Moodle plugins directory: MooTyper

MooTyper is an Activity module. A course admin, manager, or teacher creates the activity and prepares it for use by selecting the keyboard layout and lessons to use.  It can be set up to present a series of exercises from a lesson or to present one selected exercise from a lesson as a typing exam. Once set up, students can then start to type the current exercise. When a student finishes an exercise his achievement is saved into a database, so the teacher can then view grades.

For this MooTyper Version 3.5.0 release, immediately after you upgrade, you may need to go to one of your MooTyper activities and in it's Administration block, click on, Import lesson / KB layout, so you will get versions of all the new keyboard layouts and lessons. Depending on how you do the upgrade, your old keyboard files may be erased. In that case you will get an error that can be cleared by going to Setup for each MooTyper, and select a keyboard layout to use. Old keyboard versions are not necessarily compatible with the styles.css file included in this version. This version includes V4 layouts only.

New Features 3.5.0

• the old textarea is now hidden - This makes the whole look of MooTyper more compact. When a student opens a MooTyper, they just start typing and their results are shown directly in the text-to-type area above the keyboard layout.
• scrolling text - Teachers can now use longer exercises because the text-to-type will automatically scroll to show what should be typed next.
• scroll after completion - Once a student finishes and exercise, a scroll bar appear and they can then scroll up and down to see where they made mistakes.
• create continuous text - Due to the new automatic scrolling text feature, exercises can be type just like you would in a word processor. Only hit, Enter , to start a new paragraph. This means you can now provide whole sample documents as exercises, while MooTyper stays the same size on your screen.
  
• cursor color - For each MooTyper activity, the teacher can use the site default color setting for the cursor, or set a different color for the current MooTyper activity. Makes it possible to color coordinate with the course theme colors or set colors suitable for the students visual acuity.
• error color - For each MooTyper activity, the teacher can use the site default color for incorrectly typed letters, or set a different color for the current MooTyper activity. Makes it possible to color coordinate with the course theme colors or set colors suitable for the students visual acuity.
• text background color - For each MooTyper activity, the teacher can use the site default color for the background color of the text to type, or set a different color for the current MooTyper activity. Makes it possible to color coordinate with the course theme colors or set colors suitable for the students visual acuity.
• count mistakes - For each MooTyper activity, the teacher can use the site default for how to count multiple keystrokes that are the same wrong letter. Effectively, this gives MooTyper another "Typing Mode" useful for beginning students.
• Hebrew(V4)dual keyboard layout - This new version of the Hebrew keyboard layout automatically adapts to the direction of the language being used.
  

New Features 3.4.3

• Default site wide MooTyper text alignment setting for the text to type in an exercise. Each MooTyper activity can be set as needed.
• Default site wide MoodTyper text alignment while creating or editing an exercise. Can be changed as needed while before editing in in the MooTyper text editing area.
• New keyboard layouts for Estonian, Thai, and Hebrew.
  

New Features 3.4.2

• Statistics display is wider to accommodate width needed for different languages.
• Course reset capability added.
• New French and Portuguese(Portugal) keyboard layouts.
• There is a new Thai keyboard included that needs more work. Waiting on info from requesting party.
• Fixed code that was stripping some symbols from lessons.
• Fixed css bug that was affecting other parts of Moodle.
  

New Features 3.4.1:

• More compact view overall, that makes MooTyper usable on smaller screen sizes.
  
• New, more compact, keyboard layouts.
• Links to grades and settings right above the statistics, instead of floating to the right, or below.
  
• Statistics in fixed position above the text to type, instead of floating to the right, or below.
• Color setting for statistic background. Automatically set to site default, or teacher can change at any time, for each individual MooTyper activity.
  
• Color setting for keytops in the keyboard layout. Automatically set to site default, or teacher can change at any time, for each individual MooTyper activity.
• Color setting for keyboard layout background. Automatically set to site default, or teacher can change at any time, for each individual MooTyper activity.

New Features 3.4.0:

• The major change for this version was to remove all remaining uses of _POST and _GET.
• For users who were using MooTyper 3.0 and lower, you will now have access to all the new capabilities that have been added over the past year and half.
  
• Charts have been added to the bottom of both the, View my grades and View all grades, pages. The charts are only visible if using a Moodle 3.2 or higher.
• Some log events were added and some were modified.
  
• New (V3) keyboard layouts are included, with many new characters so that exercises can now include many symbols and combined letters.
• New Dvorak(V3) keyboard layout included.
• New Belgium(DutchV3) keyboard layout included.
• There are now multiple typing modes based on how you set the Continuous typing and Count mistyped spaces, setting:
  • Default - both options left blank. Cannot go to the next character until you type the correct one. Mistyped spaces do not count as mistakes.
  • Continuous typing selected - Count mistyped spaces left blank. You advance to the next character type with every keystroke, but mistyped spaces are still NOT counted.
  • Continuous typing and Count mistyped spaces - Cannot go to the next character until you type the correct one and mistyped spaces count as a mistake.
  
  

NOTE: If you are like me and have numerous instances of MooTyper in your courses, you can switch to one of the new keyboard layouts much faster by changing the setting in the database. First go to one MooTyper and import the new keyboard layouts so they are added to the database. Check the mdl_mootyper_layouts table to see what is in the ID field of the keyboard you want to use. Go to the mdl_mootyper, and change the layout field to the ID number of your desired keyboard layout.

For any additional information please visit us on GitHub or post in MooTyper's forum topic.