Gareth's author page

LMS Jubilee Class No 45690 Leander on the Royal Duchy at Powderham, Devon, England 29th August 2021

Downtime

16th September 20215th September 2021 Gareth Barnard 1 Comment Downtime, Facilitating learning, Gamification, learning, Maslow, PGCE, Relaxation

When I did my PGCE I learnt about ‘Maslow’s hierarchy of needs’, whereby there is a ‘pyramid’ that defines the elements in life that help support the needs above them. One of the needs at the top is ‘Self-actualisation’, which I understand to be a need state that is best for learning and indeed being productive. In this post I’ll discuss my thoughts on this.

Elearning World

Environment

16th August 20216th August 2021 Gareth Barnard 2 Comments Components, Environment, Quiet, Sound, Tinnitus

Introduction In 2017 I developed permanent Tinnitus, which for me is a constant noise I hear (more left than right)

Elearning World Moodle Technical

Behat – part two

16th July 202114th July 2021 Gareth Barnard 1 Comment acceptance testing, behat, Performance

In the previous part, I covered getting up and running with running acceptance tests sequentially and using a Ramdisk to speed things up. In this second part, we’ll look at running tests in parallel, specifying a custom theme to test on and writing your own tests.

Elearning World Moodle Theme

Theme selector block

16th June 202111th June 2021 Gareth Barnard 1 Comment Block, blocks, Developer, Documentation, Documentation writing, Moodle developer, Theme, User interface

Have you ever wanted to compare themes easily? In “What’s in a screenshot” (March 2018), I briefly mentioned my ‘Theme selector’ block that I took over from John Syrinek. It gives you the ability to switch between themes quickly so that you can make the comparisons you want.

Elearning World Moodle Technical

Behat – part one

16th May 20219th May 2021 Gareth Barnard 2 Comments acceptance testing, behat, Performance, ramdisk, virtual machine

Running, let alone writing the Moodle acceptance tests is a bit tricky and complicated, and they can take ages. But what if there was a way to speed things up? In this first of a two part post, we’ll look at getting up and running with running tests one at a time.

Elearning World Moodle Technical

What is a Byte anyway?

16th April 20217th April 2021 Gareth Barnard 1 Comment base-10, base-16, base-2, byte, CPU, interpretation, network analysis, Technical

We all use technology on a regular basis and we know that our electronic computing technology is based on bytes. But what exactly is a ‘Byte’ and why does it matter so much?

Elearning World LMS Moodle Theme UX

Small little details

16th March 202110th March 2021 Gareth Barnard 2 Comments colour, details, Foundation, foundation theme, Moodle, Moodle Theme, settings, Theme

Sometimes its the small details in life that can make all the difference.

Elearning World Moodle UX

Three-state logic

16th February 202111th February 2021 Gareth Barnard 0 Comments

When I first implemented the setting reset functionality of Collapsed Topics (CT), it allowed you to reset the settings of the course to the defaults as set by the administrator at the time. The reset functionality applies to the current course or can be applied to all courses by the administrator if desired. But this has the downside that when the defaults change then whole groups of settings need to be ‘reset’. What if you wanted to be able to only have one setting track the default? This is where ‘three-state’ logic comes in.