Ben works as a systems administrator, systems architect, instructional designer, and technologist at the University of Portland, managing Open Source tools for learning, including enterprise Moodle & WordPress installs. $600 USD / year $350 / 6 months | $200 / 3 months | $75 / 1 month. Unoconv 0.7 is required for document conversions because it fixes some problems with running headless as apache user. The newest version of Moodle introduces a number of enhancements including a greatly improved metacourse creation interface, a recycling bin plugin, an overhaul of the submission viewer for … Author Kiril Posted on November 1, 2018 June 21, 2019 Categories Bash Scripts, CLI, Moodle, Ubuntu Tags Bash, CLI, UBUNTU 16.04, Ubuntu 18 On Ubuntu 16.04 and Ubuntu 18 sudo apt-get install python3-minimal -y sudo apt-get install graphviz -y sudo apt-get install ghostscript -y sudo apt-get install du -y sudo apt-get install aspell -y sudo apt-get install dot -y sudo apt-get install unoconv -y A second Document converter for Google Drive was released with Moodle 3.3 in 2017. This folder must be mounted at the same path on all servers. We compiled a list of popular 3rd party plugins for Moodle and then determined if they were compatible with 3.0 and 3.1. LibreOffice needs write access to the current users home directory to create some temporary files. With high hopes, I followed the guide on the LibreLambda GitHub page. I haven’t used LibreLambda yet. You should NOT see any unoconv related warning. You should see an warning saying the unoconv version is not supported. This might take anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes depending on the document and the speed of the conversion process. Also find the moosh command to purge them. A scheduled task runs – every 15 minutes by default – to convert any newly-submitted files to PDF so they can be marked up. AICC content packages are supported in … The plugin is from CatalystIT, who have done lots of great work in the Moodle community and they really did well making this plugin Moodle admin friendly. Unoconv is used by Moodle since the release of Moodle 3.1 and is used by the Assignment activity to convert documents to pdf so that they can be annotated. Open the firewall port 2002 between the moodle webservers and the machine running unoconv. Apart from unoconv, There are various web services and different applications that can do this conversion work. The plugin interfaces Moodle with the AWS services. Click Test unoconv path. Creating a user in AWS, installing the Moodle plugins, and running the script to get things set-up was straightforward and painless – only a little more involved than setting up the Google version. SCORM 2004 is not supported in Moodle, however Rustici Software have a Moodle plugin which can turn any Moodle site into a fully compliant SCORM 2004 LMS. You should see the following warning message under Other checks : Unresolved Threads; Plugin-Store; Bug Tracker; Development; Documentation; Translations; Demo Server; Login or register. The way this converter works is to use a Google system account, the same as used to enable oAuth sign-in and Google Drive integration. Photo credit: Ken Newquist. Like you, I can’t ethically recommend or use Google for this – total privacy should always be our default starting point. However, there is a continuum, between security and ease, and sadly many schools for example will happily encourage their students to “buy into” the Googleverse and Microsoftverse, with little of zero ethical consideration as to what this means. We find with smaller clients that Unoconv works well, but I think with organisations the size of a University, and the huge number of submissions, it doesn’t sound like it scales to that size well. Disclaimer: I don’t like Google – I don’t like their licensing, and their marketing machine that seems to convince everyone they are the saviour of the internet, which they definitely are not. We are trying to access /usr/bin/gs an /usr/bin/unoconv to allow teachers to grade students. View the Unoconv test PDF: Browse to Site administration → Plugins → Document converters → Manage document converters, and click Settings for the Unoconv entry. Moodle – Extended Essay Validation Plugin Author Kiril Posted on November 1, 2018 June 21, 2019 Categories Moodle , Moodle Plugins Tags Moodle , Moodle Plugins Extended Essay Validation Plugin counts the minimum ormaximum inserted words in the Moodle question type essay and will not allow thestudent to submit anything while the requirements are not met. Everything you need to setup both Moodle and AWS is included in this plugin. @@ -46,8 +46,3 @@ $ string ['privacy:metadata:repository_googledocs'] = 'The Google Drive repository plugin does not store any personal data, but does transmit user data from Moodle to the remote