Earlier today, I attended a keynote by Martin Dougiamas, Founder and Lead Moodler, at MoodleMoot UK 2009 which is currently taking place at the Imago Centre, Loughborough. [photos on Flickr]
Over the course of 90 minutes, Martin gave an exceptionally enjoyable and interesting presentation about the Moodle development process, and an insight into the features that await in Moodle 2.0.
Whilst following the #mmuk09 Twitter tag might give a wider insight into some of the areas covered through Martin’s talk, I’ve sumarrised some of the key things that I found to be of interest.
- Moodle core code cleaned up for further development, that is for Moodle 2.0 and beyond.
- The most popular feature requests are handled and evaluated via the Moodle Tracker, e.g. site-wide groups. As such, the development process is pretty transparent. In addition, every core code change is documented.
- The new Moodle.org theme is sitting on new servers. Mixed reaction to the new theme, but positive overall. I’m liking the menus along the top, which links to thinks regardless of whether they’re in Moodle or not, e.g. Moodle Docs which runs on MediaWiki software.
- Moodle Docs link at the bottom of pages; can be turned off but currently switched on on the University of Bath Moodle installation. Complements our existing Moodle FAQ database which we direct staff to in the first instance.
- The new Repository API can connect to Alfresco, YouTube, Flickr, Google Docs, Mahara (e-Portfolio), other respositories (OPuS?!). Martin’s demonstration used this (slick) functionality to search and copy in an image from Flickr… and embed a video from YouTube. [Very cool!]
- New Moodle 2.0 standard theme called ‘anomaly’. Rather WordPress like as commented by @mberry.
- TinyMCE HTML editor in Moodle 2.0, which replaces the current HTML WYSIWYG editor. Hopefully, this will handle certain things [e.g. pasting text in from Microsoft Word] a lot better.
- Moodle 2.0 core services will support Web Services (SOAP, XML-RPC, REST, AMF-PHP). Can connect to external web server application and/or external client application.
- Navigation: Blocks will be put in ‘regions’; no longer bound by blocks having to be on the left or right hand sides. More details available on the relevant Moodle Docs page.
Martin moved on to talk about the Gradebook improvements currently planned for Moodle 1.9.5. He noted that some of the interface changes “might freak some people out!”.
I would assume that this might be something we would need to make our users aware of before we move to this version. The University of Bath currently run Moodle 1.9.4, so I would assume that Moodle 1.9.5 upgrade might have to wait until the summer months. This would give us time to update various training materials and FAQs.
A couple of additional things to note about the improved Gradebook functionality,
- The tabs are back in the Gradebook interface. This can be turned off however.
- Scrolling has been introduced in the Gradebook interface, so the students’ name is always next to their grade. Additionally, hovering over items/marks provides student name.
- Grades over 100(%) can now be added to the Gradebook!
Finally, Martin answered the question that we’d all be dying to hear: When will Moodle 2.0 be released? Christmas! He didn’t confirm which year though – I’m hoping for 2009!
The MoodleMoot UK 2009 conference continues at a fantastic pace. There are a number of very interesting sessions, and a number of useful conversations are coming out which will feed into an end of conference reflection on this blog later in the week. Til then…
