Moodle Basics

MOODLE TRICKS AND TIPS: GOING BEYOND THE OBVIOUS Tony Mobbs: International School Prague CEESA 2009 [email_address] Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a Free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites.

Going Beyond! Moodle is a brilliant tool to use for communication with students and faculty but you can expand the use by using some of the more unusual features. I work a lot with HTML coding without knowing much but this does allow you to be a lot more imaginative and to save time whilst improving the use of Moodle. Just experiment and try things in Moodle, you are only limited by your own imagination! You will also find many instructional videos on Youtube

GLOSSARIES This module allows a dictionary or list of definitions to be maintained. Glossaries can be set to create automatic links within course documents to glossary terms. Glossaries can be course-wide or specific to a topic or week. You can create glossaries where students can enter terms, and definitions can be graded, and commented upon. You can also set it so that all submissions to a glossary need the teacher's approval to be posted. You can also edit, allow students to edit, upload files of any kind, add diagrams.

Examples of Using Podcasts with Glossaries Set up a glossary, give instructions, add a rubric, and make each student a concept (subject) Upload the podcast as a file When the student is opened the podcast can be downloaded and reviewed through iTunes The comments can then be entered in a text box and everyone can view them Our Middle School music teachers get students to peer review compositions based on a rubric, which can also be posted IB English and Language orals can be peer reviewed on the same way. Teachers can build portfolios of work of any genre in this way, presentations, videos, podcasts, discussions………….but only one file can be stored at a time per concept Students can self assess against a rubric and save examples of best practice I am developing a way of storing exemplar work samples for students to view against a rubric

Peer Editing and Review Using Discussion Forums The forum module is for online discussions. When you add a new forum, you will be presented with a choice of different types - a simple single-topic discussion, a free-for-all general forum, or a one-discussion-thread-per-user. This is an alternative to upload and peer review work. When you comment you can add documents such as rubrics. The student can also add self-edited or peer edited documents You can also set up groups to collaborate on a shared document. This can also be done through WIKIs

Some Neat Tricks With Moodle! You can use HTML code to be able to post “difficult” documents into Moodle and allow editing, such as: YouTube videos Webpages Word Documents Tables

Embedding Video and Sound You can either upload a video "whole" as a file and then choose to display it. Remember you only have 16MB limit. Moodle will automatically play it when selected. You should upload this a a Quicktime (.mov) file. Upload sound clips in the same way. An alternative is to to link externally to a streaming video, such as from United Streaming, or directly to a YouTube video. This has the advantage of using less memory, which is important when you want to back up or restore the course.

Step By Step! Linking to YouTube videos . To download and save a video in Moodle takes up a lot of memory. You can put in an external link to your required video and play it in Moodle. Remember to check your link in case it changes, could be embarrassing! Find your video in YouTube. Highlight and select the HTML coding in the EMBED window. Go to your Moodle page. Choose compose webpage from the “ add a resource ” menu. Give a title and description. On the right side of the compose a web page window click on the HTML toggle button . This should give you a <br /> tag. Paste in your copied code from YouTube after this. Set your window and save changes. Your video will show up in a new window.

Using HTML to post resources as webpages within Moodle It takes a lot of memory to save Word documents in Moodle It also means that these have to be downloaded every time These can be converted to web pages and the HTML code copied. If you have a Word document with tables, etc and want to post this straight into Moodle then it is easy to do. 1/ Save your Word document as a webpage, from the file menu. 2/ View the HTML source from the View menu. 3/ Select all and copy this HTML text. 4/ On Stroodle choose Compose a Webpage and turn on the HTML toggle. These are the <> on the right of the menu. 5/ After <br /> paste you HTML copied code, save and it will appear as you want. 6/ Toggle the <> and you can see what you will get!

Word Processing Documents It takes a lot of memory to save Word documents in Moodle It also means that these have to be downloaded every time you want to work with them. These can be converted to web pages and the HTML code copied. Open your page in Word. Choose File -> Save as web page and the web page view will open. Choose View -> HTML source -> Edit -> Select all -> Copy Open up a new web page from the resource box in Moodle. Write a title Click on the toggle. Paste in your copied code. Set your window and save changes. Your document should appear in a new window. You can then edit the document.

Word Processing Tables Converting Word pages with tables: I find that I have many pages that I have created in Word containing tables that I would like to post directly in Moodle. By converting to a web page format it is very easy to do this. Open your page in Word. Choose File -> Save as web page and the web page view will open. Choose View -> HTML source -> Edit -> Select all -> Copy You should be able to edit the table by using the toggle button

Copying Sections From Web Pages I use this if there are web-links that I want to post, or sections from web pages I would like to post. Locate your page with the web-links on them. Open up a webpage from the resources box in Moodle Copy the section from your web page including the live links Paste this directly into the into the web page box and save Your links should be live, click them to check! Cite your source.

Posting Web Pages This again uses the idea of copying and posting your document in HTML code. Posting documents e.g. an Atlas Unit plan or a rubric online Have a webpage on the screen. Choose View -> Page Source -> Select All -> Copy Choose compose webpage from the “ add a resource ” menu. Give a title and description. On the right side of the compose a web page window click on the HTML toggle button, Then paste in your code. Set your window and save changes. Your Unit Plan should appear in a new window. To Edit your document in Moodle. Click off the toggle button and you should be able to edit your text and tidy it up. You must do this through the window in which you set up the webpage

Posting Bookmarks A quick way of posting bookmarks: Choose Organize bookmarks File -> Export -> give the file a title Locate this file Open the file in your browser Select and copy the section of bookmarks you want Paste these into a webpage created on Moodle The links should be live

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Moodle Basics

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