Do you have more than one course? Do you want to copy activities from one Moodle course to another? Have you wanted to copy something from your colleague’s course? If you answer yes to any of these questions, then the Sharing Cart is the plugin for you. Of course, Moodle has a standard Backup and Restore, but that can take more than twenty clicks and up to 5 minutes to move a single item. The Sharing Cart does it in seconds with 3-4 clicks.

At Sapporo Gakuin University, our teachers share quizzes, videos, surveys, links and handouts between each other every day using Sharing Cart 1.9. We keep a section on our site to keep templates of our best courses. Then any teacher can go there and grab a quiz or assignment that they like. Also each of us has 5-10 classes per week. So just duplicating an activity into another course takes just seconds. It is our number one plugin that teachers love. So needless to say, we would never move to Moodle 2 without it.

Fortunately, just released by Version2 software, Sharing Cart 2.2 will do the same process for you in the latest Moodle release. Our programmer, Tomonori Maruyama, explains that the Sharing Cart is very stable, because it uses the standard backup and restore code from Moodle core. Mr. Maruyama will be demonstrating the Sharing Cart at MoodleMoot Japan in Mie, so be sure to watch for his presentation in Mie in February. You can also get documentation on Moodle Docs.

The Sharing Cart is a block. So it can be installed in less than five minutes. As a site administrator, download the zip file, unzip it, and drag it into the blocks folder. Then go to Site Administrator and click on Notifications. The Sharing Cart will install itself and you are done. Just activate the Sharing Cart by adding it as a block in any course you visit . The Sharing Cart is a persona l bloc k that only copies things for you. The block follows you around your site like a little “pocket” to store things (resources and activities) that might be useful. Of course, it only copies the activity format, never the user names and content.

Contact Don Hinkelman and ask for your free copy of the Sharing Cart (Hinkel at sgu.ac.jp).

For more information or to download the Sharing Cart visit http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=2150.  To read the MAJ Newsletter in it’s entirety visit http://moodlejapan.org/home/ (note that the Japan Moot is coming up this February 22nd and 23rd.  

Sounds a bit like the MediaBird Study Notes module. However, this Portugese-made block is less complex, but simpler to install and to use.

Here are its main features:

• Assign up to THREE priority levels for each note;
• Sort notes by last modification or priority level;
• Easy visualization and edition of notes with popup windows;
• Global configuration for the length of note previews inside the block.

I had always wished that there could be a block that shows the student how many stamps he or she has earned. Why? This is because at the moment, the student has to click on the Stamp Collection module to view the stamps earned. So this evening, I sat down to craft such a block. And I failed miserably because of my lack of experience in PHP coding!

Undeterred, I had a brainwave of how I could achieve the same effect as a real block. Within 4 hours, I crafted something that made use of David’s existing code, HTML, PHP and some tricks. Here’s what it looks like:

So the advantage of this ‘block’ is that the student can see his Stamp collection. Is it growing? Is it stagnant? Oh, and I’m also glad to mention that if the student does a mouseover on any of the stamps (gold stars), the description of the stamp is displayed. See the image below:

So what do you think? Do you like this ‘block’? Are you already using the Stamp Collection module by David Mudrak on your Moodle 1.9.x? Would you like to know how you can set up this pseudo-block on your Moodle 1.9.x site as well? You do? GREAT! Let’s dive in!

Instructions to setup the Stamp Collection Pseudo-block
Read here >>

What I’d like, is a course format that borrowed a little from the Chrome nav to make it easier for students to move to the next topic once they’ve finished with what is on the page.  I’m not talking tabs, but rather a more Book-like navigation where each Topic is a page and they are arranged linearly (as many courses usually are).

I think it could easily be done using existing screen real estate in a Moodle course.  Here’s a mockup course shown with the grey margins on either side of the topic.  As you can see, the course summary is maintained on all pages and the topics are collapsed in order to display only 1 at a time.

