How to increase forum participation exponentially with the New Forum Replies block by Niall Barr

Deep from the recesses of moodle.org, is a year 2008 block that lists replies to your forum posts. It is called the "New replies to my posts" and is written by Niall Barr. What does it do? It is an alternative block to the Recent Activity block (see theAppendix section below). The strength of this block is that only displays new posts in threads that the current user has posted messages in, resulting in focused feedback to the user.

I couldn't resist installing this block. It was very easy to install on my Moodle 1.9.15 production site. I then logged in with a student account or two and used those accounts to make replies to my own forum posts. Here's what the "New replies to my posts" block displayed:

Now what you see may lack the pizzazz and graphics that you were expecting, but it really is exciting.

The Human mod - the best Moodle mod of all

How many of us teachers and educators can teach effectively without the use of an LMS like Moodle, an LCD projector and a PowerPoint slide? Not many of us I would think. For one, a teacher needs to know his or her stuff. He (or she) should be able to hold an audience's attention with minimal technical help.

Simon Sinek in action in 2009 at TEDxPuget Sound.

Someone forgot to bring the laptop and the PowerPoint presentation.  

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.

Online Users block (Part III) Feeling moody? Show off your mood.

WHAT IF you could display your mood or status on the Online Users block by Andy J. Davis? Imagine with me if you will.

You're on your Moodle coursepage. Just before you go to make phone call, you display a BRB (Be Right Back) status next to your username on the block. Or before you attempt a quiz for the next one hour, you display a Busy status for the world to see.

Well, I've done it on my Moodle site, and so can you.