Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -
Number of replies: 59

 
Hi,

I started a discussion here on the general developers forum about this module but probably this is the more appropriate place for this announcement.
 
Attached is a zip file of a beta version of my Flash Activity Module released under GPL (some of the libraries used are under different but compatible licenses - one actionscript class I modified and used is freeware and another is under the lesser GPL which is less restrictive than the GPL).

Some of The Module's Features :


 
Movies are installed in a movies subdirectory. The framework looks for an html file in the same directory and strips out the code from there to use to embed the
Flash movie in a page (this html file would probably be automatically generated by the Flash authoring environment). Optionally you can create a mod.php file
used to generate a single page / multi page form for configuration. And a service.php file that is a class of methods that can be called from your Flash movie,
to get config data or to send answers from the movie for example. All session variables and access to the Moodle database is available from within your service
class file. Your service class file is passed the id of the activity instance etc.
 
The framework supports :
 
*backing up and restoring config settings and grades and results from movies.
 
*Moodle grades table.
 
*Downloading answers given as an excel worksheet / comma seperated values / as a tab seperated text file.
 
There is not much recent activity or other logging going on now though.
 
The framework was built to be secure, fast and flexible.
 

Movies included in installation :


 
There are three example movies included in the installation. A little more about them can be found in the course backup file I have attached. I will be working
on more documentation soon about how you can use this same framework to have your movies talk to Moodle (first I'm going to make another movie ;  a text segment
selection test movie though).
 

Installation :

Unzip the attached zip file. The zip file contains two zip files. The Flash Activity module is in flash_activity.zip.

 
Unzip the flash_activity.zip archive in the root of your Moodle installation. This will copy a file to lang/en/flash.php and other files to mod/flash/
 
Then go to the admin page for your site : http://yourmoodle.com/pathtomoodle/admin/ Make sure you are logged in as an admin and the module will automatically
set up the database tables it needs.
 
Then you can try the example activities which are included in backup-test_drive-blahblah.zip which is a course back up file, or you can start making your own activities by selecting add activity - Flash Activity on a course's main page.

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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by N Hansen -
In order to create new activities using this model, does one have to have skills in making Flash movies?
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In reply to N Hansen

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -

To make a new activity, yes. But the activity I've made and the activities I plan to make are repurposable. You can configure my text ordering test like you can other modules and the Flash movie loads in the configuration data. In my text segment ordering test for example you can choose how many questions the test will have. You enter text and say how you want the text segments cut up before they are shuffled and the user must put them back in the right order by dragging and dropping them. 

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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by N Hansen -
But hte text shuffling assignment assumes that you are arranging text in a linear fashion, right? You can't just be rearranging the pictures to sit left and right of eachother OR above and below eachother? Am I correct? 
Average of ratings: -
In reply to N Hansen

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -
Hi,

Not sure what you mean by linear fashion.

The text ordering activity is an activity in which your user has to arrange one line of text.

The best way to understand it is to have a go at the activity on my site :

http://jamiep.org/mod/flash/view.php?id=10

It might not be suitable for Egyptian glyphs. I guess that ancient Egyptian is not representable by Unicode.

You can also download the code from here :

http://jamiep.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=13

And you can then try out making different activities by configuring the repurposable movie.

Jamie
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Leon Cych -

Jamie,

This is wonderful work. I was a technical proofer for Friends of Ed and proofed a lot of the Flash MX books for them including the compendious Actionscript Dictionary. I also work in education.

I can see how this would work for very early years children - in fact linking sounds to the letters would be an advance on this - talking jigsaws etc.

I see I'll have to get under the hood and explore.

It is wonderful to see development like this taking off at last!

Leon Cych

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In reply to Leon Cych

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -
Thanks Leon.

I think there is terrific potential in this area. Using Flash as an environment for graphically rich client side scripting with php as a back end.

BTW I have both of the Friends of Ed books on using Flash with PHP and they were very helpful. I was a bit disappointed though with them being too focussed on explaining the php language, stuff which could be found elsewhere and could have dealt more with issues about using Flash and PHP together.

