NOTE:<\/strong> This post first appeared in eLearning World last year: https:\/\/www.elearningworld.org\/<\/a>. Since then Simple Lesson has been published in the Moodle Plugins database: Moodle Bites for Developers Level 1 starts February 1st 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a user, teacher and lecturer of programming languages from FORTRAN IV to Java I\u2019ve long been interested in the topic of Moodle programming, but every time I have started I\u2019ve hit some kind of wall:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then in frustration I\u2019ve given up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This last year I published my first Moodle plugin to the\ndatabase and I\u2019m deep into my second. \nI\u2019m still not a fully-fledged developer but I do understand a lot more\nthan before. So much so that I\u2019m helping\nto facilitate a MoodleBites course in the subject[1]<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the things needed to bring about this change was\nmotivation. I\u2019d been working with people\nwho were developing Moodle courses making extensive use of the Lesson Activity\nin Moodle. It\u2019s not a bad activity but\nit does suffer one serious shortcoming \u2013 you cannot use questions from the\nquestion bank in a lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I began to Google around and pretty soon discovered that\nthis had occurred to people before and they had not been able to solve it yet,\nmostly through lack of time. Being in my\nlate 60\u2019s time is not as much of a luxury as it used to be for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stuart at HRDNZ knew that I was interested and offered me a\nplace on Justin Hunt\u2019s MoodleBites for Developers Level 1 course. Justin is \u201cthe POODLL guy\u201d \u2013 the smart\nMoodle Developer of that Swiss-army knife of Moodle improvements, especially\ngood for language learning[2]<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the course covers much of the basics of Moodle\nprogramming (by no means all) it also teaches the value of persistence \u2013 or\nshould I say without persistence you will find it hard to complete. This is not the nature of the course material\nor the skill of the facilitator, rather it is the nature of the challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Persistence for me was, when faced with a challenge, not\ngoing first to the forums and getting the answer but working back and finding\nout where I had strayed from the path. \nExperienced Moodle Developers have all sorts of tools at their\ndisposal. All I had was echo and\nvar_dump. Echo allows you to print\nthings at your console (you can also log messages to your error log). Var_dump\nallows you to see the \u201cguts\u201d of an object and work out what you should be doing\nwith it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Armed with these simple tools I would go back over my code\nand figure it out for myself, resulting in those wonderful \u201cah hah\u201d\nmoments. When you have those, by the\nway, don\u2019t forget top put them in your Evernote or whatever you use for a log.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve sometimes puzzled for days over some piece of code and\nthis has led to a broader and deeper understanding of Moodle structure and\ncoding norms. Even some of the\ndocumentation at Moodle org started to make sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is, of course, an endless amount of knowledge already\non the internet about Moodle, PHP, JavaScript and other technologies. So much in fact that you sometimes have to be\npretty skilled to find the missing piece you are looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Obvious sites are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Less obvious routes include looking at GitHub for Moodle HQ\nand other developer\u2019s accounts and studying the code of any plugin somewhat\nsimilar to the one you are trying to build. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Moodle database will also help you understand what\nvariables\/properties belong to which classes\/objects and gain a deeper\nunderstanding of what your code is actually producing. I have found this especially useful when\ntrying to understand how my plugins store media files.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a really quick but excellent overview of Moodle architecture,\nyou can read Tim Hunt\u2019s excellent guide[6]<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As many people will tell you, learning by doing Moodle\ndevelopment is better and more effective than learning by reading about Moodle\nDevelopment. In fact Moodle is built on\nthe philosophy of social constructionism[7]<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you see an error message as an example of feedback on\nyour learning, a challenge to be googled, rather than as an obstacle to your\nprogress you will learn more effectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ve already mentioned personal traits such as persistence\nto which we can add optimism and a sense of humour. However, you will also need:<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s true that if you are not familiar with all of the above\ntechnologies you can learn as you go. A\ngood source of basic knowledge is at the W3Schools website[8]<\/a>\nwhich may help if you have some gaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good luck! [1]<\/a> https:\/\/www.moodlebites.com\/mod\/page\/view.php?id=24546<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n [2]<\/a> https:\/\/poodll.com\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n [3]<\/a> https:\/\/moodle.org\/mod\/forum\/view.php?f=33<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n [4]<\/a> https:\/\/stackoverflow.com\/questions\/tagged\/moodle<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n [5]<\/a> https:\/\/docs.moodle.org\/dev\/Main_Page<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n [6]<\/a> http:\/\/aosabook.org\/en\/moodle.html<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n [7]<\/a> https:\/\/docs.moodle.org\/24\/en\/Philosophy<\/a>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n [8]<\/a> https:\/\/www.w3schools.com\/default.asp<\/a>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What I’ve learned about Moodle Development over the last two years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[36,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-development","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesnz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesnz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesnz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesnz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesnz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jonesnz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesnz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesnz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesnz.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Moodle plugins directory: Simple lesson<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nMotivation<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Guidance<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Persistence<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Support<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Action<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Pre-requisites<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n