How to selectively hide individual files that are contained inside a Moodle folder resource

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Does the structure below look familiar to you? Have you ever used a Folder resource in Moodle? If you have then you will know that you can hide an entire folder by restricting access. However, you cannot selectively hide and show different files within the folder.

Can you hide just the file named GA01 Ver1.0 Service Tracking Form.pdf from the tree? I think not!

In Moodle 2.7.2 until Moodle 2.8.5, you are not able to hide from view, an individual file that is put inside a Moodle folder resource. However, I needed to to this. Desperately. Thus I sought to find the answers on Moodle.org. Alas, no one had come up with an answer. Only questions.  I threw myself into the work with gusto. After four days, I had cracked the problem. I am sharing my solution in this post. 

The Learning Outcome of this post is you will know how to hide from a user, individual files inside a Moodle folder.

How to display more than the default 30 users in "Browse List of Users" in Moodle

When you do browse the list of users in Moodle, the users will be displayed in groups of 30 by default.

If you wish, yu can increase this by hacking the numeric value inside /admin/user.php like so:

Hope you find this hack useful. Many thanks to Mark Sharp for his tip in this post on moodle.org.

Cheers,
Frankie Kam

How to add the username as an extra column in the "Browse list of users" table in Moodle

Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/NavigationPopups_Usernames-10.png

By default, Moodle does not display the user's username as on of the columns in the "Browse list of users" list. See the image below. This is for privacy reasons.

However, there can be times when it is needful for the Moodle administrator to have the usernames appear. For example, the administrator could make it mandatory for all usernames to be the same as the user's corporate or institute E-mail address. And the administrator would like to verify that this rule has been adhered to.

I was surfing for a way to do this for my Moodle 2.7 production site, when I stumbled upon this post in Moodle.org. At the end of this post, you will be able to add the username as an extra column in the Browse list of users list.

Here's how you do it.

Customising Moodle2Word to generate simplified multiple choice question Ms Word pages

Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/ [http://goo.gl/Xlzzy4]
(by U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Charles Oki [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

If you a teacher who uses Moodle and the quiz activity, you might be spending quite some time in crafting hard-copy quizzes or exams. 

I am using Moodle2Word (Version 2015040201, release  3.1.4 (Build: 20150402)) on my Moodle 2.7.x site. Today's post is an update of my earlier blog post on a Moodle 1.9 version of the Moodle2Word plugin.

After three days of hard work, I have managed to a hack on the mqxml2word_pass1.xsl file. What my hack does is to change the output of the Question-Bank-exported-MsWord file.

Exploring the use of TeamSpeak with your Moodle course

Hi. 

I am exploring the use of voice-casting software in Moodle, specifically TeamSpeak. Why? Simply because many Digital Native users of Moodle are teenagers with experience in Gaming and TeamSpeak. So it's just another way to engage the digital native on their own turf, so to speak.

So what exactly is TeamSpeak? TeamSpeak is proprietary voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) software that allows computer users to speak on a chat channel with fellow computer users, much like a telephone conference call. A TeamSpeak user will often wear a headset with an integrated microphone. If you are interested to know more, click here for a great introduction and review of TeamSpeak.

If anyone is interested, you can try out TeamSpeak3 at my newly created free 7-Day Trial TeamSpeak3 server.

I went here to get my free 7-day-trial TeamSpeak 3 Server. If you want to rent a TeamSpeak3 server, you can also go here.