I'll be releasing a new version of this Flash Activity Module again soon and then I want to whip the documentation I've produced so far into a little better shape before I start doing a bit of Moodle advocacy on some Flash email lists etc.
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -

I'm testing my activity here at an internet cafe and it seems that this computer doesn't have fonts to display any of the unicode characters I used. I thought that we might be able to get away without embedding fonts in the movies as Flash should find any suitable font on the user's system and use that to display the characters in the movie, I thought most computers must have at least one suitable unicode font for most symbols, especially the ones I used in the logic ordering quiz. It's not working here thoughsad.

Will be looking at ways to dynamically embed fonts in the Flash movie (there is much better support for doing this than trying to embed fonts in HTML). I looked into this before though and I couldn't find a solution to embed a unicode font, the hack that works well to embed nonunicode fonts dynamically doesn't at first appear to work for unicode fonts or portions of unicode fonts.

If we can't dynamically embed unicode fonts then we will have to make a different version of the Flash movie for every font we want to use : one for logic symbols, one for Japanese, one for Hindi and whatever other languages we want to use.

Are the foreign characters and logic symbols visible on other people's computers?

Jamie

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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Rhonda Goetz -

I installed you flash activity module in 1.5dev test site.  All went well until I received the following error: 

1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '---- RELATIONS FOR TABLE `mdl_flash_accesses`:-- `flashid`-- 

         
      
  

(mysql): SELECT COUNT(*) FROM mdl_message WHERE useridto = '1' AND timecreated > '0'  


flash tables could NOT be set up successfully!

Continue

(mysql): SELECT * FROM mdl_course WHERE category = '0' LIMIT 1  

(mysql): SELECT * FROM mdl_user WHERE id = '1' AND username = 'guest' LIMIT 1  

Ideas?

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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Dave Ray -

Jamie,
            Am very excited about your module. I tested it on  clean 143+ install and
everything when well until the following error:

(mysql): ---- RELATIONS FOR TABLE `mdl_flash_accesses`:-- `flashid`-- `mdl_flash` -> `id`-- `userid`-- `mdl_user` -> `id`---- ------------------------------------------------------------ Table structure for table `mdl_flash_answers`---- Creation: Feb 02, 2005 at 01:59 PM-- Last update: Feb 03, 2005 at 10:54 AM--CREATE TABLE `mdl_flash_answers` ( `id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment, `answer` text, `q_no` int(11) default NULL, `accessid` int(11) NOT NULL default '0', `grade` int(11) NOT NULL default '0', PRIMARY KEY (`id`)) TYPE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=599  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '---- RELATIONS FOR TABLE `mdl_flash_accesses`:-- `flashid`--

         adodb_mysql._execute(---- RELATIONS FOR TABLE `mdl_flash_accesses`:--   `flashid`--  ..., false) % line  804, file: adodb.inc.php
      adodb_mysql.execute(---- RELATIONS FOR TABLE `mdl_flash_accesses`:--   `flashid`--  ...) % line   30, file: datalib.php
   execute_sql(---- RELATIONS FOR TABLE `mdl_flash_accesses`:--   `flashid`--  ...) % line  152, file: datalib.php
modify_database(c:\program files\easyphp1-7\www\codeclass/mod/flash/db/mysql.sql) % line  178, file: adminlib.php
upgrade_activity_modules(http://localhost/codeclass/admin/index.php) % line  231, file: index.php

Error


flash tables could NOT be set up successfully!

Continue
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Not sure what to do now?

Thanks, Dave

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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Bernard Boucher -
Hi Jamie,
              first thanks for brigning Moodle in the flash worldwink

Some comments:

1 - It seem to be an "invisible" problem in mod/flash/db/mysql.php around line 46, probably some control caracter, that give Rhonda and Dave problem. If the line is removed no error id given but the table are not createdsad
I created table directly in phpmyadmin by copy/pasting your sql statements.