system.' Search; This Thread. My university is a lapsed Google school (now on O365), so I wasn’t sure I would be able to get a proper, institution owned Google account set-up, and I didn’t want to use a consumer Google account as it would not be subject to the same FERPA-compliant terms – who knows what type of data mining would be done on student work? When talking shop with other Moodlers, one common pain point lies with Document Converter plugins. The plugin interfaces Moodle with the AWS services. Hi Oscar, I’m not sure how you would be able to do this….there might be a way if you are clever enough with MySQL queries. However, a Google Docs service provides a similar service to a MacD9nalds when you are hungry – it’s fast, cheap, and easy, and we (mostly) ignore the fact it’s unhealthy. Site administration ► Server ► Environment, On the unoconv test page, you should see confirmation the. PRE-REQUISITES Share the moodle data root between the webservers and the machine running unoconv. One thing that needs fixing is that this patch still uses is_executable instead of file_is_executable that was introduced in the blocker issue. 22 May 2017. My users were missing the annotation capability on Word files, but I was not optimistic about using unoconv. Meanwhile, professors already stressed by the current state of affairs began to experience significant wait times or performance degradation while trying to use Moodle for grading. Everything you need to setup both Moodle and AWS is included in this plugin. LibreLamba, however, seemed to offer the best of both worlds. I’m not sure what the root cause was: the increase in web traffic to our Moodle servers, a sizable uptick in assignments being submitted, Google throttling on their end, or some combination of the three, but all of a sudden our conversions could not keep pace. Moodle becomes art thanks to the “Word Art” exhibit in Butler University’s Irwin Library. Once that is done this looks good for integration. It’s fast, efficient, and critically seems to be keeping up with the surge in online assignments at my school. My main hesitation in using the Google solution was privacy. If you can find a list of the file IDs you want to delete, you can use Moosh to purge them: https://moosh-online.com/commands/. This is so the annotation feedback plugin can be used on a wider variety of student submissions. PDF conversion in new assignment grading interface does not work on windows servers. To start the test, you MUST install unoconv version 0.6. If you used brew, they will both be installed to /usr/local/bin. Visit Site administration ► Server ► Environment On the unoconv test page, you should see confirmation the unoconv path appears to be properly configured... Honestly this was the last thing I needed during all online instruction in a pandemic so within a week I decided to take another look at alternatives. 0.6 is the default on ubuntu lts - a few people have installed this older version and not checked. All that it requires to set-up are some basic command line skills and a working knowledge of AWS administration – but is far less complicated to manage than unoconv. Moodle PDF Conversion Plugins: Good, Bad & Ugly. Click on the Download button and make sure a test pdf was generated. All the get_string () calls are in the plugin. I got into trouble with this. 2 vCPUs; 4 GB RAM; 80 GB SSD (Aprox. You may just want to look at disabling the Annotate PDF Feedback plugin altogether if your server can’t handle the space. I’m now trying to find the way to delete all unnecessary converted documents to get rid of 5 GB of space. Hi Oscar, I didn’t find a way to do this. As of June 2017, there are 1,342 plugins available for Moodle with over 405,200 recent downloads. BUT, I’m not 100% sure about the Moodle database datamodel, so I’ll keep all this “in the fridge” to test it once course is over. Themes. Now, Moodle HQ … Did you find a way to delete all unuseful pdf anotations? I’ve disabled the Scheduled Task “Prepare Submissions for Annotation.”. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. Some of the dependencies, moodle and it’s plugins have are not hard during installation, but they will show up when you use moodle for a while. Moodle 3.3 . Suffice it to say, it was not long before I started looking for alternatives. New activity - Custom certificate Plugin. Superseeds the Certificate plugin. $ string ['privacy:metadata:repository_googledocs:email'] = 'The email of the Google Drive repository user.' My predecessor had so much trouble keeping unoconv running reliably that one of his last acts before leaving the university was to just disable document conversion altogether. Set up a Moodle site with working Unoconv with pathtounoconv correctly set up. Set the paths to unoconv and ghostscript in Moodle (Site administration > Server > System paths). Install a wrapper for unoconv on the webservers that forwards the requests to the remote server. Everywhere; This … If you just don’t want to know, why these dependencies are needed, you simply need to do (as root or with sudo) apt install unoconv ghostscript graphviz . We should check and warn if their version is too old. This is my story. Naturally, many professors enjoy the flexibility and convenience of annotating without requiring students to manage submitting their assignments in the correct file format (talk about herding cats!). It’s my mortal enemy. 