Check out the latest information on one of the best themes for K-12 here:

Fordson Theme for Moodle

In case you missed it there is a new theme on the horizon for Moodle which is focused on the needs and feedback from K-12 teachers and students.  Introducing Fordson!  The Fordson Moodle theme is a child-theme of the new standard Boost theme.  This means that Fordson incorporates the latest and greatest from Moodle with Bootstrap 4 and many other visual and navigation changes built into the Moodle 3.2 release.

Follow Development on Githubhttps://github.com/kennibc/moodle-theme_fordson

Get the official releases on Moodle.orghttps://moodle.org/plugins/theme_fordson (As of this publishing it is not yet approved)

The Fordson theme is designed, tested, and supported by Dearborn Public Schools with feedback from classroom teachers.  Fordson provides an impressive user experience right out of the box.  Install and activate Fordson and your site will begin catching the attention of staff and students!

Take a look at the enhanced homepage which helps direct and engage students with their learning materials.

Fordson Homepage

Click to enlarge image

Enhanced Homepage

Once a student authenticates Fordson helps guide the student to their courses by utilizing several unique features that can be customized in the theme settings.   The Fordson Icon Navigation Bar provides for up to 8 custom icons and links so that you can provide visual cues for students in a very obvious way.  There are 4 default icons to get your started: My Home, Calendar, Badges, and Courses.  There is also a “Create a Course” button which will only appear if the user has the capability to create a course within Moodle.  This is generally someone who has been given the Course Creator, Manager, or Site Admin role.  You can customize every detail and even use external links for the icons such as a link to Mahara or your student information system.

Below the Icon Navigation is a custom textbox which is a great place to provide instructions and a welcome message.  There are actually two custom textboxes.  One appears to logged in users and one appears to logged out users which allows you to further target your audience with instructions.

The final enhancement for the Fordson homepage is the ability to add up to six marketing tiles.  These marketing tiles have been designed to be very versatile with the inclusion of text, images, and links.  The marketing tiles hold their height so if you add too much text it will automatically add scrollbars to the side.  This is a great feature if you want to make a list of “staff training” courses or other purposes.  These marketing tiles can be placed at the top or bottom of the page by utilizing a toggle in the theme settings.

We also strategically placed a Course Searchbox just below the Icon Navigation to help students quickly find a course.  This is very useful when your students must find and enroll in courses manually on their own.

Built Upon Boost, Built to Last

We took great efforts to make sure we did as little change as possible so that Fordson will continue to inherit changes and improvements from Boost.  This makes our life easier and also means we can better support this theme well into the future.

Key Features:

  • Custom full screen image for login page
  • Custom header image for main site and each course (Lets teachers customize the top banner in their course by uploading an image to their course summary file area)
  • Enhanced homepage experience with Icon Navigation Box for visual navigation cues, Versatile Marketing Tiles, Custom Textbox for instructions, and a Course Searchbox to quickly find and enroll in courses
  • “Create a Course” button provides quick access to anyone that has the capability within Moodle to create courses right from the homepage
  • Color choosers for all major elements of the design
  • Social icons in footer
  • Built for all screen sizes
  • Support for uploading style presets and custom SCSS
  • Out of the box a clean, refined, and stylish appearance with minimal configuration

Follow this blog

Get every new post delivered right to your inbox.


Skip to toolbar