2- In your site your 3 example works fine with IE 5 but not with Mozilla 5.

3 - Locally, multibytes and test examples works fine with IE 5.

4 - Order example don't works locally.

Thanks for your great work,

Bernard

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In reply to Bernard Boucher

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -
Hi,

Oops sorry about that. The attached file should replace the file with the same name in the directory mod/flash/db This fixes the db installation problem.

Jamie
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In reply to Bernard Boucher

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -
Hi Bernard,

Thanks a lot for your feedback on the Flash Activities.

Could you tell me more about what you mean by doesn't work?

If there is a communications failure then Flash won't display anything. If the fonts are not installed then instead of the logical symbols you might see box symbols.

The activities work fine on this system WIndows XP on Mozilla, Opera (my favourite), IE 6.

Jamie
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Bernard Boucher -
Hi Jamie,
              I just force a manual  update of mozilla flash plugin and everything is goodsmile

It sure that don't work is not a great help for debuggingwink 
Only a square white space appeared in the middle of a page, seeming to wait for an infinite download!

Thanks,

Bernard

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In reply to Bernard Boucher

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -
The Flash movie should work on Flash player 6.0 or above. It might not work on some of the early Flash 6.0 players on some platforms though.

What FLash player do you have? And what OS are you running if I may ask?

I'll be embedding fonts that can display the logical symbols in the Flash movie and may make other movies with other languages character sets embedded. This will fix the letters not being displayed properly.

Jamie
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Timothy Takemoto -

Hi Jamie,

No wonder you are busy!

I downloaded, installed the module and restored the course. It seemed to install fine. Everything displayed okay except for the Hindi since i do not have Hindi fonts on my machine. I did not know what the "remember to change DefaultGatewayURL" meant. I did not understand the first module. I guess it was just demonstrating that flash actionscript can talk to php.

Moodlers can see it from a student point of view using
usern4me test,
psswurd test
here
http://www.nihonbunka.com/moodle/course/view.php?id=12

The sentence and word reordering was fun. A bit like hotpotatoes except more secure.

I guess that the possibilities are endless. I hope that a lot of flash movie programmers arrive soon.

By the way, there is absolutely *no way* that Flash can record voice without Flash Communication server is there? Without using java that is.

Timothy

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In reply to Timothy Takemoto

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -
In reply to Tim :

"By the way, there is absolutely *no way* that Flash can record voice without Flash Communication server is there? Without using java that is."

Nope unfortunately not as far as I'm aware.

" I did not know what the "remember to change DefaultGatewayURL" meant."

You can ignore that.

" I did not understand the first module. I guess it was just demonstrating that flash actionscript can talk to php."

Yes.
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Hi, Jamie - thanks!!

Sounds cool though I haven't tried it yet.

If you can email me your sourceforge.net username I'll give you access to contrib so we can keep and work on the latest version of your code in there.
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -
I've released a new version of the Flash Activity framework and my example text segment ordering movie.

You can find it on my 'Test Drive' site. You can try out the activity as a guest.

The new module has improved feedback to the user on their attempts at a quiz. Better answer export facility for exporting all answers as excel / csv / text.

In order to deal with the problems reported of non English characters not being displayed properly we now are embedding fonts in the Flash movie so that in our example for example no matter whether a user has a font with logical symbols installed in their computer they can still see the logical symbols in the test. We could do something similar for Japanese, Arabic, Armenian or other languages if there is a demand for this.
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Mark Stevens -
I'm getting very very small boxes on the test.  I did this a few days ago and 3 or the four were unreadably small.  (See attachment.)  I'm using Firefox and MacOS 10.3.8.
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In reply to Mark Stevens

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -
Hi,

Thanks for letting me know.

This seems to be a problem with the way that I've made the text just big enough to fill the screen. Or possibly it is a font issue.

You say that 3 of the 4 tests didn't work for you. Does question 2 of the same test work for you and does the logical symbol test work for you?