65 GB usable) No user or course limits applied. Moodle 3.0/3.1 Plugin Review. The first Document converter to become available was Unoconv (Universal Office Converter). New content plugins, such as H5P and Content Pages emerged, giving users new capabilities for creating interactive content right in Moodle and aiming to replace traditional authoring tools one day. Modify moodlesite.tld.conf?… Forums. Aren’t cloud-based solutions, themselves, about as secure and private as Microsoft Windows? From version 9.2 you can prevent the system from adding the automatic PDF alternative by including the extension this is not desired for in the configuration option non_image_types . Student Submits Non-PDF Document 2. A bug in the onuconv release 0.7 (which is deployed by debian 10) prevent the unoconv to … The aims of this plugin are to: While we have been keeping an eye on Moodle 3.0.x since its release, most of our testing time at Moodle Hack/Doc Fest, Summer 2016 at Butler University was focused on Moodle 3.1. Document Converted By Moodle 3. Rather, the converter plugins allow integration with a separate utility, which can be run on the same server or elsewhere. This utility was clearly not intended for the specific Moodle use scenario and it was … If a professor happens to visit the grading screen of a submission before it can be processed, they will have to wait while the file is converted ad hoc. Technically speaking, in Moodle 3.1, the File API added the ability to convert files, but local unoconv was a requirement. This plugin uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) services to provide the conversion to PDF, the primary AWS services used are Lambda and S3. So far looks to be superior to the Google Drive converter. It uses a slick cloud-based solution but allows the end-user to maintain ownership and privacy of student data. Can how I try to bypass that? Can install plugins or themes; Can use custom domain; Can use official Moodle™ App; Unoconv Document converter; Antivirus; Recycle bin; Access to Web Services; Global search; Moodle™ Stats; Sign up for free. … Plus, since the introduction of Competency-Based Education in Moodle, developers have submitted plugins to work on top of that, and most likely this will remain a trend in the upcoming year. Thank you, Catalyst! As you said “even if an assignment has PDF Annotate turned OFF, Moodle still adds its submissions to the conversion queue”. It’s an interesting point. The plugin is from CatalystIT, who have done lots of great work in the Moodle community and they really did well making this plugin Moodle admin friendly. I don’t want to mess it up with COVID-19 all around and more than 400 students depending on Moodle . Moodle version 3.3 is now available. The aims of this plugin are to: unoconv installed and working on the host system; ghostscript installed and working on the host system; ghostscript configured in Moodle Visit Site administration ► Plugins ► Activity modules ► Assignment ► Feedback plugins ► Annotate PDF From an administration standpoint, it’s important to note that Moodle does not perform document conversion itself. Each plugin is maintained in the Moodle plugins directory. #DoomAt11 #mdlhackfest, — Charles Fulton (@mackensen) June 20, 2016. 2 April 2019. Now, install the unoconv version 0.7 or higher Upgrading to Moodle 3.3 Moodle 3.3 can be upgraded to (or installed) using any of Installatron's products. Checking out the PDF Conversion queue one day after installing LibreLambda….24 hours before this it was at over 1250. Worst of all is when an instructor is working with queued submissions of a file type that isn’t compatible with the conversion process, as this often causes lag and long page loads. Confirm the version by executing: unconv --version Mostly it was to turn text documents, slideshows, and spreadsheets into PDF so teachers could add annotations and comments without affecting the original file layout. All sites upgraded to Moodle 3.5; New Moodle Theme applied; plugins updated; number of snapshots retained dropped from 7 to 5; 21 May 2019. It was an easy win for a new Moodle admin. Graphical themes for Moodle can be installed to change the look and functionality of a Moodle site or of an individual course. All content on this web site is