View PDF files in a ShadowBox pop-up window in the Essential Theme on your Moodle 3.0 site (works on all other themes as well!)

Source: Jens Peter Olesen,
Pixabay, CC0 Public Domain

Design. It's all about design. Today's post is  a sequel to my earlier post on the same subject. In that post, I enabled my PDF and ODF files to open in a Lightbox-like window, when clicked upon, in three themes: Evolve-D, Academi and BCU. I had used FancyBox and ViewerJS to achieve this. I couldn't get Fancybox to work with other themes.

The great news is that I have since discovered that ShadowBox (in place of FancyBox) works on Essential and Moodle 3.2's Boost theme. The installation is much easier, and I managed to optimise the look and feel of ShadowBox by tweaking its original CSS file.

Important Disclaimer and warning:
If you find that your Moodle version and Moodle theme causes your PDF file to load v-e-r-y slowly, or if your Google Chrome displays the "Out of memory" or "Aw snap" message,  then try using the FancyBox method that I blogged here instead.

Learning Outcome
At the end of this post, you will be able to hack your beloved and sacred Moodle site so that PDF files will open as pop-ups. That's all. Nothing earth-shattering. However, I strongly believe that my post today is going to touch lives and make a difference in your Moodle experience (XP). As well as your teachers' and students' Moodle XP. Read on!

How to install the multi-platform PDF pop-up window on your Moodle 2.9.x/3.0 site.

Pop up! Source: Pixabay,
License: CC0 Public Domain;
See https://goo.gl/lAIF8x

Welcome to my Dummies' Guide for the Complete Dummy!

This guide will show you how to enable your Moodle 2.9 site so that if you click on a PDF file resource, a lighbox-like pop-up window will open. I made mention of this 'innovation' here.

A dumbed-down version of this guide is called the Idiot's Guide. But I haven't gotten down to doing it yet because I'm not a complete idiot. Yet.

Buy

I crafted this Guide because I am afraid that three months from now I might forget all the steps. Thus the Dummy is I. This guide is insanely populated with screenshots because it is a step-by-step guide for, like I said, Dummies.

A Dummies' Guide should be simple enough for any 'Dummy' to follow. All you need to do is to follow the steps and in the end you will be rewarded. I will hold your hand all the way through.

Learning Outcomes
At the end of this Guide, you will be able to

• install the PDF pop-up on your Moodle 2.9.x/3.0 site using one of these themes: evolve-D, BCU and Academi. Disclaimer: if you are using a different theme, I cannot guarantee that it work on your theme. I tried to get it to work on Essential, More and Clean themes. I failed. Maybe you can succeed where I failed.
• to experience the joy of seeing your students open up PDF files as a pop-up window on Moodle, on every platform and device known to man. After this you can sit back, relax and watch Netflix.

• to see a PDF, Text and ODF (Writer, Presentation, Calc) file open on multiple platforms in the same and consistent way. Check out the Slideshare presentation below. Drool.

Make your Moodle 2.x Quiz Navigation Section come to life with this useful mouseover hack

Source: http://www.businessethicsalliance.org/blog/pop-quiz-how-would-you-define-community-responsibility/

How would you like to transform your humble Quiz Navigation section into a mini Information System?

Now you can, thanks to Michael Weston and Tim Hunt, who bounced this brilliant idea around from conception to fruition. Michael asked if the Quiz Navigation question links could display the quiz question text on mouseover:

Tweak for Danny Wahl's Autohide for Moodle 2.x when using the Topics Format

If you're using Danny Wahl's Autohide creation with the Topics Format course format in Moodle 2.x, here's a tweak for the autohide.css file that allows the Settings icon to appear on mouse hover. Before this, I was using the Weekly Format and all was fine. Then I switched over to the Topics Format and suddenly I realised that there was no way to change a topic's description as the Settings icon refused to appear on mouseover!

What a strange phenomena. Upon further investigation, thanks to Sakshi Goel and Mary Cooch in this forum, I was finally able to solve this puzzle by changing this section of the code:

.section_add_menus, /* Add Resource/Activity dropdowns (2.2) */
.addresourcemodchooser, /* Add Resource/Activity Link (2.3) */
.editing .block .title .commands .icon, /* Block Title Controls */
.editing .block .content li .commands a, /* Command in block content (add resources/activities in Main menu) */
.editing .block .editbutton a, /* Edit button in custom HTML blocks */
.editing .section .side > *:not(br), /* Section controls (can't use 'a' b/c ajax uses 'span') */
.topics .section .content .summary ,
.editing .section .summary a:first-child, 
.editing .section .activity .commands > *, /* Individual activity and resource controls (can't use 'a' b/c ajax uses 'span') */
.editing .sitetopic > a {
    filter: alpha(opacity=0);
    opacity: 0;
    -webkit-transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s;
    -moz-transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s;
    -ms-transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s;
    -o-transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s;
    transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s; /* half-second fade in */
}

to

.section_add_menus, /* Add Resource/Activity dropdowns (2.2) */
.addresourcemodchooser, /* Add Resource/Activity Link (2.3) */
.editing .block .title .commands .icon, /* Block Title Controls */
.editing .block .content li .commands a, /* Command in block content (add resources/activities in Main menu) */
.editing .block .editbutton a, /* Edit button in custom HTML blocks */
.editing .section .side > *:not(br), /* Section controls (can't use 'a' b/c ajax uses 'span') */
.editing .section .activity .commands > *, /* Individual activity and resource controls (can't use 'a' b/c ajax uses 'span') */
.editing .section .summary a:first-child, 
.editing .sitetopic > a {
    filter: alpha(opacity=0);
    opacity: 0;
    -webkit-transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s;
    -moz-transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s;
    -ms-transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s;
    -o-transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s;
    transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s; /* half-second fade in */
}

.topics .section .content .summary {
   filter: alpha(opacity=0.5);
    opacity: 0.8;
    -webkit-transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s;
    -moz-transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s;
    -ms-transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s;
    -o-transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s;
    transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s; /* half-second fade in */
}

Now the Settings (gear icon) symbol appears on mouseover as it should.

Yippee!!
You can download the tweaked autohide.css file from here.

Regards
Frankie Kam

Making Moodle more SOCIAL and FUN.

Making Moodle More Social and Fun

I presented this at University Malaya on Thursday 7th February 2012. Hope you enjoy the tips.



Thanks for viewing. Any comments?

Frankie Kam

Liven up the Participants List (People Block) in Moodle 2.4 by changing the City field into Hobby

How would you like to have a Hobby field show up in the Participants List in Moodle 2? Well it can be done! Charles Kelly of http://www.manythings.org had shown how it could be done in Moodle 1.9  here. The purpose of my blog post today, is to show you how to do it for your Moodle 2.x (tested on 2.4) site. I had previously blogged about doing the hack for Moodle 1.9 post here. The good news is that it's easier to do this for Moodle 2.x.

What’s the benefit of doing this? In my humble opinion, knowing that you come from Wellington or Kuantan is not as interesting as knowing that you have a liking for Psy, Bradfort City Football Club or rearing Beagle pups. How can we do this? In Moodle 2.x, you just need to do one mandatory step.

• Firstly, change the City field’s display name to “Hobby / Interest / Free Time”.
• Secondly (this step is optional), modify the length of City field from an already generous 120 characters to N characters.

Figure 1. What the Participants List looks like. Note that some users had earlier typed their City data since I only recently implemented the hack.

Here it is - my FREE Limited-Features Version of the Wall for Moodle 2.x

Dear All
I am releasing a free version -and- limited-features version of the wall for Moodle 2.x. This wall has been tested under Moodle 2.2. You can download it, try to install it. If you succeed, you are a Moodle-PHP Guru. If not, you can always E-mail me, right?  If you successfully set it up on your Moodle site, you are free to modify or customise it. This wall is a modification of Srinivas Tamada's Facebook-like Wall Script 3.0 which is free.

Journal-like feature of the Wall - ensuring privacy of students' posts

I made this one before the New Year deadline. Notch up one more feature for the ever-versatile Wonderwall on the  checklist. I have added a "Moodle Journal"-like Wall feature. This means that there is added level of privacy for students. The Teacher can also ask questions and a student responds without the benefit of seeing/viewing other students' answers/responses. Works like the Moodle 1.9 Journal mod. Sort of.

Using the parameter in the iframe code,

&Journal=1 

the student only can see messages on the wall that were posted by himself or the Course Administrator. Works pretty much the same as Moodle 1.9's venerable Journal mod. In this manner, the student enjoys a degree of privacy. His or her wall posts are hidden from other student users. Of course the Course Administatrator can view and reply to all wall posts from all students.

Check it out on:
http://www.moodurian.com/mod/resource/view.php?id=4326
Username: studentscm   -or-  me
Password: studentscm   -or-  me

Attached PNG screenshots hopefullly are self-explanatory.