If the logic symbol ordering movie now works fine with embedded fonts that would be interesting.

Jamie
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jerome Carujo -
I have the same here on your test drive site.
Boxes are so small I can't read what's written.
Too bad as I think it's a great add-on for Moodle (the text selection is also excellent for language teaching, plus it displays fine on my computer. woo-hoo)

As I am also running Mac OS X (currently 10.4, Safari 2, but it did the same before with 10.3 and Safari 1.x) with the latest Flash Player, my guess is that there must be a bug in the Mac version of Flash player (or let's say it interprets things in its own way).

Anyways, sorry to bring these bad news.
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In reply to Jerome Carujo

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -
Are none of the Text Ordering questions working for you?

It might be possible to try coding things differently to fix this but I can't test on a mac since there are very few macs here in India.
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jerome Carujo -
OK, I went through most of your Flash activities.

Here's my findings:

English Text Ordering Test
1/2 completely unreadable
2/2 smallish but I could read it. However my guess is it would still be somewhat hard for someone with bad eyesight.

Japanese
1/3 same as ETOT2/2, smallish but I could still read it
2/3 same as above
3/3 even smaller, very hard to read

Devanagiri
1/3 same as ETOT2/2
2/3 same as Japanese 3/3
3/3 same as above

Text Selection Example
1/2 the word selection works fine. It's really a great activity!
2/2 completely unreadable

It seems to me that blocks containing just one character are sort of OK, but the block won't grow bigger with its content. So a full word will have the same length, thus the unreadably small font size.
Hope it's sort of understandable (and useful), I'm currently multi-tasking and not very good at that. If only I could have a dual brain...
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In reply to Jerome Carujo

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -
Oh dear sad

I guess Flash also suffers from some cross browser issues.

What's happening here is that I'm using a function in Flash 6.0 to get the size of the text and I iterate up to the biggest size that can fit on the screen. I guess that the text size function is not working on your Mac system (it's a bit buggy on PCs). Others (Mac users only??) have reported similar problems.

The solution for this would be to try to fix the code so it works on a Mac or maybe switch to a configurable font size, the test creator could then specify the size instead of trying to autosizer the text.

I have published for Flash 6.0 rather than 7.0 maybe publishing for 7.0 would sort things out since apparently in 7.0 the text extent function works better. Or I could try fiddling with the code to get it to see if I can get it working on a Mac my problem is I don't have access to a Mac to test things on.

Would like to get this working across all browsers.

If anyone is out there who owns a Mac and has some Flash knowledge I can give some pointers on things to try to fix this.

Will have a think about what to do about this.
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

More about what has changed in the Flash Activity Module.

by Jamie Pratt -
Josep agreed that I could post his comments on the More about what has changed in the Flash Activity Module here. I thought I'd post this here so others would now of what we have changed in the Flash Activity Module and particularly the text segment ordering movie and why.

Display all headersDate: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 11:49:43 +0530
From: "Jamie P"
To: "Josep M. Fontana"
Subject: Re: Flash Activity Module

In reply to your previous comments on the first version of the ordering movie :


On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:03:35 +0100, Josep M. Fontana wrote:


I visited your test site and I was playing around with the
reordering exercise. As you noticed, there is a problem
with the fonts. I could see the Hindi characters but not
the Japanese. What affects me more directly are the
logical symbols, some of them cannot be seen on my screen.
And I have a few sets of unicode fonts installed in my
computer (obviously not the right ones). So, we have to
find a solution for this.


We are now embedding fonts and must make a different movie for each language / set of symbols we want to use.

Hope the logical ordering movie works well for you now. I trust you can see the logic symbols. They should display on all systems , no installed fonts needed.



