Hi all,
This is for all interested parties who would like to see the development of new activity modules for Moodle. I believe that my comments here, although critical, are justified and reasonable and are intended to be constructive.
As you well know, the web is continually evolving at a dizzying pace with great new opportunities for enhancing and creating new e-learning activities. Moodle is a fantastic platform for deploying e-learning content but there are some major obstacles to developers who would like to contribute, the most pressing of which, I think, is finishing the NEWMODULE.zip package.
NEWMODULE.zip is an activity module template that allows developers to easily create new activity modules for Moodle 1.8 and 1.9. One of the core, necessary functions of an activity module is to report learners' results or grades to Moodle's gradebook. This is completely absent from NEWMODULE.zip and several would-be Moodle contributors have commented that there is no gradebook API and insufficient documentation for developers interested in creating new activity modules.
For example, I have developed and contributed 2 new open source activity modules to Moodle:
http://code.google.com/p/moodle-flv-player/ - Play FLV, F4V, MP4 and MOV video and include W3C compliant captioning and HTML lecture notes.
http://code.google.com/p/moodle-swf/ - Deploy any Flash and Flex Framework e-learning applications and facilitate communication with web-services, Internet telephony, media servers, bucket servers, access Moodle databases, etc.
A request has been in the Moodle tracker for well over a year now so it looks like this is a low priority. If you would like to see Moodle grow and keep up with new developments in e-learning technologies, please add your requests to the Moodle tracker: http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/CONTRIB-1076
Supportive and/or critical comments are also welcome here.
All the best,
Matt
In reply to Matt Bury
Re: Petition to finish NEWMODULE.zip package - please add your name!
by Tim Hunt -
You, or anyone else, is, of course, at liberty to
1. look at the code of the core modules that have grades.
2. Come up with your guess at what code should be added to NEWMODULE
3. Attach it to the tracker issue.
4. Patiently but persistently work to get one of the developers who understands grades to review and commit it.
1. look at the code of the core modules that have grades.
2. Come up with your guess at what code should be added to NEWMODULE
3. Attach it to the tracker issue.
4. Patiently but persistently work to get one of the developers who understands grades to review and commit it.
In reply to Tim Hunt
Re: Petition to finish NEWMODULE.zip package - please add your name!
by Red Morris -
5. Vote on the tracker issue to help highlight its popularity
I think the word petition is a bit harsh and might get peoples backs up. The way Open Source works is you roll up your sleeves and get stuck in. To continue with that analogy, you won't be thanked for standing on the side-lines drinking coffee and telling people they're doing it wrong.
In reply to Tim Hunt
Re: Petition to finish NEWMODULE.zip package - please add your name!
by sam marshall -
There are developers who understand grades?
:>
If the requester can't code it, but can get enough people to sign a petition, maybe those people could club together to provide funding for development by Moodle HQ...
--sam
:>
If the requester can't code it, but can get enough people to sign a petition, maybe those people could club together to provide funding for development by Moodle HQ...
--sam
In reply to Matt Bury
Re: Petition to finish NEWMODULE.zip package - please add your name!
by Dan Poltawski -
Actually I did start to look at the grades side of it which your link to quite a few weekends ago. I've just not any time to look at it again.
See the code here (not particularly documented or commited well, I was just playing).
I seem to recall I was having internal batles with myself on how best to demonstrate functionality without making newmodule itself quite complex - if you have any thoughts on that they are welcome.
See the code here (not particularly documented or commited well, I was just playing).
I seem to recall I was having internal batles with myself on how best to demonstrate functionality without making newmodule itself quite complex - if you have any thoughts on that they are welcome.
In reply to Dan Poltawski
Re: Petition to finish NEWMODULE.zip package - please add your name!
by Matt Bury -
It's good to see people are interested in this issue! 
In reply to Dan Poltawski
Re: Petition to finish NEWMODULE.zip package - please add your name!
by Jacob Pappe -
I know this is inevitably a stupid question, but I've been looking and can't find the answer: how can I actually download that code you linked to?