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Ian Wild wrote a book on #Moodle 4 Secruity. Although things have changed I suspect it will still contain useful information. You can read a review of it here
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Does AI have any good use cases?
I listened to a reposting on “Cory Doctorow and Ed Zitron on Enshittification and the Rot Economy”
Ed Zittron views AI as a "batshit insane" financial bubble. While acknowledging some niche utilities, he argues that claims of AI replacing professionals are "lies" used to drive profit. He believes the current massive spending on AI infrastructure provides almost no lasting productive value.
(From #AI Summary..)
https://podcastindex.org/podcast/6793395?episode=54303859525
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I am due to be presenting at #MoodleMootEstonia26 this week. In honour of that occasion Tõnis Tartes has kindly translated the strings of my #Moodle #AIText question type into the #Estonian language.
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More detail of the re-imagined gradebook showing details of data
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The #Moodle Reengagement plugin
https://moodle.org/plugins/mod_reengagement
allows the creation of email template with placeholders as
%courseshortname%
%coursefullname%
%courseid%
%userfirstname%
%userlastname%
%userid%
%usercity%
%userinstitution%
%userdepartment%So you could produce
"Hi %userfirstname%,
This is a reminder that you are enrolled in %coursefullname% and have not yet completed all required activities. Please log in and continue at your earliest convenience."
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AI Chat block customised for #STACK
I have created a video demonstrating the #Moodle AI Chat block from #ByCS with “agent mode”.
It adds “context” along with the user's question in the form of the strings in with the current form. In addition it can have page specific context. In the video I have added the context from
https://github.com/marcusgreen/moodle-block_ai_chat/blob/main/docs/qtype_stack_context.md
If you would like to experiment with this using a teacher account email me at
[email protected]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVW8m9lXTsk -
Moodle AI Chat block with optional "Agent mode" which adds the help strings from the current form and adds as context to requests.
System admins can add additional context for specific plugins and limit availability to specific pages. This is very interesting.
https://github.com/bycs-lp/moodle-block_ai_chat/releases/tag/v3.0
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You can watch the video of yesterdays #Moodle community meeting at
https://moodle.org/mod/bigbluebuttonbn/view.php?id=8821
The main topic was #mahara and #eportfolios but there was substantial coverage of the #LTI and related topics with some very knowledgable speakers.
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I am in a very gradual migration to self hosted NextCloud. I have played with it for years and it is the system where I work at #Catalyst-EU who are very much a FLOSS organisation.
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I have been enjoying the #MapMen Youtube videos for a long time and they were recently interviewed about their new book. This statement struck me
“And Mark and I are of the opinion that actually those two things go together very well because if you make something silly and funny and fun, you're going to remember it more”
#Learning cannot happen without engagement.
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The representation of time is complex, cultural and varied. Read about time related falshoods here
https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood/?tab=readme-ov-file#dates-and-time
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According to Google Gemini #ai
“#DeepWiki is an #AI-powered tool designed to automatically generate comprehensive documentation for code repositories, primarily those hosted on #GitHub. It was created by the team behind the AI developer tool #Devin, with a core purpose of helping developers and engineers quickly understand complex or unfamiliar codebases.”
The Moodle repo for it looks very interesting
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I have updated the version of my Qbank #bulktags plugin on the Moodle.org plugins database to support #AI #LLM tag suggestions.
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AI Tag Suggestions
My #Moodle #qbank #bulktags plugin allows the quick update of multiple questions with the same tag. There is a Moodle 5.0 compatible branch that has a setting for #AI #LLM suggestions based on the question text. It will work with either the core AI subsystem or Local ai_manager from ByCS Learn Platform.
Read more about bulktags AI Suggestions here
https://github.com/marcusgreen/moodle-qbank_bulktags/wiki/AI-Suggestions
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There is an issue in my #Moodle #bulktags plugin where it doesn't work with Moodle 4.5. There was a change in function signature between 4.5 and 5.
There is a full description here
https://github.com/marcusgreen/moodle-qbank_bulktags/issues/1
which points to a branch that should fix the issue. I would appreciate feedback to confirm that branch works as expected. I cannot think of a way to fix it apart from haivng two different branches....
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Question Bank Bulktags
Updating the tags on a single #Moodle #quiz question with 4 tags can be time consuming. It typically takes 9 clicks to update a single question. If you have a category with 20 questions that is 180 clicks. And of course there is a good chance of making a mistake.
My question bank #bulktags plugin has been accepted into the plugins database and it can reduce that task down to 10 clicks.