Also, I have a question concerning the grading reports. In
the activity where you have to reorder the letters of the
word Flash, I made a mistake on purpose, writing 'flahs'
instead of 'flash', then I retried it writing the word
correctly. In the final report, though, I got a zero.
Isn't it possible to allow the user various tries and
obtain an average as the final result? This would be
really desirable since in this type of exercise users can
make a few mistakes before they get it right and it
doesn't seem very indicative of their skills if they get a
zero independently of whether they get it right the second
time or the fifth time.



I previously wrote to you about this. You could not retry a question in a test before, you could move the letters though after you submitted an answer but you
could not submit the answer again. This confusing UI issue is addressed in my second version, and I've added a config property to allow the test creator to
optionally allow retry of each question.


By the way, would this module work with Moodle 1.4.1?
There are other teachers using my site and I'm hesitant to
upgrade to the newest versions in case there is some
problem.


The module should work great with 1.4.1, I hope. It is tested on 1.4.3 and 1.4.3+ and 1.5 developement version.

Jamie
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

More about what has changed in the Flash Activity Module Post 2

by Jamie Pratt -
More about the Flash Activity MOdule changes :


And in reply to you and your colleagues second lot of comments :

On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 12:49:47 +0100, Josep M. Fontana wrote:

Jamie,

I forward you the message I received from the professor that
requested the logic exercise. She also mentions the issue of
the grade report. I haven't checked our correspondance to
see whether we were very specific about the issue of the
specific format for the grade reports. I don't think it
should be very difficult to be able to generate the grade
reports also in the way she suggests in (3), is it?



Your colleague said :


3) it would be useful to be able to tabulate a list of all answers given
(right and wrong) to
a given question, along with the number of times each answer was given.





A teacher can download an excel, text or comma seperated values file from the site of all answers to a test. You do this by clicking on Flash Activities in the
breadcrumbs at the top of the screen (when you are logged in as a teacher).

I have revamped the tables for displaying users answers and grades for a test. I think a help button might be helpful to explain the 'grading methods used'.
I'll work on that.




Concerning comment number (1), I answered her that this is
the way Flash works. The applet needs time to be loaded. I
found her comment strange because she tried it from her
office and we have super fast connection. I tried it from
home, with a modem and I didn't find it really slow.


Your colleague said :

1) i find the animation at the beginning of each example, where the symbols
move into place, a bit slow. perhaps they could just pop into the screen or
something.




I think your colleague meant that she found the animation where the letters float into place a waste of time. I have made this a little faster in the second
version. I think it is a nice feature of the test. I think it helps to establish for the user the context of the task ie. that the text segments are randomly
ordered and must be put into the right order.

Your colleague said :


2) my answer was marked wrong, but the formula was well-formed. i don't know
if this is because we supplied you with a different correct answer or if
something
else is going on.



I've not noticed this problem. Is this still happening?? I don't think it is.

Your colleague said :


i think i would make the indication of a wrong answer be
more
positive -- instead of a big red X, something like "Oops! Try again", and if
possible
give them the chance to try again. could we put a button to try again next
to the
one to continue? if we did, would it be very difficult to keep track of the
various
tries (simply adding them to the list of answers)?


I've made the wrong answer feedback more positive. There is no red cross animation now.

Added allow answer retry option to test.

Jamie
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: More about what has changed in the Flash Activity Module Post 2

by Anke Tröder -

Hi Jamie, and thx for the Flash module which I am just happily testing.

I am currently stuck with an old Flash 3 version, which can't handle drag and drop, and my XML skills are not ready for that. I find these activities such a great resource, though. As soon as I have upgraded I would like to try some drag/sorting activity (e.g. for count/non-count exercises) Are you possibly working on s.th. like that (already)?

I noticed one small thing: when updating or using your module, my site login at the bottom of the page is displayed like this: "Logged in as Tr?" instead of "Tröder".

Can you see any reason why your Flash would make Moodle choke on the Umlaut? Must i change names now?

Best wishes,

Anke

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In reply to Anke Tröder

Re: More about what has changed in the Flash Activity Module Post 2

by Jamie Pratt -
I am currently stuck with an old Flash 3 version, which can't handle drag and drop, and my XML skills are not ready for that.

