1. 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.

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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

5. 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

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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!

11. 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

15. Many Thanks! Give me your email address and I will send through the Presentation as Power-Point and PDF. Please contact me with any questions and suggestions. [email_address]