Here’s a mockup with Arrows added:

And clicking on the arrow would return the next Topic area (see below):

Anyone else want something like this?  I realize you can hack this in by using static links to the individual course pages, but I would rather it be created dynamically and easily across a site.  I’d even be willing to donate to the cause/work order for its development (hint hint developers).  It’d also be nice to nix the #s placed to the left of each topic in that grey area.

Information Overload 
It lists ALL recent activity, including forum posts in any and all forums by any and all users. Hence, one can easily get lost in all the details that appear in that block. In addition, if there was a lot of recent activity in the last 24 to 48 hours, then the block will take up a lot of vertical real estate on your Moodle course page!

Enter the “New Replies to my posts” block

Deep from the recesses of moodle.org, I have unearthed a year 2008 block that lists replies to your forum posts. It was written by Niall Barr. What does it do? It is an alternative new forum posts block that only displays new posts in threads that the current user has posted messages in.

When as teachers, we want to encourage (force!?) forum postings among ALL students in a class. Therefore, any tool that can motivate our students to post replies in forums, is greatly welcomed.

Here’s a forum post and tracker link that mention this block. It currently runs only under Moodle 1.9.x, but it is due to support Moodle 2.x in March 2012 according to this other tracker link.

Comments and Word-Of-Mouth

Here are some comments from Moodlers who have used this block:

Our students do everything on Facebook because it has this kind of functionality. It makes online conversations easy. Moodle forums need this because it gives them a bit of the functionality of Facebook. Please put this into the core so that my administrators will install it at my school. Thanks. - Jonathan Andreas

Should definitely be core, if it is not already. Dynamite block and has increased forum participation exponentially! This block is AWESOME! Loaded on our test server and I LOVE IT. Thanks to all who contributed to its development. … Staff/Students will love it. … a real time-saver and assist me in tracking my specific issues. … it has brought SO MUCH MORE interaction and engagement in forums to our course. I could not live without it! - Deb Burdick-Hinton

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 that you were expecting, but it really is exciting because it alerts and informs the forum poster of replies to his or her posts. Never mind that the output is fully text-based. This functionality now cranks up the interactivity of forum posts and replies a notch or two higher. The net result is that your teachers and students will get the satisfaction of receiving attention to their thoughts and opinions via replies from others. If you have ever posted a comment on an online forum, and received a reply, the feeling is GREAT.

Find a copy of the block to download here: http://tracker.moodle.org/secure/attachment/14653/block_new_forum_replies_20080724.zip

For installation instructions and more details, read here >>

The challenge: 
Recently I was using the Book resource to encapsulate articles on Sew What? Incorporated.  I was doing this work as part of my teaching of MIS at Stamford College Malacca, specifically a case study the Sew What Inc. 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.

When you click on a link on the TOC (Table of Contents) in a book, you would want to view the right-hand-side content easily, and with no fuss. In this case, using the mouse to scroll left was very irritating.

BTW, here’s the embedded code that I used in the reading area.

<table cellspacing="0" style="width:100% !important;background:#999 !important;padding:0px !important;margin:0px !important;border:0px !important;border-collapse:collapse !important"><tr><td style="background:#999 !important;padding:1px !important;margin:0px !important;border:0px !important;"><iframe src="http://www.dell.com/html/us/segments/bsd/case_studies/sew/index.html" scrolling="yes" frameborder="0" style="display:block !important;width:100% !important;height:400px !important;background:#D4D0C8 !important;padding:0px !important;margin:0px !important;border:0px !important;"><a href="http://moodurian.com/">Moodurian.com</a>; (iframes required)</iframe></td></tr></table>

The embedded code worked, but unfortunately the content did not fit nicely inside the Book’s reading area.  By default, the width of the TOC (located on the left) is 140 pixels.To solve this, I …(read more here) >>

You’re on your Moodle course page. 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.

Well, I’ve done it on my Moodle site, and so can you. All thanks to a talented Italian PHP developer named Matteo Scaramuccia.  Thanks for help on the PHP code, mate! Much appreciated and credit to you, Matteo.

