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Tailoring Moodle to Your Own Needs. JALTCALL International Conference, Waseda University, Tokyo , 2 June 2007 Don Hinkelman, Sapporo Gakuin University Thomas Robb, Kyoto Sangyo University Paul Daniels, Kochi University Andy Johnson, Sapporo Gakuin University
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Tailoring Moodle to Your Own Needs JALTCALL International Conference, Waseda University, Tokyo, 2 June 2007 Don Hinkelman, Sapporo Gakuin University Thomas Robb, Kyoto Sangyo University Paul Daniels, Kochi University Andy Johnson, Sapporo Gakuin University Gordon Bateson, Kanezawa University Peter Ruthven-Stuart, Hakodate Future University
Gordon Bateson: Moodle Tweaks Overview • Seven tweaks: easy -> difficult • Can be implemented by: • Moodle administrators • Moodle teachers • Arose from collaboration between: • programmer-teacher: GB • CALL-teacher: teacher with previous experience using yahoo.com for CALL
Gordon Bateson: Moodle Tweaks (1)Standardize romaji • What it does: • standardizes the romanization of user’s first name, last name and city • converts any double-byte roman letters, spaces and punctuation to single-byte equivalents • Demonstration: • http://call.kanazawa-gu.ac.jp/moodle/english/2007/login/signup_form.php • Where to get it • http://englishforum.sgu.ac.jp/downloads/bateson/1.standardize-romanization.txt
Gordon Bateson: Moodle Tweaks (2)Cell phone email addresses • What it does: • Allow Moodle signup using (cell phone) email addresses, which can contain “invalid” character combinations: • repeated full-stops, “..” • a full-stop just before the at-sign, “.@” • e.g. hong-kong-man...@r.vodafone.ne.jp • Demonstration: • http://call.kanazawa-gu.ac.jp/moodle/english/2007/login/signup_form.php • Where to get it • http://englishforum.sgu.ac.jp/downloads/bateson/2.validate-email.txt
Gordon Bateson: Moodle Tweaks (3)Language menu on all pages • What it does: • Adds a language menu to every page which has a Moodle header • Demonstration: • http://call.kanazawa-gu.ac.jp/moodle/english/2007/ • Where to get it • http://englishforum.sgu.ac.jp/downloads/bateson/3.language-menu.txt
Gordon Bateson: Moodle Tweaks (4)Improve multilang filter • What it does: • allow nested <lang> and <span> tags in multilang blocks • accommodates htmleditor which in some browsers uses <span> for bold and italic, causing the standard multilang filter to terminate multilang blocks prematurely • Demonstration: • http://call.kanazawa-gu.ac.jp/moodle/english/2007/ • Where to get it • http://englishforum.sgu.ac.jp/downloads/bateson/4.multilang-filter.txt
Gordon Bateson: Moodle Tweaks (5)Show/Hide section details • What it does: • adds a toggle switch to hide and display specified activities on the course page. • makes display of sections containing many activities more manageable • Demonstration: • http://call.kanazawa-gu.ac.jp/moodle/english/2007/ • Where to get it • http://englishforum.sgu.ac.jp/downloads/bateson/5.show-hide-activities.txt
Gordon Bateson: Moodle Tweaks (6)Useful links block • What it does: • combines the useful links from several other blocks into one single block • different links for teacher or student • text shown in user’s preferred language • Demonstration: • http://call.kanazawa-gu.ac.jp/moodle/english/2007/ • Where to get it • http://englishforum.sgu.ac.jp/downloads/bateson/6.useful-links.txt
Gordon Bateson: Moodle Tweaks (7)Rotating banners and links • What it does: • displays a rotating selection of images in an html block • the advanced version can optionally allow a link for each image • Demonstration: • http://bateson.kanazawa-gu.ac.jp/moodle/16/ms/ • Where to get it • http://englishforum.sgu.ac.jp/downloads/bateson/7a.banners.txt • http://englishforum.sgu.ac.jp/downloads/bateson/7b.banners-and-links.txt
Gordon Bateson: Moodle TweaksAdvice • You can do quite a lot with Javascript • won’t interfere with CVS and upgrading • Small changes to your Moodle scripts are usually OK • if you use CVS, changes are automatically merged • otherwise you need to keep patching, manually or semi-automatically (e.g. WinMerge) • Offer code improvements on the forums or tracker • small improvements that have been tested • even then, the developers may be too busy to implement the changes.
Gordon Bateson: Moodle TweaksLinks • http://englishforum.sgu.ac.jp/downloads/bateson • /Tailoring-Moodle.BATESON.html • /Tailoring-Moodle.BATESON.full.doc • /Tailoring-Moodle.BATESON.ppt