Cell Phones and the Moodle Test Module

Cell Phones and the Moodle Test Module

- Timothy Takemoto の投稿
返信数: 13

I am pleased to be able to announce that I have found university funding to pay Jamie Pratt (flash programmer, and general moodle programmer extraordinaire -  he is very highly recommended) to make

The Moodle Test Module Mobile or following on from Bob Gettings and Narumi Sekiya's work, towards making

iMoodle ??

By the end of this year it should be possible to set test homework, such as reading comprehension questions, for students to do using their mobile phones. The tests should be available to every major phone provider and not just the newest phones with full browsers.

At the same time due to technical and budget limitations, in the first instance
1) There will be no on screen timer.
2) There will be no copy protection.
3) Only multiple choice questions will be available
4) It may be possible to do only the current weeks questions (?)

It would be great, therefore, if other people would chip in and help pay for further extensions to this functionality. All the functionality will be available open source.

I hear that homework that can be done via mobile phones is very popular with students due to the fact that they are free to do their homework at times and places to suit their schedules, such as on the bus or in a break from their part time job. This should make it possible to set more homework, and should encourage students to do homework at a more even pace rather all on the night before the deadline.

e-learning is big, but m-learning is bigger.

Timothy

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Timothy Takemoto への返信

Re: Cell Phones and the Moodle Test Module

- Jamie Pratt の投稿
Hi all,

Me and Tim have already done some testing ( I wrote a test script and we tested it on various phones - new ones and all the old ones we could find) and we found that :
  • nearly all Japanese mobile phones can properly display chtml (compact html - a web standard invented by DoCoMo and standardised by the W3C) pages.
  • chtml pages are expected to be SJIS and PHP has problems with SJIS but that's OK. We found that we could convert SJIS input to a PHP script, from a form from a keitai phone, to UTF-8 using the PHP mbstring extension. We can convert input to UTF-8, process it as UTF-8, store it in a database as UTF-8.
  • we then output UTF-8 from our php script which is then converted back to SJIS again by the mbstring extension.
  • we found only modern phones can store data in cookies.

I'm starting on the project proper now.

My first step will be starting some discussions on 'Using Moodle' about the best way to do this to fit into the Moodle architecture and contribute to overall Moodle developement so that the changes will have the best chance of being in the main Moodle release.

I expect to be able to :

  • Have moodle automatically detect when the device trying to access Moodle is a keitai and thus automatically output pages appropriate for a keitai.
  • We will allow keitai users to log in. Moodle session ids will be passed from page to page by adding them to the query string appended to each URL so that phones even without cookie support can access Moodle.
  • Have a simple course front page and course page formatted for keitais that lists activities / resources on the front page.
  • I hope to add a small mobile phone icon to the course page when edit mode is on. The mobile phone icon will display next to activities which can be made accessible by a teacher to mobile phone users. Initially this will just be quiz activities consisting only of multiple choice questions.

Jamie

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Re: Cell Phones and the Moodle Test Module

- Timothy Takemoto の投稿

Hi Jamie

You programming guru.

I know that Jamie is a very reliable programmer because of my satisfaction with other products that Jamie has programmed for me  --the TUI-- in the past.

The moodle keitai test functionality represents, I believe, a major leap forward.

Are there no other sponsors? The software will be released open source.

Tim

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Re: Cell Phones and the Moodle Test Module

- Jamie Pratt の投稿
"Jamie Pratt (flash programmer, and general moodle programmer extraordinaire -  he is very highly recommended)"


"You programming guru."

big grinsmilesmile

I would highly recommend you as an employer Tim. I love complements and like working for people who are free with them.



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Re: Cell Phones and the Moodle Test Module

- Gordon Bateson の投稿
Hi Jamie, Hi Tim,

as you may know, I have also done some work on adapting Moodle for mobiles.