A trivial feature? Frivolous? Childish? A complete waste of time? Tell you what, give it a try on your victims, erm…I mean users. Inform them of this feature. Demo it to them. Then sit back and see what happens. If no one in the class sets a mood for others to see, then yeah, this is a waste of time. But if just one student sets his or her mood, then you might have chanced upon something here. Perhaps you have managed to make Moodle a bit more human-like. A bit more Web 2.0ish. Perhaps this one feature will make the Moodle experience a bit more social for your students.

If you would like to experiment with this feature on your students, read on! Otherwise, well, you can just hit the Back button of your web browser.

Still with me? Great! Here’s how we did it. >>

Give courses a little more depth in structure and organize resources/activities a click away from the main page.

Github: https://github.com/moodleou/moodle-mod_subpage
Mary’s original post: http://www.moodleblog.net/2012/01/14/sub-page-module
Youtube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3lynb89BeY

Now I don’t know about you, but I like, no, LOVE, the Online Users block by Andy J. Davis. It lends an air of Web 2.0 for Moodle. The feeling of a learning community that the block helps to foster is priceless. This block is useful for students and teachers to know who is online.

Two cases for invisibility. Why you should switch on the cloaking device.

 All this is well and good, but there can be cases where having the entire class see your avatar is not cool. Some teachers may not want to be seen online. You might be grading assignments online and would not want to be interrupted by an instant message, chat window or by an email by your students. This is a real possibility if you are blessed to be an effective teacher, one who is well-loved by your students. So how to stay focussed on that rubric or grading of online submissions when you are peppered with requests from students?

If you are a teacher for whom 24 hours is never enough time, the only time you might be updating your course materials is after office hours. To be specific, at night. To be realistic, past the midnight hour, when the spouse and the kids are asleep. So, you might not be comfortable being seen on-line by your students at an unholy hour.  So as a teacher, how do you feel about accessing your Moodle site in the wee hours of the morning, and to find that your students are just as hard-working as you, online on the site? For me, there’s always that funny feeling that the student might be on-line at the same time as I, and is wondering “Why is Mr. Frankie up late at night logged on to the Moodle site?”.

Of course you can also set the block (Site Administration | Modules | Blocks | Online Users | Remove after inactivity) to display users who have been online for 120 minutes. So if students see your avatar, it might have been because you logged on at 12 midnight and logged off a 12:30am and are now fast asleep. Only problem is, if you and your student are still logged on at 3:00am, then the game’s up. You’ve been found out.

Some students may wish that they too were invisible in spite of that infernal online users block sitting pretty on the course page. A student may feel uncomfortable about revealing their presence to the world during the early hours of the morning.

So…?
So is there a way to make a user invisible to the Online Users block? I mean other than removing or hiding the block, is there a way to give a choice for the user to click a button and hey presto! Avatar disappears from the block. If Facebook allows you make yourself invisible on the Facebook chat window, why not apply the same concept to the Online Users block? We certainly can! To be exact, a user (teacher, student or administrator) can choose to allow his or her avatar and username to appear or be invisible on the Online Users block.

In this post, I present a practical and workable solution. I was the facilitator to this particular solution, and Mr. Matteo Scaramuccia of Genova Italy was the writer of the solution PHP code. Brilliant chap he is. So enough yacking around. Let’s roll up our virtual sleeves and get to work.

HOW TO – MOODLE 1.9

Step 1: Access the Create a User Profile field link.

Step 2: Create a new profile field

Step 3: Type in the settings values.

The short name will later be referenced in PHP code. The Name is what appears on the User’s edit profile page. Good to enter a brief and concise description. The “Display on signup page?” option should be set to “Yes”. Click the “Save changes” button when finished.

Return to your homepage. Click on your username. In my case, I have the Login & Logout block installed.

Scroll to the bottom of the page. See your custom, new user profile field description Stealth Mode? Great job so far! Tick the checkbox with your mouse and then click “Upate profile”. You’re halfway there!

Step 4: Modify MoodleSite/blocks/online_users/block_online_users.php