What are Filters in Moodle?

Filters are a way to automatically transform content before it is showed to the user in Moodle.
You can add a filter at the site level and then remove it at the course or activity level.

You can use filters to...

• add links
• insert multimedia players
• convert Mathematical expressions 
• convert emoticons into images 
• and more...

Video created by Moodle

Here is the list of filters in Moodle.

If you are a developer and would like to create your own filters you could have a look tho this page.



There are different levels to activate filters:

1. Site-wide: Site administration--Plugins--Filters-Manage Filters. In order for Filters to show at a course or activity level they need to be enabled by an administrator.



 
2. Course: Administration--Filters



If you enable a filter at the course level it will apply to all the activities in the course.

3. Activity: Activity administration--Filters





If you enable a filter at the activity level it will apply just to this activity not to all the other activities in the course.

You can read more about how filters work in different contexts here

More about Managing filters here

Please write your comments below...

New Features In Moodle 3.1

Documentation for Moodle 3.1 is already available and bellow are some of the new features:

For teachers
Competency based education is now fully supported
Grading Assignment submissions has got smoother with all elements on one screen and the ability to annotate over student submissions of different file types
Important forum posts can now be pinned to the top of your list, making them more visible to your students
When setting up a workshop, you can now specify the types of file you want students to submit or not. Students may also now deleted their own submissions.
Shared external tool enrolment now allows you to share course activities and related grading between two Moodle sites
Course activities and resources may now be tagged, making it simpler to find related content.
Change section titles without leaving the course main page, speeding up your course creation
Search for meta linked courses and add them together in one step.

For administrators

Create competency frameworks for use throughout the site. (A plugin will also allow you to import from external sources.)
Create learning plan templates and apply them to individuals or whole cohorts.
Let your your staff and students search the site by enabling Global search and installing Solr
Teachers can annotate directly on uploaded submissions of different file types, not just PDF if unoconv 07 is installed.
If you’ve enabled a File system repository on your server for FTP uploading, your teachers can now search the folders in that repository
Make setting up a Lesson simpler for teachers by reviewing the default and advanced settings.
When a Folder resource contains many files, students can download them all in a zipped file.
Search all courses you have access to and quickly find that important resource.
Global search. Search all courses you have access to and quickly find that important resource.
The Message button is now next to the user's picture, making it much easier to send important messages.
New permalink feature makes it easy to share useful forum posts.

Please write your comments bellow.

Turnitin Direct V2 Integration and LDAP authentication in Moodle

When using the LDAP authentication in Moodle, if an student is set as on hold (could be because he/she didn't pay the fees) in LDAP the student will still have the account and data in the Moodle database but he/she will just not able to login to Moodle.

Under the above circumstances, the student cann't login in Moodle so therefore can not do any submission in Turnitin.

But you might have some questions under the above circumstances,


1. What if a lecturer refresh the and student submission in a Turnitin activity and the student is not active anymore in LDAP, so he can not login into Moodle anymore?

When refreshing you will notice that the similarity changes to 'Pending' and Turnitin will not return any further report for that student, so the similarity percent showed by the Turnitin Direct V2 plugin in Moodle will always stay as 'Pending'.

2. What if a lecturer goes to the Turnitin activity and submit a paper in behalf of the student?

I still need to test it but I suppose the result of that action will be the same as in question 1 above.

Please write your comments bellow...

Turnitin: Printing Originality Reports

Step 1. Go to your main course page and click in the Turnitin activity.



Step 2. Click the “Submission Inbox” tab


 Step 3. Click in the “Similarity %” for the student and the report will open



 Step 4. A new window will open with the student report (It will take a bit to open, around 10 seconds). Make sure that the selected tab in to top-left is ‘Originality’



Step 5. In the bottom-left of the page, click in the “Printer Icon” and choose the option “Download pdf of current view for printing”. You can now print the PDF by going to the place where it has been saved in your computer.

Restore grades: Student accidentally unenrolled from a course

To restore the grades you will need to...

Go to administration -> grades -> general settings, I checked "recover grades default".
Open a new self enrolment  with a new password and make the student enroll again.
Once the student is enrolled back in the course, go to every quiz in the course, select the student name, and click "regrade selected attempts".



* I got inspired here

Useful Plugins in Moodle

I will be listing below some useful plugins. The list will be increasing with time...

1. Sharing Cart
2. Configurable Reports
3. Certificate
4. Sign in Sheet

Progress Bar

Collapsed Topics Plugin is a very useful plugin when you have a lot of topics/weeks and it prevent users from getting tired scrolling down in a course. The plugin has been updated to Moodle 3.0.

See bellow how it work...

Please write your comments below...

Plugin lists in other blogs...

11 Moodle Plugins For A Corporate Moodle
CUL Activity Stream Block

List installed plugins in Moodle

If you need a list of the installed plugins in your Moodle you need to click in 'Plugins overview' in the next path...
Home / ► Site administration / ► Plugins / ► Plugins overview

You will see a list of all plugins with the version number, release, availability (enabled or disabled) and settings link.

As well you can filter the list and 'Show additional plugins only'

Plugin updating from within Moodle

An administrator can enable updates deployment in Administration > Site Administration > Server > Update notifications. Then when updates are available, 'Install this update' buttons are shown on the Plugins overview page.