EJS and Moodle

[ldelatorre]

Hi all,

Ruben Heradio and I have just released the first official version of four new plugins for Moodle that, along with some changes that have been made to the EJS core code (version 4.37, build 20120715 or later, already includes these changes) allow you to embed EJS applications into Moodle and treat them as any other Moodle activity.

To sum up, using Moodle and EJS together will let you:
1. To deploy applications written in EJS.
2. To control user access to the deployed EJS applications and distinguish between virtual labs (or simulations) and remote labs.
3. To set several resizing options for displaying the embedded EJS applets.
4. To backup and restore thanks to Moodle course backups.
5. To use cloud storage for any data, image or state file created by the EJS application.
6. To create sessions for synchronous collaborative working with the Java applets created with Easy Java Simulations.
7. To manage and control the access to EJS remote laboratories by means of a booking system that gets integrated into Moodle.

More info at:
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=217163
http://www.um.es/fem/EjsWiki/Main/UsingEJSWithMoodle
We are also preparing several video tutorials. Expect them to be available in youtube within two or three weeks.

You can download the Moodle plugins either from Github:
https://github.com/UNEDLabs
Or (once they have been approved) from Moodle site:
https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=mod_ejsapp
https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=block_ejsapp_file_browser
https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=mod_ejsappbooking
https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=block_ejsapp_collab_session

We hope you can find it interesting and usefull :-)

[ldelatorre]

Good news.

The plugins have been approved by the Moodle staff and are now available for download from Moodle.org. This means the links to the plugins stored in moodle from the previous post are now working. There is also a new link for the EJSApp set:

https://moodle.org/plugins/browse.php?list=set&id=27

It is important because in the near future this set will be upgraded with, at least, one new moodle plugin for EJS: a brand new repository moodle plugin for finding and downloading EJS simulations from digital libraries (such as COMPADRE) directly from moodle!! This would work just like the moodle repository plugins for finding and adding videos from youtube or files from dropbox work.

Fu-Kwun, I know this is not a digital library by itself but there are so many EJS applications in this site. Do you think it would be possible to also link them to Moodle by means of this repository plugin? It would be really nice!

[Fu-Kwun Hwang]

This is really a good news. I will try to look into it and find out what I can do with it. :-)

[ldelatorre]

Nice to hear you are interested :-)

Anyway, don't worry too much about this issue for the moment. We still haven't started working with Moodle repository plugins so we know very little about them right now. We will probably know a bit more about how to connect Moodle repository plugins with external services in a couple of months. Basicly, we need to start programming and make some tests, but we need to read the related Moodle documentation first (http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Repository_plugins).

Once we have a clear idea of what we would need from your part and of how to program our part, I will contact you to discuss the details.

[Fu-Kwun Hwang]

Sound great! Let me know what I can help when you think it is ready. :-)