You can view the flash version of the screen cast here: http://compsci.ca/~dan/screencast.swf

This screen cast is a demo of the first version of the Moodle Grade Book stats and visual reports witch i worked on for Google Summer of Code.

I have committed the latest code for the project and considering this to be a first release of the report/stats and report/visual plug-ins for Moodle 2.0 dev. I have also update my test site with the newest code so any one can take a look at the plug-ins running in a Moodle install (you can login as guest). I had also hoped to have a screen cast demoing the plug-ins for today however due to some trouble getting sound working right it will probably be ready late Tuesday or early Wednesday.

Anthony Borrow has requested that i get an entry for the plug-ins added to the Moodle Modules and Plugins Database and some pages up about it on the Moodle Wiki instructing users how to use the plug-ins and install them, witch i plan to also get done this week, time and internet permitting (i may not have internet access for a few days well moving back to Thunder Bay).

You can download the plug-ins at:

report/visual: http://download.moodle.org/plugins/grade/report/visual.zip
report/stats: http://download.moodle.org/plugins/grade/report/stats.zip

Whats done:

• report/stats gradebook plug-in works and shows text based statics on a courses grades in a table format.
• report/stats has a modular design that allows for new statics to be dropped in.
• Printable version of report/stats.
• Group related functions for report/stats.
• Settings page for report/stats.
• report/visual gradebook plug-in’s framework is done and allows for new visualization to be dropped in.
• report/visual gradebook plug-in’s flash/flex with flare front end is in a running state and can take grade data from Moodle, a visualization’s settings in an XML format and turn them into an interactive visualization for the user.
• Continuous Grade Distribution Visualization.
• Grade Distribution by Item (Bar) Visualization.
• Grade Distribution by Group (Bar) Visualization.
• Grade Distribution (Line) Visualization.
• Normalized Grades vs Students Visualization.
• Ability to invert Visualization’s axes.
• Ability to hide axes.
• Ability to hide axes labels.
• Ability to hide any legend item (hide a group or item).
• UI Selector widget for changing data source of the visualization.
• Highlighting of legend items (highly a group or item in a graph).
• Popup detailing a nodes information/data.

What needs to be done this week:

• Finish printer friendly version of report/visual.
• Add in checking of users capability to see if they should be able to view a visualization or statistic.
• Add in two or three other visualizations i was planing to get in.
• Finish options page for report/visual.
• Fix mode problem in report/stats where students could possibly see all grades.

What needs to be done before the 18th:

• Add more documentation.
• Do final testing and fix any bugs found.
• Clean up code.

What i wanted to get in but probably will not have time for:

• Back port to Moodle 1.9.x
• Export functionality to other programs and document types like excel.
• Port to flare 2008.07.29 (new major flare release that had some big changes to the API witch would require some recoding of the plug-in’s front end).
• Stats and visuals for outcomes and outcome reports.
• “Find me in data” - a feature i wanted to add to show a user where they are in the data being visualized.
• More options, more controls, more functions, more cool looking animations, more visualizations, more statistics, etc.
• Better looking graphically and more natural UI.
• Add reports that go beyond just grades in a course. Compare diffrent courses, years, drop out trends, age of students, submission times, etc.

Overall i am rather happy with how far the project has come considering that at the start i knew nothing of Moodle, Flex, Flare, Actionscript 3, or much flash. I think the plug-ins that i have made will be use full to teachers and educators and i hope to keep supporting them and working on them in my spare time as a hobby after GSoC has come to an end.

Grade Distribution by Group in a bar graph:

Grade Distribution by Item in a bar graph:

I have also added a new user interface widget witch i call a selector that looks like a legend however only one item on it can be shown at once. When a new item is selected a request is sent to the Moodle back end to get new data based on the value of the selectors item. This allows for selectors to have many diffrent functionality that a developer can program in from the visualization class on the Moodle side of things with out having to change any action script or plug-in code.

I have also change how nodes and edges are hidden when you click on a legend item. Be for the visualization would just set the visible property of the nodes and edges to false but now it will remove the nodes and edges from the data list (tree) and put them back once requested. This allows for live scaling and resizing of the axes and layout, witch makes the char much easier to read and looks much cooler when animated.

There has also been a lot of refactoring and bug fixes to the flex/action script code i made for the front end including fixing a memory leak so things should run smoother.

I should have the new code up on the test site tonight and plan on making a commit with the new code to the CVN once i do a bit more testing on it.