The Wall with the parameter : &Journal=0
Everyone sees everyone's posts

Summary: now the Wall has Journal feature which hides other students' posts from any student user. The student user only sees Wall updates from himself/herself/Course Administrator/Teacher. Student now enjoys a level of privacy. The teacher can remove  the &Journal=1 parameter, or change it to &Journal=0 to revert the Wall to all-see-all content type of default wall.

What do you think of this feature?

Regards
Frankie Kam

P.S., Move your mouse cursor over the grayed-out avatar user account pic to see a nice effect.

Three ways to disable the "Show only one topic / Show all topics" icon in Moodle 1.9

Ever had this need?

In a topics-format course, the "Show only topic N" and "Show all topics" icons present a usability issue. Students who inadvertently click on them become confused when they lose sight of the the other blocks. It would be good if we could disable these icons, either at System or Course level, or perhaps through a new capability.
(John Isner from this Moodle tracker).

In this post I want to present FOUR ways of disabling the "Show only week N" icon

and its sibling, the "Show all weeks" icon.

Extend the functionality of OUWiki in Moodle 1.9.x by adding links to its interface

The BEST thing about Moodle is that it is Open Source and written in PHP. That means absolute heaven for the programmer within the Teacher or Educator. Ah! To be able to modify code to suit your needs. Pure joy indeed.

Figure 1. The OUWiki - A great collaboration tool!

One of the BEST collaboration tools in Moodle is the Wiki. In fact, the standard Moodle Wiki has been enhanced by the boffins at the Open University, United Kingdom and we are blessed with the OUWiki.  With the OUWiki, we have a Moodle resource that allows students to not only build a webpage asynchronously, but also to annotate their work for others to read. As Sam Marhall pointed out in this Moodle.org post:

"The big new feature is annotation which is intended to replace comments. Comments were a nice idea but didn't work with students - they put things in comments instead of editing the page as they should (either too timid or just didn't know which was appropriate), and it was also too complicated for them. So if you choose, you can get rid of 'em. Instead you can have annotation. Annotation lets the teacher add 'red pen' notes to a wiki page and lock it, so as to give feedback when marking a wiki page."

Lesson Objective
In this post, I want to show you how you can add more links into OUWiki's interface. Clicking on a link will bring you to your intended URL or open a new tab for the destination webpage. It's actually pretty easy.

Learning Outcomes
At the end of this post, you will be able to customise your OUWiki so that more hyperlinks can be added to it. You will be able to extend the functionality of your Wiki. You will be able to take your OUWiki from here:

Figure 2. The OUWiki menu items 

to here:

Figure 3. Adding a new menu hyperlink to the menu list - done!

Moving the Choose link to the left column of the file picker in Moodle 1.9

A milestone in Moodurian.blogspot.com! This is my 100th blog post and what a joy it is to contribute yet another hack for Moodle 1.9 community.

I want to thank firstly my dearest wife and companion, Ju Lee, for looking after the den and our two cubs, Leanne and Laura. Thanks for taking care of the kids while their father hunches over the computer fighting with php code and Moodle hacks. I'll wash the dishes and will put the clothes in the dryer once I take a break from the laptop, honey. And yes, I did water the plants today.

I want to also thank my boss, the Educator and Principal of Stamford College Malacca, Mr K. Naranasamy, for helping to finance the college's first Moodle server back in September 2010. Also not forgetting Mr U.K. Menon whose two words, "Try Moodle" back in 2008, started me on this journey.

A big shout out to my good friend Nicholas Walker of Montreal, Canada, for his strong interest in my work, for getting me to push the envelope, and for his moral support and good advice. Also for the use of his server, http://www.labodanglais.com to host my production Moodle 1.9.15 site. Thanks mate, you have been a catalyst for many a post on this site. I am inspired by your innovative, inquisitive and entrepreneurial spirit, and your ability to combine the three worlds of education, technology and business. I've had, am still having, a blast with your other websites virtualwritingtutor.com and chatbotmaker.com.

Another person I want to thank is the prolific Joseph Thibault of Moodlenews.com who churns out moodle newsbites at a dizzying rate of N posts per week. Small but meaty chunks of Moodle knowledge to keep us all up to date. Thanks for the believing in me enough to offer me the honour of being a guest author on the most visited Moodle news site on the planet.