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Beware tech giants offering free lunches
“UK government’s deal with Google ‘dangerously naive’, say campaigners"
"Company to provide free technology and ‘upskill’ civil servants but concerns raised over UK data being held on US servers”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/09/uk-governments-deal-with-google-dangerously-naive-say-campaigners
#AI #UKGovernment #Google #FreeLunch -
I have released a new version of my #Moodle #advancedgrading report plugin. It fixes some minor issues and confirms compatibility with Moodle 5.0.
The report shows a breakdown of grading for the rubric and marking guide methods for #assignment.
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I had rented a #hosted #RaspberryPi from @beasts on a month by month basis. After just under a month of playing I decided I didn’t want to continue the subscription as I didn’t really have a use for it. I emailed them to cancel the subscription.
I got confirmation the same day, a small credit note (wasn’t expecting that) and an email discussion about what other services I might buy from them.
Read about their simple cancellation policy here
https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2024/10/18/simple-cancellation
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#Atto is being removed from core Moodle
The Atto editor will be removed from core with the release of #Moodle 5.0 in April.
https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-83282
I believe it will be available from the plugins database but in the long term #TinyMCE is the future. -
#Moodle wird in #UK-Schulen nicht häufig verwendet und ich denke, dass #MoodleSTACK ein Grund sein könnte, es zu verwenden. Ich habe daran gearbeitet, es über #LTI zu verwenden, was bedeutet, dass es von anderen Systemen wie #Blackboard oder #Canvas aus verwendet werden kann.
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I have been writing some #code for a #Moodle plugin using the #Cody plugin for #Vscode and #Codium.
I find it very helpful. It will create boilerplate code in seconds that would take me multiple minutes to create. It is mostly the right code and sometimes it phrases things slightly better than I would have done.
I sometimes hear AI described as sophisticated autocomplete, which it turns out is something I find very helpful.
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I have been using the #cody plugin with #VSCode and #Codium IDE’s for a while now
https://sourcegraph.com/
For my #Moodle development
I have found it very, useful. A Typical scenario is that I start to type in a command and it offers me the possibility of a completion. Sometimes it is exactly what I want, frequently it is close and I tweak it.
However the ultimate #Moodle specific development tool is -
The #GPL licensed #STACK system is the most powerful #Maths question type available & is backed by the the #Maxima CAS System. Although it requires #Moodle, Moodle can deliver it to any #LTI compliant VLE (e.g. #Blackboard and #Canvas).
STACK comes with with over 1,000 #mathematics questions, from the #HELM project. These range from the absolute basics to advanced Maths.
You can create an instant student account and attempt some of the quizzes here
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I was updating the readme file for my #Moodle question bank #bulktags plugin with an #ai assistant enabled (#Cody).
https://github.com/marcusgreen/moodle-qbank_bulktags
I was pleased to see it makes suggestions not just for code but for general text as seen in the attached screenshot.Having said that it offered an incorrect suggestion that required an understanding of how tags vs categories work.
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AI Generated Moodle Code
I have been working on a plugin to add #AI Assisted feedback to the #Moodle #assignment module. I had the skeleton and created a textarea for adding the prompt.
I was about to create an upload dialog for files with a prompt when I thought, perhaps an #AI, #LLM could to do that using the Continue plugin for #Codium (#VSCode without the telemetry). It turns out you can, as illustrated in the attached animation. It is using #Llama3 via Groq.
https://console.groq.com/playground -
I am the creator and maintainer of the #Moodle advanced grading report for the #assignment module (think rubrics)
https://moodle.org/plugins/report_advancedgrading
I was delighted and flattered to recently receive a code contribution that added a new setting to control how part of the output is displayed. Receiving code contributions from other people is one of the great delights of developing free software.
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Dominique Bauer is a huge contributor to the world of #Moodle with a long track record of maintaining the #maths #formulas question type and creating Javascript code to improve functionality and appearance of #quiz questions.
He recently created an example using the true false #question type. You can see how it looks herehttps://dynamiccourseware.org/course/view.php?id=144§ion=11
Note that this is a core Moodle True/False question type, not an #H5p question.
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During a job interview I was once asked what software development #methodologies I was familiar with. I claimed my main experience was with JFDI. Fortunately they didn’t ask me to explain the acronym further. I got the job.
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Software maintenance
The idea of maintaining software may seem odd, it is not like a car or a washing machine, there is nothing to “wear out”.
However, change is constant and I have just had a report that one of my Moodle plugins throws a big, ugly deprecation error with PHP 8.1. It should be easy to fix, but it shows that software does need maintenance.
Without support and maintenance software quickly becomes unusable.
#moodle #edtech #softwaredevelopement