Today’s review Module is the Drag and drop file upload for Moodle 2.0. This module enables an easy way to upload files into a Moodle 2 course.
Background
This module for Moodle is created and maintained by Davo Smith from England. Davo has created some nice other mods (including Lesson Objectives and Checklist which I reviewed before) and this latest one is really quite interesting. We are all used to dragging and dropping files on our desktops, and this now brings that to Moodle 2 as well.
What does it do?
The module enables you to drag a file from your desktop onto your browser window containing your Moodle 2 course. Although this does not work with IE yet (it is using HTML 5), it has been tested on Firefox 5, Chromium 14 and Chrome 12 on Windows and Linux. I only use IE for testing so this isn’t a problem for me, but could be for others.
Is it simple to install?
The module source is managed on github, so like other modules you can browse the source or choose to download a zipfile of the plugin. However, like most other github managed modules this does not download as a pretty (instantly usable) zip file name or folder name, instead of dndupload it downloaded as davosmith-moodle-block_dndupload-56d76a6. So once download and unzip the file you need to rename the folder before upload.
Of course if you are using GIT to manage the code base of your local install (which if you are doing a lot of changes with ad-dons/themes it is advisable) then you will just pull from his GIT repository, for more information on that check out the Moodle Docs page for GIT for Administrators and specifically the part on Installing a contributed extension from its Git repository
When installing the plug-in caused no errors and there was no extra global settings to configure.
Is there documentation for it?
The plug-ins page has the step by step instructions for installation as does the README file in the downloaded zip. It also gives greater explanation about what the module does and what testing it has had.
There is a current forum discussion about it and there is a detailed documentation page on Moodle Docs.
Is it easy for the teacher/admin to use?
I am always a bit careful about using ajax in enterprise system just in case something is not working as intended! So after a strong coffee I loaded up my Moodle 2 test install and added the block to a course. The block added just fine and sat there waiting.
So I dragged over an image from my desktop to the course area and saw the appearance of “Add a file” appear, very similar to how gmail behaves. The files was added successfully.
Dragging a file onto Moodle
When i edited the resource entry, it had a name 003 which was the same as the original file, an empty description, and default resource settings. As description is a required field I would recommend to the author adding the 003 (filename) to the description field as well, it can’t hurt, can it?
Is it easy for the learner/student to use?
As a student cannot upload files, a student cannot see the block or make file uploads.
Does it do what it promises?
Oh yes. This is really quite cool and will save some people oooodles of time (or is that mooOoodles? of time) . This is the most useful module that Davo has made yet, and i can already see some interesting variations which he could add down the line, such as:
- If its a zip file, ask if it is a scorm object and they want to add a scorm activity (default settings) or create a folder with its contents..
- If its a .mbz prompt to restore course?
No idea if the above is possible or not, but it seems like this could be the beginning of some cool stuff.
Stars: 4 out of 5 stars for this block.
**Standard Reminder**
These reviews check out the plugin for usability not for security. If you are considering installing any module on your site you should also check that is secure and does not impact the server performance.
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