You are using Flash 3 authoring environment? That must have been released quite a while ago?!

No XML is needed for my Flash Activity Module. It doesn't use XML internally either but data is serialized / unserialized by php's serilaize function.
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: More about what has changed in the Flash Activity Module Post 2

by Anke Tröder -

You are using Flash 3 authoring environment? That must have been released quite a while ago?!

About one hundred years ago smile I am currently just experimenting, though, what can and can't be done with more or less no budget. Changing to MX asap.

No XML is needed for my Flash Activity Module.

Sorry, I phrased that poorly;  I was referring to drag 'n drop and XML/CSS in general. You can do amazing things with that.

Anyway, very nice to see what you put together.

Thx again.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Anke Tröder

Re: More about what has changed in the Flash Activity Module Post 2

by Jamie Pratt -
As soon as I have upgraded I would like to try some drag/sorting activity (e.g. for count/non-count exercises) Are you possibly working on s.th. like that (already)?

No. Sounds like a nice idea to work on. You could probably use the code I wrote for ordering text segments and have the user drag them to two halfs of the screen.

I was thinking if I have time it would be fun to make something similar to the TUI where instead of reacting to stimulus you are categorising words or pictures and you are timed. I know that Tim Takemoto wants to find a way to make the TUI module useful for language teachers.

I noticed one small thing: when updating or using your module, my site login at the bottom of the page is displayed like this: "Logged in as Tr?" instead of "Tröder".

Yes on the Update page and on the rsults page I've forced the page to use UTF-8. We need to use UTF-8 internally in Flash so we need the form to give us UTF-8. There are two solutions to solve this problem. Switch to a language pack that uses UTF-8. Or we could translate data to UTF-8 from the encoding that the Moodle pages use. Or translate the rest of the update form page to UTF-8, for european languages using iSO-8859-1 this could be done with utf_encode.

Jamie
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: More about what has changed in the Flash Activity Module Post 2

by Anke Tröder -

You could probably use the code I wrote for ordering text segments and have the user drag them to two halfs of the screen.

That's what I was thinking of. Two boxes, and you sort words or images in Cinderella style. The good ones go in and stay there and possibly change to a small friendly icon, the bad ones pop out again when you check. Could be used with lots of stuff, sound too. It's basically like a matching activity. Hot Potatoes might introduce something like that in version 7, but as much as I like HP, I do not like the looks and the code too much and would prefer to have that done differently. With a bit more artistic freedom smile I will try, as soon as I have upgraded. And I will check the TUI thing now. Thanks for the tip.

PS: A Timer would be nice with that. Speeds up things.

Have a nice weekend,

Anke


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In reply to Anke Tröder

Re: More about what has changed in the Flash Activity Module Post 2

by Jamie Pratt -
Keep us posted on your progress.

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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by M Gardner -
I do hope I'm not missing something here and making a fool of myself.

I'm very impressed with this Flash Activity though I'm on a steep learning curve.

Jamie, I like the word and letter re-ordering examples on your test site, can I get these courses downloaded to my Moodle (including the .fla's) so I can work out how it all fits together?

Thanks very much

Malcolm.
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In reply to M Gardner

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Timothy Takemoto -

Dear Malcolm,
Yes, you can. I have downloaded all the activities and installed them on a Moodle of mine. I can see the ordering of logical symbols backup on his site but not the others. Peraps it is packaged with the flash module. Just in case you can download the other flash activities here (Jamie please let me know if you want me to remove this).

Hold on...See the attachment at the very top of this forum!

Timothy

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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by niall seery -

The Flash module looks for a HTML file that may be already created by the Flash application.  Within my Flash movie, after uploading to the subdirectory I get the moodle error that it cannot locate the HTML file although there is one there.

The html file that is in this directory is the one that has been created hrough publishing a preview in flash.  I have no service.php, that may be the problem but i am not too sure.

Any ideas?