Others on Moodle.org whom I would to thank are my colleague of Stamford College Malacca, Garry McIntosh (for being an active user of Moodle.com), Davo Smith (for many great plugins like the Realtime quiz, PDFupload, drag and drop, etc.), Itamar Tzadok (for ingenious CSS coding and advice on PHP), Mark Ward (Moodle 2.x Autohide plugin), Mary Cooch (for her Moodle books and so many crystal clear video tutorials which have set a bench mark for quality learning resources), Mary Evans (for so many great Moodle 1.9 and 2.x themes like Isometric and others), David Mudrak (for writing one of my favourite plugins - the Stamp Collection module), Matteo Scaramuccia (I was stuck, and he wrote a brilliant piece of code that made E-mail notification possible in the Stamp Collection module; and for writing the main working code that makes online users 'invisible'!), Paul Rayner for his excited and unrelenting requests for the enhancements on  Stamp Collection for Moodle 2.2 which led to my modified Stamp Collection code for Moodle 2.2(!), Gareth J Barnard (the course format expert, for reminding me of the perils of not attributing original authorship of a moodle plugin, LOL!), Michael Choong (for reminding me of how global Malaysians have become), Don Hinkelman (for his pearls of wisdom and enthusiam in all things Japanese and Moodle), Matt Bury for his wonderful Media Player plugin, which I use often, and many, many others. Other names I'd like to mention are Lewis Carr of Leeds for his work on Moodle 2.x. Others? Sorry if I didn't mention your name. If your name comes to my mind, I'll just re-edit this post.

Finally thank you Martin Dougiamas, for creating Moodle, the Learning Management System used by millions all over the world. And for heading the team that churns out major updates to Moodle every six months. Moodle 2.3 (at the time of writing), whatta great piece of software!

Okay, now onto the rest of this post!

Moodle's marching on strong with the release of Moodle 2.3. For those of you who have yet to migrate over to Moodle 2.x, here's another hack for the venerable Moodle 1.9. I've used this on my production site, mainly out of necessity. One of the issues I face with the file picker in Moodle 1.9 is that the Choose link is on the far right of the file name.

That's not really a problem when your file names are short. However, if a particular file name is unusually long, then the Choose link can be difficult to access. To be honest, in my classes, I often switch to 800x600 pixel resolution when projecting a Moodle course page on the whitescreen. So having the Choose link brought forward is really necessary for me.

The change seems trivial but wading through the code is not that easy. Anyway, here's how to do it. The code to modify is /files/index.php. Well, I managed to do it.

Check out the screenshots below which begin with the "Add a new resource or link to a website" resource.



Clicking on the "Choose or upload a file" reveals a file picker screen with a facelift! Viva la difference! You screen should now show the Choose link on the left. Mission accomplished.

To find out how I did it, go to this Moodlenews.com post. Enjoy!

Frankie Kam
Malaysia

How to change the Maximum Upload Size for a Moodle site.

Here's a very old post (2007!) by Vystavil PK on how to change the maximum upload size for a Moodle site. The default size is 2 Megabytes which is peanuts.

Anyway, the summary is that you can't do this within Moodle itself. You can only do it if you have root access to your Moodle server, especially the php.ini file. I think there's a reason why this particular post by Vystavil had so many hits.
(1) He explained the solution very clearly and lucidly.
(2) This happens all the time, especially for new Moodle installations. Usually the user has to remind the Moodle administrator to change the php.ini settings.

Anyway, Vystavil's post is a blast from the past, and it is very informative. That's one way to tame Moodle.
Note: The post was referring to Moodle 1.9 and below.

Happy Muddling, I mean Moodling.
Frankie Kam

Enhancing Davo Smith's Realtime Quiz plugin for Moodle 1.9. More time-savings for the teacher.

Davo Smith's RealTimeQuiz plugin for Moodle 1.9/2.0 is a real gem. It simulates a Clickers-type technology that allows the teacher to gauge the level of understanding of a class on a topic or question. Minus the clicker hardware. In this post, I show you how I enhanced the already-excellent software plugin to save me time in the classroom.

"Overall I think clickers increased student satisfaction and participation in the course. It also allowed me instant feedback on student comprehension. They also seem to engage students more fully in a large lecture course. They can also stimulate discussion in a class where that does not occur often." (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee faculty member)

Now I don't use Clickers (and all this imported quality technology costs money for my humble education institution), and I think that Davo Smith's plugin meets my needs in the classroom. In this plugin, the quiz is conducted on a student's computer rather than a hand-held device. I use it in my classes when I want to test the student's understanding of a topic. It helps to break the monotony of a class lecture and the nice thing about it is that it gives instant feedback to the student.

Liven up the Participants List by changing the City field into Hobby

How would you like to have a Hobby field show up in the Participants List in Moodle 1.9? Well it can be done! Charles Kelly of http://www.manythings.org has done it and in this blog post I will show you how.

