In this series of blog posts our resident developer and expert on all things Moodle related, Connor, will be picking a Moodle plugin to feature each month which he thinks is innovative, useful, and easy to add to your platform.
This month we’ve chosen the image optimiser plugin, developed and maintained by our very own Moodle developer, Guy Thomas. You can download this plugin from the Moodle plugins directory here: https://moodle.org/plugins/filter_imageopt.
One of the most difficult challenges for any educationalist is creating consistently engaging content, but we’re fortunate enough that Moodle comes with a range of ways in helping you with this. One very simple way of doing this is by adding creative imagery to your courses. We’ve long talked about the benefits of using tools such as H5P, which creates stunning interactive content that can be embedded into your platform, but another way this desire can be achieved is by adding beautiful static imagery to your courses.
All subjects that can be taught through Moodle will see the benefits of adding images to their courses, from health and safety training in the workplace that show diagrams of how to properly handle equipment, through to geography lessons in the classroom that can add images to demonstrate tidal drift, but there can be issues with this. If you’ve ever uploaded high-resolution images to your Moodle courses previously, you may have experienced problems with your site slowing down, continuous lag throughout the site and eventually your courses may pack in and not load at all.
The image optimiser plugin solves all of these issues with the following features:
- With the plugin, you have the ability to resize images that are greater than a maximum width and preserve aspect ratios and original images, giving them the desired fit on your course.
- The ability to resize images in all filterable text – course content, user profile description, etc.
- Finally, the plugin allows you to delay the loading of certain images and set them to only load once they are visible to reduce lag.
Knowing the benefits attractive imagery can have on your courses and on your user’s engagement, makes this plugin one of our favourites, and our plugin of the month. We highly recommend you try this out on your platform using the link above.
For any assistance with setting up Moodle plugins, you can also contact the team at Titus Learning – we’re always happy to help with any Moodle query however big or small.