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In reply to niall seery

Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -

Are your html file and your swf file named identically? And are they in  a sub directory of movies with the same name? Eg. :

mod/flash/movies/grommit/grommit.swf

mod/flash/movies/grommit/grommit.html

You don't need a service.php if you're not going to call it from the movie.

Jamie

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Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by niall seery -

Thanks Jamie,

Will have a go and get back to you.

Thanks again

Niall

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Flash Activity Module Downloadable from Moodle.org; Started documenting the Module on a wiki

by Jamie Pratt -

The Flash Activity Module is now available for download from the Moodle site at :

http://moodle.org/download/modules/flash.zip

Please download the module from there, the upto date code will always be there. For those who use the CVS it is now in the Moodle CVS repository in contrib/flash/

I have also started documenting how to author your own movies to work in the Flash Activity Module on a wiki here :

http://jamiep.org/mod/wiki/view.php?id=97

Sign up to be a member of http://jamiep.org and you will be able to edit the wiki and will also receive news about my latest work.

Jamie

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Re: Flash Activity Module Downloadable from Moodle.org; Started documenting the Module on a wiki

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Thanks for the module!

Also listed on the modules download page, now.  big grin 
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Flash Activity Module Downloadable from Moodle.org; Started documenting the Module on a wiki

by Jamie Pratt -

Please download the Flash Activity Module from the Moodle.org download page rather than anywhere else, including attachments in this forum. The Flash Activity Module from the Moodle.org is the latest version.

My logic_order movie is still available from my site jamiep.org. Because it uses an embedded font it can't be distributed on a GPL license and so I have kept it seperate to the rest of the code.

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Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by mandy honeyman -
Hey Jamie,

Fantastic work. Thank you. I could go on and on but I'd just embarrass myself big grin.

You ask if users could see japanese characters in the multi-byte comms activity. Yes, I could thanks.

cheers
Mandy

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Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Michael Penney -
Hi Jaime, can this be used to load variables from an external text file, (say relative to the swf, or is that still a problem?

Thanks!
Michael
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Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -
Hi Michael,

The Flash module can go one better and allow you to load info in from the Moodle db.

You design an html form to capture the information. Then when your movie loads you can get Flash to load the info. THat is what I'm doing in my reconfigurable movies. It is not difficult to do and I hope to have some good documentation written on this within the next month.

If you are having problems loading any external content into Flash you might see this post here :

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=20466

The info I've posted about .flvs applies to all content loaded into Flash.

There should be no problem loading data from an external text file. I don't see why this should be a problem.

Jamie

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Flash Activity Module Problem

by Zoltán Kőrösi -
1st I'm sorry about my english I hope You will understand me. thoughtful

I think Your Flash Activity Module is very usefull but I have some problem with it.

Download from Moodle.org -> OK
Install to moodle -> OK (no error message)
When I try to add flash activity to my courses I fill the first page and try to save I get this error message:

A required parameter (sesskey) was missing.

What is the problem? Please help to me. I use Moodle 1.5dev.

Thx.

Zozo
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In reply to Zoltán Kőrösi

Re: Flash Activity Module Problem

by Jamie Pratt -

Where did you download the module from?

I think this issue is fixed in the latest version of the module which is available here http://moodle.org/download.php/modules/flash.zip This link is always to the latest version. Don't download the module from the attachments to the forum please.

Sorry if you download today April 8th please also get the mysql.sql file which I posted on this forum here : http://moodle.org/file.php/5/moddata/forum/603/101254/mysql.sql

Put this in mod/flash/db/ to replace the file that is there now.

This won't be necessary for release 1.2 of the Flash Activity Module which I hope to put in the CVS today or tommorrow and then will be available for download a day later.

Jamie

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Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by John Anderson -
Wow, what I wanted all along. Thank you Jamie Pratt. I'm a FLASH courseware developer and had one question:

Can I open my FLASH courseware in its own window? This is an important design aspect for me, I'd think others too.

Nice work!


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Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -
No, not at present.

