The latest articles on DEV Community by Ilias Almerekov (@iliasalmerekov). https://dev.to/iliasalmerekov https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F3956020%2F72d7bd34-06c2-40e6-8c25-f68fc28c9697.jpeg https://dev.to/iliasalmerekov en Ilias Almerekov Thu, 28 May 2026 07:54:01 +0000 https://dev.to/iliasalmerekov/reviving-my-schools-ai-assistant-moodle-ollama-4o63 https://dev.to/iliasalmerekov/reviving-my-schools-ai-assistant-moodle-ollama-4o63 <p><em>This is a submission for the <a href="https://dev.to/challenges/github-2026-05-21">GitHub Finish-Up-A-Thon Challenge</a></em></p> <h2> What I Built </h2> <p>Moodle AI Assistant — an AI-powered learning companion embedded directly into Moodle, the LMS used at my vocational school Berufsschule ITECH in Germany, where I'm training as a Fachinformatiker (IT Specialist)</p> <p>This project means a lot to me because it solves a real problem I see every day at school: students get stuck on assignments after hours, teachers get flooded with the same repeated questions, and there's no smart help available on demand. I built this to change that.</p> <h2> Demo </h2> <p>Github Repository: <a href="https://github.com/IliasAlmerekov/moodle" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://github.com/IliasAlmerekov/moodle</a><br> Demo Video: <a href="https://youtube.com/shorts/Iiy4re43cMM?feature=share" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://youtube.com/shorts/Iiy4re43cMM?feature=share</a></p> <h2> The Comeback Story </h2> <p>The project started as a school initiative at Berufsschule ITECH. My teachers loved the idea and we were planning to finish it together and actually deploy it to the school's real Moodle instance. Then our block-based curriculum kicked in — a new Lernfeld (learning field) began, everyone's schedules shifted, and the project quietly slipped into the "we'll get back to it someday" pile.</p> <p>It sat there. Months passed. Then I found the GitHub Finish-Up-A-Thon Challenge — and something clicked. This was exactly the push I needed. The thought of finally showing my teachers a working, production-ready version of what we once planned together was all the motivation I needed to open the repo again.</p> <h2> My Experience with GitHub Copilot </h2> <p>When I first built this project, I had a GitHub Student subscription with access to powerful models and no strict weekly limits. Back then, Copilot was my real pair programmer — it helped me move fast and learn even faster.</p> <p>Unfortunately, the tighter weekly limits that came later made it much harder to use Copilot the same way. But those months of working with it weren't wasted — I learned a lot, grew as a developer, and now I feel ready to come back to this project and do a full refactoring, applying everything I picked up along the way.</p> devchallenge githubchallenge