Why should it be done? In my humble opinion, knowing that you come from Melaka or Kansas City is not as interesting as knowing that you have a liking for Pink Floyd, Manchester City Football Club or body building. How can we do this? Two steps. First: change the City field's display name to "Hobby / Interest / Free Time". Secondly, modify the length of City field from a measly 20 characters to a generous 100 characters.

Upload files faster and easier in Moodle 1.9 with less mouse clicks. What do you think?

Moodle 1.9.x is like old wine that keeps getting better. There are a 1,001 different ways to innovate and enhance the code. Here's what I managed to do, recently, with the "Link to file or website" resource.

The humble Browse button has sprouted siblings. In this case nine other Browse buttons. Why settle for just one Browse button, when you can have 10 of them! In the screenshot above, you are 11 clicks away from uploading 10 files. Still, you might argue that that's 11 clicks too many still. However, considering that there are no page refreshes between which picking of each file, this feature will be welcomed, I am sure, by teachers and site administrators.

Secondly, here's what I did to enhance the "Advanced loading of files" assignment activity. Now students can upload multiple files within a Moodle assignment. They should now have less reasons why Moodle is so "clunky". The benefit of this? Less mouse clicks, less page refreshes and more student and user satisfaction. After all, time is money.

How would you like to be able to DOWNLOAD all student assignment submissions in one neat ZIP file?

Do you use the Assignment activity for your students to upload their work?

Do you have relatively large numbers of assignments to laboriously download and grade? If you answered “yes!” to both questions, then you will love this Moodle 1.9 Assignment activity hack by  T. A. Prilianto. Thanks to John Holmes of Jakarta International School for sharing this with the Moodle community.

Improving the Journal Activity for Moodle 1.9x - great for reflections

David Monllaó's Journal activity for Moodle 1.9 is one of my all-time favourite Moodle activities.

Applications for the Journal (what's hot about it)
I use it a lot in my Intensive English classes where students have to post a write up of their speech. I can see each student's work, but each student only can view his or her write up. In other words, the student has a private view of his workspace. Very nice. The Journal can also be used by the student to reflect on a particular topic, and the student can edit and modify and refine his or her answer over time.

Enhancing David Mudrak's Stamp Collection Module for Moodle 2.2! Multistamps and Pseudoblock Stamp display.

Awarding Stamps in David Mudrak's Stamp Collection Module for Moodle 2.2 just got better!

4/4/2012 - I managed to enable Multi-Stamp awarding in the Stamp Collection Module for Moodle 2.0!!

Read all about it here and on (coming soon) Moodlenews.com.
The code for Moodle 2.2 will be published real soon. Wait for it.

How to increase the width of the Book module's reading area (Moodle 1.9.15)

Peter Skoda (http://skodak.org) and Mojmir Volf are the authors of the Book resource. The Book resource is one of the major reasons why I love Moodle. It's a brilliant resource because it allows me to group related articles and webpages in a nice package. Something like the HTML frameset objects which were very common during the early days of HTML and the Internet. In short, I can't live without it. And neither can most of you Moodlers reading this I would reckon.

The challenge: 
Recently I was using the Book resource to encapsulate articles on http://www.sewwhatinc.com. I was doing this work as part of my teaching of MIS at Stamford College Malacca, specifically a case study on Sew What? Incorporated. So anyway, I discovered that I wanted to increase the width of the reading area of the Book resource. Why would I want to do that? I was embedding a Dell webpage into a book chapter and I found that

1. I couldn't view the embedded webpage's entire width within the book
2. the embedded content did not fit inside the right area of the book resource. The embedded website needed horizontal scroll bars (hmmm....) at the bottom of the display area in order for me to view the Dell site in its entirety.

Nadav's HTMLAREA Toolbar Extentions

I just spent the larger part of my weekend extending my Moodle 1.9.14's HTMLArea Toolbar. Many thanks to the prolific and brilliant Nadav Kavalerchik. See the moodle.org plugin page.

Hadav's work is amazing!. He has increased the pedagogical value of Moodle right from the Editor itself.

For me the most useful plugins that has has added to the Moodle editor functionality are:

1. Drag and Drop image adder (a must-have for any Moodle site! Previously only the admin or teacher could add images to the editor. Students could only insert images by giving the URL)

2. Insert PDF (no more having to figure out the HTML embed codes)

3. VideoRecorder (FANTASTIC. Thanks for Kevin Brake (and Vimas Technology)!)