Update: euphoracle from the #CompSci.ca IRC room called up Rogers tech support and after getting threw the first few “tiers” of teach support asking him to run virus scans got to a Rogers tech that knew about the issue and claimed that they are working on the problem but there is currently no ETA. So it seems Rogers knows about the issue but has yet to fix it.

Earlier this month news of a new DNS attack was leaked to the public with details a method to poison the cache of a DNS server and allow an attacker to redirect any domain to there own ip/site.

The implications of this are massive but i will not go in to the details as that has been talked about already on many more popular blogs and in some media sources. What i do want to talk about is Rogers (one of the largest Canadian cable ISPs).

All DNS providers (including ISPs) have had since July 8th to patch and/or fix this vulnerability but from some simple testing the #compsci.ca IRC room and my self have conducted it seems that Rogers has failed to put any kind of protection in place to stop this attack (witch is ironic as they just started hijacking there own DNS server to place ads on 404 pages).

If you are a rogers user you should immediately change your DNS settings to use a secure server such as the bell ones ( 207.164.234.193 and 207.164.234.129) or use OpenDNS (witch has some ads on 404 pages). I would also recommend that all Rogers customers tell Rogers to patch there system ASAP.

If you want to see if your DNS server is secure check out http://www.doxpara.com/?p=1176 (thanks to Dan Kaminsky) and click on “Check my DNS” on the right hand side. This is what we used to test Rogers and other CompSci.ca users ISPs.

CONTRIB-497
*Added new visualization, Grade Distribution
*Fixed some minor bugs
*Made abstract visualization class for creating visualizations by making classes witch extend it.
*Made visual_settings.php witch takes a visualization class and truns it in to XML witch flex can read in.
*Made flex visualization application read in XML formated settings as well as tab formated data from moodle and combind them to make a custom visualization.
*Made flex visualization application read and use langue strings from moodle.
*Added printer firendly tabTODO:
*Add more visualizations
*Refactor some of the flex/actionscript code
*More douctenation
*More UI functions for the flex application

CONTRIB-496
*Fixed a minor bug in lib.php witch caused some problems geting a list of statistics used in the plug-in.

Currently the grades are being place in groups of 10% (0% - 9.99..%, 10% - 19.99…, and so on) witch is used as the x axis and the number of students is used as the y axis. As with the other visualization, the axis are invertible and the same UI and features are used.

Unfortunately the changes to the back and front ends of the plug-in to make them dynamic as possible and to allow creation of new visualizations simply by making a PHP class in Moodle was more complicated then anticipated and has set me some what behind my original schedule for the project. Hopefully i will be able to make up for some of the lost time and still be able to get in all the features i wanted.

<?php
include(’../config.php’);
redirect(’http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_liberation’);
?>

This file also seems to be on the main moodle.org site: http://moodle.org/lib/womenslib.php

It would seem that the Moodle core developers have a senses of humor.

Such seems to be the case tonight where a new bug showed up once i updated from development branch and all of a sudden the group (class/course sections) functions started messing up in my plug-in. After searching my own code for some time, thinking it was something i changed, i traced the bug back in to the Moodle core functions where there was a check that was failing as a side effect of a change to a seemingly unrelated piece of code.

So i whipped up a bug report and a patch to fix the bug and summited it to the Moodle tracker in the hopes that some one would look over my report in a day or two and look in to it. After all i was posting it at 3:37 AM on the week end, however to my amazement 30 minutes latter my report had been looked in to, commented on, a patch (based on mine but better) was committed to the development branch and the tracker issue was closed.

This is one of the reasons why i love the Open Source Ideology so much. In a closed source corporate environment a bug like this could take days to get from begin reported, to being looked in to, to being fixed (especially since it was reported early in the morning on Saturday) causing untold amount of frustration to the users and delays to developers working on the code effected by the bug. If Moodle was closed source software for witch i was creating the same plug-in from a limited plug-in API available to the public my bug report would have not be any where as nearly detailed in to the cause of and how to fix the bug and would be limited to simply saying “hey X is not working for some reason” and i deftly would not haven been able to give a patch that the core developers could base a fix on, causing lost man hours for the payed developers looking in to and tracking down a bug in a vague report that could be better spent.

There is also a great feeling knowing that you where able to help out an Open Source project and that your patch (as simple as it may be in this case) got in to the code base and will help others. It is also great thing to be able to fix the bugs you come across in software, change it in any way you may feel like or just see how things work under the hood.

Now if i could only get the bugs in windows mobile on my phone fixed….