This is part of a blog series of short profiles on plugin developers within the Moodle community. Today it is Juan Leyva.
| Name: | Juan Leyva |
| Twitter: | @jleyvadelgado |
| Blog: | http://openlearningtech.blogspot.com/ |
| Source Code: | https://github.com/jleyva |
Tell us something about yourself
I have a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. I have always worked in projects related with technology and education.
My first job was in a small elearning company. After that I worked for portal educaMadrid, ConsejerÃa de Educación de Madrid (that is like the local Madrid ministry of education).
Currently I work for the Moodle spanish partner CV&A Consulting.
When did you first start programming?
I started programming at the age of 17, the language was MSDOS BASIC. It was just for fun, my first program asked for the user name and age.
When did you first encounter Moodle?
My first contact with Moodle was a long time ago, Moodle 1.1 in 2003 when I worked in the small elearning company.
What did you use Moodle for?
I mainly use Moodle as a developer creating plugins and customisations.
What was your first Moodle plugin? Why did you write it?
My first plugin was Configurable Reports. I wrote it because there was no reports builders options in Moodle, and at the time there was no plugins available either.
What is your latest Moodle plugin & why did you write it?
My most recent plugin is the Forum discussion subscription. I wrote it because is one of the most popular voted “new features” in the Moodle tracker and it will only available in Moodle when the Forum rewrite happens.
What would you say to someone who is considering writing a Moodle plugin?
Be very patient, test a lot your code and reuse ideas and code from Moodle.org
Follow the code guidelines and before programming, check others code.
And, this is very important, you have to maintain your code and help your “customer” that are the user’s plugins.
Don’t forget to use github!!
Final Thoughts
It’s good fun programming for Moodle 2 🙂
Some Plugins
This is a list of the plugins that Juan has contributed to that are currently (Jan 2012) in the Moodle plugins database. To view all these in the Moodle.org Plugin database check this page
| Collaborative real-time editor | This is a is a new type of assignment. It’s a collaborative real-time editor that works like Google Docs Two or more users can work at the same time in the same document |
| ConfigTabs | ConfigTabs is a local plugin that converts any configuration form in Moodle from a scrolled page to a tab view page. |
| Configurable Reports | This block is a Moodle custom reports builder. You can create custom reports without SQL knowledge. It’s a tool suitable for admins or teachers. Read the review |
| LTI Provider |
This is a local plugin for making Moodle a LTI provider tool. It can be use to provide access to full courses or activities from remote systems (other Moodle installations, Sakai, any LMS LTI consumer compliant). Read the review. |
| UB Hot Spots |
This is a new question type for Moodle. This new type of question allows the teacher to create multiple areas or spots within an image for self-evaluation. |
| umm: Unofficial Moodle Mobile app | This is an unofficial clone of the Moodle Mobile app for iPhone that works on Android and Blackberry devices. It should work also on iPhone and iPad. |
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