The three problems I worked on were:
  1. Moodle's screen layouts use wide <TABLES> which are hard coded into the scripts.
  2. some Japanese cell phones only work with Shift-JIS, but this language pack was not available
To remove the wide <TABLES> for mobile phones, I first set a switch in the globally available $CFG variable, and then went though the Moodle scripts one by one and added an branches such as the following whenever something was output to the browser:
I also created a "mobile" theme which moved some elements from "header.html" to "footer.html", and I created a "mobile" course format which printed out the page using <P> tags instead of <TABLE> and <DIV>. The left-middle-right table columns, were printed out as top-middle-bottom paragraphs for mobiles.

To get my wife's old DoCoMo phone working with the new pages I had to generate Shift-JIS output. The easiest way for me to do that was to create a Shift-JIS language pack, but I now realize that this is not a full solution to this problem, and thanks to you both for enlightening me on this point 笑顔

For demonstration purposes, I also changed some of the Moodle quiz module scripts so that a "multiple choice" quiz could be viewed on a mobile.

If you would like to look at what I have done, here is the URL:
http://bateson.kanazawa-gu.ac.jp/moodle/mobile/ms/

Try looking at the page on your PC and on your mobile at the same time, so see the difference in the way the output is formatted.

When I get to work tomorrow (Tue), I will send a zip file of the files I changed.

all the best
Gordon

                                    

                
                
                
                                        
                
                
                                            

                                                    
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                                        Gordon Bateson への返信
                                        
Re: Cell Phones and the Moodle Test Module

                                        

                                             - James Phillips の投稿
                        

                                

                
                                        

                                        

                            

                
                            

                
                                

                                    

                                        Let me know if you need any help with testing. I am pretty flat out at the moment but this all sounds like fun!

Cheers,

Jamie (definitely NOT the programming guru!)


                                    

                
                
                
                                        
                
                
                                            

                                                    
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                                        Gordon Bateson への返信
                                        
Re: Cell Phones and the Moodle Test Module

                                        

                                             - Jamie Pratt の投稿
                        

                                

                
                                        

                                        

                            

                
                            

                
                                

                                    

                                        Thanks for posting more information about your work with mobile phones.

I'm still unsure as how to approach this and ideally have the code uncoupled as much as possible from the existing Moodle code. Until Moodle starts seperating presentation from data using something like smarty templating it is going to be tricky (impossible is another word you could use here) to be able to have code for a mobile seperated out from the rest of the code of the site and thus have it working as an addon for different versions of Moodle. Even if Moodle did use Smarty though there would need to be changes to Moodle internals to support things like cookieless sessions.

The idea I'm contemplating right now is to have a parrallel directory structure of scripts and have a keitai redirected to this code.

I wonder did you find a solution for the cookie problem Gordon. Did you find a way to get sessions working by appending a session id to urls? Should think it's not too tricky but will involve some more changes to the internal Moodle code to have it working throughout different pages.

Jamie


                                    

                
                
                
                                        
                
                
                                            

                                                    
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                                        Jamie Pratt への返信
                                        
Re: Cell Phones and the Moodle Test Module

                                        

                                             - Jens Gammelgaard の投稿
                        

                                

                
                                        

                                        

                            

                
                            

                
                                

                                    

                                        
Hi,
I am sure that Jamie can do something very nice with Flash Lite or so, but if you just need to be able to read material, and read forums and reply now and then not to forget a search once a while, then this post might have your interest:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=33033#153806
All the best,
BR
Jens

                                    

                
                
                
                                        
                
                
                                            

                                                    
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                                        Jamie Pratt への返信
                                        
Re: Cell Phones and the Moodle Test Module

                                        

                                             - Timothy Takemoto の投稿
                        

                                

                
                                        

                                        

                            

                
                            

                
                                

                                    

                                        
As noted here 
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=33033#169412
Jamie (the programming guru, not the translation guru) has recently managed to get moodle to work without cookies. I believe he integrate some open source software into moodle. This cookie-less-ness has been integrated into the main moodle 1.6. 

As a result, those using mobile phones (which often do not have cookies) can now log into moodle 1.6!

There are still issues to be ironed out, such as the fact that session ids are not sent with javascript buttons. 

Please vote for the following bug
http://moodle.org/bugs/bug.php?op=show&bugid=4504&pos=1

But a mobile phone quiz may not be too long in the making. 