made available under the. Visit Site administration ► Plugins ► Activity modules ► Assignment ► Feedback plugins ► Annotate PDF $ string ['privacy:metadata:repository_googledocs:searchtext'] = 'The Google Drive repository user … But, after working with our IT staff, I was able to get a service account under our Google Apps for Edu domain. The plugin works by allowing us to set-up and use our own conversion process in AWS with serverless Lamba functions and object storage via S3 buckets. But now I know it’s from our friends at Catalyst (the “other” Moodle Partner in New Zealand) I will have a look – they are a great company, and we have lots of friends there . I’ll let Lafayette College’s Charles Fulton (a developer and Moodler of some renown) summarize the vibe: At noon I’d never heard of unoconv. Introduced with Moodle 3.1, Document Converters allow Moodle to convert common file types like Microsoft Word or OpenOffice that are uploaded as Assignment submissions to PDF. After letting the process run for a few days, I’m impressed. Moodle - the world's open source learning platform - moodle/moodle Onedrive and LibreLamba. This folder must be mounted at the same path on all servers. Visit Site administration ► Plugins ► Activity modules ► Assignment ► Feedback plugins ► Annotate PDF Click on Test unoconv path link under Path to unoconv document converter You should see an warning saying the unoconv version is not supported. Thanks Ben. Moodle 3.0/3.1 Plugin Review. and this can be undesirable. Then….COVID-19 and online instruction happened. PDF Conversion • Non-PDF Documents Must Be Converted • Conversion Occurs Outside Moodle • Conversion Process: 1. Interesing post. Fail delay” which has to be manually cleared, Using Moodle to Respond to Changing Needs, Moodle Multiple Choice Quizzes in Second Language Teaching, Client focus – College of Natural Medicine using Moodle. Try Jira - bug tracking software for your team. Mobile. Of particular note were the following plugins, which list compatibility with 3.0 but not 3.1: Course Overview; TurnItIn; McGraw HIll; Course Overview was tested under 3.1 and seemed to work just fine. I tried what I could to remedy the situation: I shortened the interval between scheduled task runs from 15 minutes to 5, deleted the backlog in the queue hoping the process could stay caught up after the initial rush, and even set Annotation Feedback to be off by default on new assignments site wide (guess what: even if an assignment has PDF Annotate turned OFF, Moodle still adds its submissions to the conversion queue). When I took over as the Moodle admin at my school, I mostly knew Unoconv by it’s reputation, which is… bad (really bad.) For document conversion, it sends the file to the system account’s Google Drive, converts to PDF, downloads the result, and then deletes the original upload. When researching alternatives, I found two new file converter plugins of interest in the Moodle plugins database. Install a wrapper for unoconv on the webservers that forwards the requests to the remote server. I sincerely hope they are able to keep this plugin updated for new versions of Moodle! Obviously moodle cann't access /usr/bin by permissions. If you want to keep unneeded files from being converted into PDFs you can disable the Scheduled Task “Prepare Submissions for Annotation.” However, that would mean that any graders who are using PDF annotation would have to wait for the files to convert when they visit the assignment grading screen. Powered by a free Atlassian Jira open source license for Moodle. In the wider Moodle-verse, things didn’t seem much better. You should see an warning saying the unoconv version is not supported. One of my users reported wait times of up to 2 minutes trying to grade an assignment that student submitted .zip files to before they could save grades and feedback. An alternative method for previewing Office formats is to use QuickLook to get previews on the Mac, but using Unoconv enables page previewing and an automatic PDF alternative version of the file. The set-up was easy – Moodle provides good documentation on how to set-up things on the Google side, and then in Moodle it’s plug and play with your oAuth account. Many Moodle themes, based on responsive web design, allow Moodle to be used on mobile devices. TEST This sounds a bit scarier than it is. Things continued smoothly for well over a year – aside from some blurriness on the converted documents I had no complaints with the Google converter. That this patch still uses is_executable instead of file_is_executable that was introduced in the plugin the. Themselves, about as secure and private as Microsoft Windows to offer the best of both.... Utility, which can be marked up > System paths ) setup both Moodle and AWS is included this! 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