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.

Open and view a PDF file on a Moodle 2.9 coursepage inside a fully-featured pop-up window using Javascript. All without leaving the Moodle coursepage.

By Sean McEntee. Source: https://goo.gl/5vEpBI
Creative Commons License (Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0))

Hi All

1. Introduction

2. The Solution

I managed to make use of existing Javascript libraries to produce a PDF pop-up on my Moodle site. Here's what happens. I drag-and-drop a PDF file into my Moodle 2.9 coursepage. When I click on a PDF resource link, a fully-functioning pop-up window appears.

I've made it work on and for the following: iPad, PC, Android and Mac. I've tested it on IE, Firefox and Chrome. They all work.

Embed a PDF file (and more!) in your Moodle course page by using ViewerJS. Cool!

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/degu_andre/5364417987/
André Gustavo Stumpf, some rights reserved.

If you ever wanted to embed PDF files inside your Moodle 2.x course page, but didn't know how to, look no further than the uber easy-to-use ViewerJS.

At the end of today's post, you will be able to view PDF files and Ms Office files direct off your Moodle course page. How? Read on!

1. Download the Javascript zip file from here.
2. Unpack the file on your computer. You will see a folder named 'ViewerJS'.
3. Upload (FTP) that folder to your webserver, preferably to www.domainname.com/moodle/ViewerJS
3. Upload one or more PDF documents to your webserver, preferably to a custome folder named pdfs. E.g, at the location www.domainname.com/moodle/pdfs
4. Create a Label resource with the example HTML code below

The softcopy code is given here:

3 Categories of Moodle Wow Factors for the English Teacher who is new to Moodle

°·._.• ʍ๏๏ďℓ€ ώ๏ώ ƒąȼţ๏я$ •._.·°

I've had a flash of inspiration vis-a-vis Moodle Wow factors. Assume you were to give a demonstation of Moodle to an English Language teacher with no or limited current experience of using Moodle. Think about it. Which features, blocks, activities, or technology of Moodle would you show?. To my mind, there are 3 categories of Moodle Wow Factors when it comes to English language learning.

Each category contains a set of Moodle tools and/or activities. I, personally, would spend more time demo'ing the first Wow Factor category as it is the easiest to grasp and, quite possibly but subjectively, the easiest to get excited about.

'Student' Wow Factor Category.

These activities are familiar to the English teacher. They are online exercises where students who take them are graded. These activities mirror or are an online version of exercises given in class. 

Figure 1. MILAs on Matt Bury's website

Embedding PDF files in Moodle – a concise tutorial by @LBCCeLearning

Note: Click here for a more recent, year 2015 post that works on Moodle 2.x.

Hi there!
LBCC eLearning Blog is the “the place to see the latest ideas for online education at Linn-Benton Community College” (follow them @LBCCeLearning).

In a March 2010 post, Eric Bryant explained how to embed a Portable Document Format (PDF) file inside a Moodle course. An embedded PDF file will, in my humble opinion, engage a student more than if he or she were to just see the PDF icon and description on your course page.  Which is how it would appear if you use the standard method of “Add a resource | Link to a file or website”.

If you want a truly embedded PDF, then Eric’s tutorial is for you [link]. The blog post is short, informative and concise. Sample html embed code is provided, and there are screenshots that show the effect of using different settings for each EMBED variable. Thanks, Eric!

There are other ways of embedding PDF files on the Net, but I found that this method (outlined here) works for me. Armed with this knowledge, I proceeded to create a book resource (Moodle 1.9) where each link was a embedded PDF file. It’s a very nice layout (see below for a screen shot of an embedded PDF using embedding!

Sample code to embed PDF content inside your Moodle page is:

<center><embed width="800" height="600" src="http://scm.moodleace.com/file.php/7/download/SM1007_SEPT_2011_Coursework_Assignment.pdf#toolbar=1&navpanes=1&scrollbar=1" quality="low" /></center>

I would love to hear from you If you have found this information useful, and have decided to use PDF embed code in your courses.  If you use a different method or have a favorite Web 2.0 technology to engage students with PDF content within Moodle, please share your experience.

Note: this article was originally posted by the author on Moodlenews.com on 25th March 2011.

Marking online submissions of PDF files

Thanks to this UploadPDF module by Davo Smith, and this post by Joseph Thibault, I've now enabled my Moodle site to receive online submissions of PDF files, AND direct annotation on those submissions.

To get the assignment module to work, Ghostscript (GS) has to be installed on your server. If your Moodle server doesn't have GS installed, then you might want to request your Web hosting company to do it for you. Or you might want to DIY it.  I use a Centos Virtual Private Server to host my Moodle site. At this time of posting, the latest version of GS is 9.02. These 2 links helped me to install GS on my VPS:
http://linuxadminzone.com/install-html2pspdf-library-to-create-pdf-files-using-php/
and
http://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/GPL/current/
So NOW, I can get my students to save their homework or assignments in PDF format (Ms Word 2010 allows one to save in PDF format), and to submit their work in PDF format. Here's how it worked out for me. I created a dummy PDF file and logged in as a student account and uploaded it as a dummy test file.

Next, I logged in as my usual account and proceeded to annotate the PDF file submission.
After all, I didn't want Shakespeare to roll in his grave as a result of the "howlers" in the submission.
Here's what I did to the original PDF file while online on my Moodle site:

After I have finished annotating the PDF file, the (hypothetical) student is able to access/download the annotated PDF submission while logged in in his or her account. Now is that a great feedback mechanism or what? The best thing is the annotation tools of this module now allow me to give feedback to my students, RIGHT INSIDE THE PDF file itself! AWESOME. Simple AWESOME.

Note: this post was originally posted on http://moodle.org on 19th April 2011.