?

Most jobs require tools.  Plumbers need wrenches, joiners need saws, accountants need calculators, hairdressers need scissors.  But what does a Moodle Developer carry in their toolbox? 

This will differ depending on your Operating System but in terms of functionality, how many applications does a Moodle developer really need?

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Moodle Tip: Change the default popup file window size

One of the most frustrating things about Moodle is the popup window that opens when a tutor uploads a file.  Not only does it open in a small window but it often crops of the side of the screen with the “choose” option.

Many tutors then miss out this vital step of clicking choose and often place a checkbox next to the filename instead.

So we set about trying to find the code in Moodle which changes the size of the popup window (by default this is set to 750px x 500px).

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New MyMoodle Idea: Moodle Folders

As I’ve said many times before, I love the MyMoodle page and I’m always looking for ways in which to improve it. So my colleague and I, Sukhwant Lota (@sukhwantlota) set about creating Moodle Folders.

We needed something new for the start of the summer term and we needed a custom way to sort long course lists on the MyMoodle page. Being avid fans of Google Mail and Docs we liked the idea of using tags and labels, so in effect this is how Moodle Folders works. The user simply creates a tag/folder which is assigned to a course.

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Book Review: Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques

This has quickly become of my favourite Moodle books as it offers something completely different.  The book focuses on using Moodle as a teaching tool and mixes both the technical know-how and the pedagogical theory to great effect.

This book is ideal for any teacher/tutor who wants to use Moodle interactively.  The book teaches the reader how to build an effective online course by promoting the use of the book module, forums, workshops, wikis and other core activities. The use of groups and groupings are not only explained but also put into practice. 

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Archives Things I've made

Moodle Twitter Post Block

Twitter PostI have just finished an early release of my Moodle Twitter Block.  The block simply allows you to post a tweet to a Twitter account.  At present it asks you to enter your Twitter username and password but I will be customising this to pull the data from user profile fields already in Moodle.  A lot of work has already been done on a similar block by M3 (http://m3.jiscemerge.org.uk/) but I wanted to create my

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Archives Things I've made

Moodle Bar almost ready for public release

My Moodle bar is almost ready for public release.  I have cleaned the code up (a lot), the bar now installs with just one simple PHP include tag in the footer of your Moodle theme.  The buttons now have a CSS based tooltip rollover (like Facebook).  I just have a few Internet Explorer 7 glitches to take care of.

I am also planning a notifications module for the bar which will alert users of messages, deadlines and calendar events.

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