This could be added as an option when configuring a Flash Module activity. If someone wanted to write code to do that then submit a patch against the latest version of the Flash Activity module in the CVS.

I can do this for US 200, at most I'd have this done in 6-8 weeks but probably sooner.

Jamie
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Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by John Anderson -

Jamie, I'm looking at your mod code and the "resources" mod code to see how a popup window option could be added to your activity config page. I think some things might be re-usable but, will take me some time to sort out.

My couple questions are:

Seems like the parameters for the javascript need to be stored in the DB for each instance of the flash activity? Oh God. Is that how the resource module works?

My other thought is to hard code and option like "hey, want a 800 by 600 popup" tick this checkbox...

Hey, I'm a hacker not a programmer!

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Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Jamie Pratt -
You could work out how big the popup window should be by looking at the html file generated by Flash that is in the movies directory {moviename}.html You can extract the width and height from the object tag.

You can see that I open the html file and search for the tag in view.php You need to change

You want a window just big enough to display the .swf right?

As far as I'm aware it is not going to be possible to get a window that pops up from the course view page unless you edit course/view.php
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Re: Flash module add-on: Flash Activity Module

by Ivan Suarez -

Hello

Someone was able to resolve the issue the issue of size in this module?

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Difficulty with flash module

by zhihong chen -

Hi Jamie,

I understand that the flash module is able to link up to the test score function in Moodle. I uploaded the module, tried to use it and saw that there was a question on how many questions there are in the flash module.

Is is necessary to have a fixed number of questions? because the flash software we're loading up is in the form of a game - the number of questions that the user answers depends on how the game goes. Or is there a way around this?

thanks,

John

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Re: Difficulty with flash module

by Jamie Pratt -

Hi John,

You can have the number of questions as 1 and then the Flash module won't print question numbers on the results page. You can then give the grade for the whole movie and optionally provide some feedback to appear on the results page.

Jamie

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Re: Difficulty with flash module

by José Ángel Polo -

Hi Jamie.

I published this post two days ago. Please, help me.

I need to show a chess board before the questions, because our students must answer about the position of this chess board. So, It´s very important we can intruduce an image into select test (flash activity module).

Help document said:

"The <img> tag.

The image tag is supported for loading non progressive jpgs and .swf files. But this only works for people who have the Flash 7.0 player installed."

The problem It´s not only Flash Player version, I´m sure. Somebody can help us, please?. Thank you. Best Regards.

José Ángel

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Re: Difficulty with flash module

by Mathieu Fernez -
I've finally install the Flash activity without any problem, but when I want to create a new activity I've got this message: "Error creating new flash movie record"

If I turn on the debugging server option, I have an error by line when I want to create the new activity! How can I do ? I really need this activity working...
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How I can make multiple questions ??

by Mathieu Fernez -
I install the Flash Activity module, looks fine, but I don't know exactly how I can make multiple questions, and saving all the answers.

Finally I want to show the answers and the score in Moodle.

I tried to understand with the second tutorial (tutorial2.zip) but I didn't find the solution!!

Somebody could help me please ?
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Trả lời: How I can make multiple questions ??

by Đinh Lư Giang -
I can't find the Fash module anymore. Is the development of the module discontinue? Where could I find the most updated? Thanks for your help.

Giang
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In reply to Đinh Lư Giang

Re: Trả lời: How I can make multiple questions ??

by Matt Bury -
Picture of Plugin developers
Hi guys,

I'm currently developing a new module for Moodle that deploys dynamic Flash learning applications and should offer similar functionality to the FAM but with more flexibility and forward compatibility, i.e. Flash 6 to 10 and upwards. The project has been under way for a few months now and is starting to take shape.

Please have a look at the project site on Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/swf-activity-module/ and if you'd like to get involved, join the group: http://groups.google.com/group/swf-activity-module

I'm still having some problems with the restore functions so please don't install it on a production server just yet! If you can help with this or any other issues, please let me know.

All the best,

Matt Bury
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