                                    

                
                
                
                                        
                
                
                                            

                                                    
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                                        Gordon Bateson への返信
                                        
Re: Cell Phones and the Moodle Test Module

                                        

                                             - Bill Burgos の投稿
                        

                                

                
                                        

                                        

                            

                
                            

                
                                

                                    

                                        Hi Gordon,

Very interesting work. I will be willing to test this for you, if you wish. I am using an AU phone and I already tried out the quiz.

Bill


                                    

                
                
                
                                        
                
                
                                            

                                                    
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                                        Gordon Bateson への返信
                                        
Re: Cell Phones and the Moodle Test Module

                                        

                                             - Timothy Takemoto の投稿
                        

                                

                
                                        

                                        

                            

                
                            

                
                                

                                    

                                        
Thanks Gordon!

I hope that makes your work a little easier Jamie (the programming guru).
The more people we have working on this the better the outcome. 

I am sure that this is going to make moodle a lot more attractive to a lot of people. 

Tim


                                    

                
                
                
                                        
                
                
                                            

                                                    
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                                        Timothy Takemoto への返信
                                        
Re: Cell Phones and the Moodle Test Module

                                        

                                             - Rohan Priestly の投稿
                        

                                

                
                                        

                                        

                            

                
                            

                
                                

                                    

                                        I have been reading about the mobile phone project and think it's great. 

Just recently I can across an column/article in the Language Learning and Technology (online) Journal titled, "Emerging Techonologies - Going to the MALL: Mobile Assisted Language Learning." (http://llt.msu.edu/) 

It may be of interest.

Rohan.
(first post)


                                    

                
                
                
                                        
                
                
                                            

                                                    
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                                        Timothy Takemoto への返信
                                        
Re: Cell Phones and the Moodle Test Module

                                        

                                             - d c の投稿
                        

                                

                
                                        

                                        

                            

                
                            

                
                                

                                    

                                        
hi -

did you guys look at doing a flash client for mobile phones? most phones support it now and you could do the client side stuff like timers and generally make it a lot more fun.

i run a japanese mobile flash    site:
http://charajam.com

and also a japanese learning site, tho i wish i had known about moodle earlier. we have some flash quizzes + stuff up there:
http://jgram.org

but the main reason i found this page is i am having problems with smarty and japanese text: having to wrap it all in literal tags. is there a way around this? it makes the templates very cumbersome...

tx!

/dc


                                    

                
                
                
                                        
                
                
                                            

                                                    
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                                        d c への返信
                                        
The Mobile/Keitai Moodle Test Module Has Landed!

                                        

                                             - Timothy Takemoto の投稿
                        

                                

                
                                        

                                        

                            

                
                            

                
                                

                                    

                                        Many thanks to Jamie Pratt! A demo of the Test Module Moodle for Mobiles (keitais / iMoodle?) is read for your your perusal. 

Please try out the new Mobile / Keitai Test module, ideally from your Keitai at
http://jamiep.org/mobile/course/view.php?id=2
you can either apply for a username and password, or you can use one of the preprepared test passwords tomx where x is a number between 1 and 31 (your birthday perhaps). 

The moodle for mobile phones addon allows cookie-less login to Moodle!
The teacher can specify those quizes that are to be open to keitai's. 
Moodle for mobiles automatically senses whether the browsers is a mobile (keitai) or not and serves content appropriately. 
When the user is using a mobile (keitai) then content is reduced to a minimum and displayed using CHTML.
The breadcrumbs are at the bottom of the page for nagivation.
Multiple Choice and Matching Questions are supported at the moment. (Please fund some more! and some more modules.)


As I mention above, most Japanese students are more familiar with their phones than with their computers, and spend a lot more time online using their phones than using their computers. Making your tests available by mobile phone will make them much more convenient for students who will respond by taking the quizes more seriously. 

Please test the above site from as many different types of mobile phone as possible. When we are sure that the module is generallly compatable it will become available for open release. 

Tim
                                    

                
                
                
                                        
                
                
                                            

                                                    
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