Educator, Thinker, Consultant

Month: April 2016

Moodle FlashCard Update

DB Ideas: Moodle FlashCards 2016-04-28 21-00-59

Moodle FlashCards are wonderfully useful. In doing some additional work, it became clear that it is preferential for the FlashCards to open in “Single view” mode. Indeed, I received a request with that particular feature. Essentially, doing so means that the FlashCards would open with the view of a single FlashCard. FlashCards are built off the Database activity within Moodle. By default, Database activities open in the List view.

So, how to change the default behavior in the Database activity to present a FlashCard straight away? I turned to the forums and William Lu came up with a terrific answer. He suggested that we move the actual FlashCard activity to an unseen Topic. For example, if you are displaying ten topics, move the activity to Topic 11. Then open the FlashCard activity and click on “Single view”. Now copy the URL. Then, go back to the section where you want the students to see the FlashCards. Create a new resource of the URL type. Paste in the URL that you copied from the FlashCard single view. A perfectly wonderful work around.

I’m lucky enough to know some other really smart people too. One of the worked up a couple of adjustments to the Templates. There are two Templates that you need to adjust.

First of all, you need to create a class to call. Copy and paste the code below into the List view template:

Templates | List template (Click on Disable Editor button) | Repeated entry box paste this code (replacing what is currently in the box):

<table width=”100%” class=”fc-list-item”>

<tbody><tr class=””>

<td valign=”top” align=”left” width=”175px”>##delcheck## Question: <br>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; ##edit## ##more## ##delete## ##approve## ##disapprove##

</td>

<td valign=”top” align=”left”>[[Question]][[Picture]]</td>

</tr>

</tbody></table>

<br>

<hr>

(The real difference here is on line one with the addition of class=…)

Next, replace the Javascript template code with the code below:

document.addEventListener(“DOMContentLoaded”, function(e) {

var redirect = window.location.search.indexOf(‘redirect=false’) == -1;

var fc_list_items = xpath(‘//*[@class=”fc-list-item”]’);

if (fc_list_items.length != 0 && redirect) {

location.href = location.href + ‘&mode=single’;

}

var view_list_btn = xpath(‘//*[@title=”View list”]’);

if (view_list_btn.length != 0) {

view_list_btn[0].href = view_list_btn[0].href + ‘&redirect=false’;

}

var fc_btn_container = document.getElementsByClassName(‘button-container’)[0];

/ Add a random card button /

var fc_paging = xpath(‘(//*[@class=”paging”])[1]/a[not(contains(@class,”previous”) or contains(@class, “next”))]’);

if (fc_paging.length != 0) {

var fc_rand_btn = document.createElement(‘div’);

fc_rand_btn.setAttribute(‘class’, ‘btn-togglecard’);

var fc_rand_btn_h1 = document.createElement(‘h1’);

fc_rand_btn_h1.innerHTML = ‘Random Card’;

fc_btn_container.appendChild(fc_rand_btn);

fc_rand_btn.appendChild(fc_rand_btn_h1);

fc_rand_btn.addEventListener(‘click’, function(e) {

e.preventDefault();

var fc_rand = Math.floor((Math.random() * fc_paging.length));

location.href = fc_paging[fc_rand].href + ‘#region-main’;

return false;

});

}

/ Add a previous card button /

var fc_paging_prev = xpath(‘(//*[@class=”paging”]/a[@class=”previous”])[1]’);

if (fc_paging_prev.length != 0) {

var fc_prev_btn = document.createElement(‘div’);

fc_prev_btn.setAttribute(‘class’, ‘btn-togglecard’);

var fc_prev_btn_h1 = document.createElement(‘h1’);

fc_prev_btn_h1.innerHTML = ‘Previous Card’;

fc_btn_container.appendChild(fc_prev_btn);

fc_prev_btn.appendChild(fc_prev_btn_h1);

fc_prev_btn.addEventListener(‘click’, function(e) {

e.preventDefault();

location.href = fc_paging_prev[0].href + ‘#region-main’;

return false;

});

}

/ Add a next card button /

var fc_paging_next = xpath(‘(//*[@class=”paging”]/a[@class=”next”])[1]’);

if (fc_paging_next.length != 0) {

var fc_next_btn = document.createElement(‘div’);

fc_next_btn.setAttribute(‘class’, ‘btn-togglecard’);

var fc_next_btn_h1 = document.createElement(‘h1’);

fc_next_btn_h1.innerHTML = ‘Next Card’;

fc_btn_container.appendChild(fc_next_btn);

fc_next_btn.appendChild(fc_next_btn_h1);

fc_next_btn.addEventListener(‘click’, function(e) {

e.preventDefault();

location.href = fc_paging_next[0].href + ‘#region-main’;

return false;

});

}

});

var xpath = function(path){

var result = [];

var nodesSnapshot = document.evaluate(path, document, null, XPathResult.ORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE, null );

for ( var i=0 ; i < nodesSnapshot.snapshotLength; i++ ){

result.push( nodesSnapshot.snapshotItem(i) );

}

return result;

}

That’s it. Those two changes will make is so that when you open the FlashCard activity (or, more importantly, when your students open the activity), a single FlashCard will be presented. *Please note that it is expected that the List view will briefly show before switching to the Single view.

Either method will produce the same result.

Note that the “hide the activity” and link the URL is a great trick to have in your back pocket. This trick could be used in other places and certainly with other Database activities. I love the Moodle community and their willingness to share.

If you are using the FlashCard activity, I’d love to hear from you.

The link below is a FlashCard zip file. Download and have fun.

flashcards-preset-20161110_0124

Student Centered Interview

Joomla occasionally interviews experts on their Expert Interview page. I was recently honored to have been interviewed on Student Centered Environments with E-Learning. I hope that you’ll head over and check out the interview.

I talk just a bit about the concepts of student centered learning. The real focus is on the role of the teacher. I still believe that teachers make a HUGE difference in the educational process. A good teacher handily beats good software. It is far better to have a good teacher and good software.

Anyway, please check out the interview.

https://www.joomlalms.com/blog/expert-interview/student-centered-approach-troy-patterson.html 

Thanks.

Confirmation

Sometimes, you get things right. It is always good to receive positive feedback. Recently, this has happened with me in terms of curriculum mapping. It is something that I believe in strongly, in terms of communicating what the curriculum should be.

Sometimes, confirmation just takes a while to happen. I work on several long term projects. One of those long term projects is the implementation of curriculum mapping. I’ve set up an electronic system to map and communicate our curriculum. We used TODCM as the basis for our implementation. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be actively developed anymore.

We set the system up a couple of years ago. We heavily tweaked the system so that it would work for both elementary and secondary teachers. My constant pitch is that this has to work for classroom teachers. I don’t really care if it works for administrators or not, it has to work for teachers in the classroom. The system was largely born out of my visit to a kindergarten class. I was there to help a teacher with an iPad question. I watched the teacher for a few minutes. The lesson was engaging and high quality. I made a comment to her about what a nice lesson that it was. Her response was “I spent all weekend finding the lesson…” I thought that is was terrible that a teacher would have to spend a weekend looking for curriculum and lessons. We have several excellent kindergarten teachers. Shouldn’t they be able to easily share lessons?

Elementary teachers have very different needs than secondary teachers. TODCM, which we renamed DEC (Dearborn Educational Curriculum) is set up much better for secondary teachers than elementary. Each course is mapped to a subject area, thus secondary is a natural fit. We had to redo elementary by marking periods and make each marking period a different subject so that elementary teachers could see all subject areas at once.

Recently, I was informed that we needed to do some additional work on DEC. Not so much we, but the curriculum committees. It seems that teachers are now using DEC and have noticed that it is inconsistent in terms of quality of resources. (I’ve been pushing for more curriculum work for a while.)

Here’s the good news. We are now taking additional steps toward making the curriculum more consistent and more conveniently discoverable for teachers. This has taken longer than I would’ve liked, but it is another step in the right direction. Having curriculum committees review and agree on what the curriculum really should be is an important step. Making that curriculum available for all teachers is just as important.

All too often in the past, everyone “knew” what the curriculum was, but rarely did two people “know” the same thing. Now, we have the opportunity to easily have everyone looking at the same material. Additionally, we can identify those exemplary lessons and share those with all appropriate teachers.

Now the system is far from perfect. There are some technical issues that we can improve upon. However, the biggest improvement that we can make is in determining exactly what classroom teachers would like it be. I will be exploring that this Spring through some focus feedback groups.

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