Part 3: Essentials for Teachers with New Course Sites

Transcription

1 Part 3: Essentials for Teachers with New Course Sites Moodle 2 includes many new features. One of these is the file management system through which you can organize, prepare and upload content into your Moodle course site. Before you begin, however, please ask your local Moodle Manager must create a course site for you. (Part 2 of this Guide) This will be an empty course shell within which you will: A. Configure your course site. This is much like getting your regular classroom prepared before your students arrive. B. Organize and create some of your digitized course content offline. This includes organizing your course into modules (units, chapters, etc.) on your own computer even before uploading any content into your Moodle site. This is a very important step that will help you avoid confusion later. Your course content can include many types of files like Word, PDFs, PowerPoints, images, audio files, videos, etc. C. Upload course content to your course site so your students can gain access to it from any Internet connection. If you have followed steps A and B, your course site will be highly organized and easy for your students to navigate. That way they will be able to focus on the content rather than the technology which is only a pathway to learning. Help is always available. If you are currently enrolled in Integrating Moodle into Your Teaching you can post questions in the Help Desk forum. If you are not currently enrolled in the course, you can me at romeo@romeomarquis.com, by phone at (voice or text) and through Skype (romeomarquis). Let s begin by creating a new course titled Online Learning and Systemic Change. This course will be the capstone course in an online certificate program. My local Moodle Manager has created a Moodle site for me as described in Part 2 of this manual. Here we go... Steps 1 and 2: Configuring my course site and adding content from files saved on my computer. 11

2 The empty shell created for me by my local Moodle administrator looks like this: I will now click on Edit settings. In the Edit course settings page that opens I will do only the following: Add a course description in the Course summary box no more than one or two paragraphs. I will add a more complete outline (syllabus) later. Scroll down to the Format menu and change Weekly format to Topics format. Change the Number of weeks/topics to six to whatever you want. Skip the rest, scroll down to the bottom of the page and Save changes. Then I will click on Turn editing on and my Moodle shell will look like this: Note the tiny hands holding a pen. Clicking on any of these tiny icons will enable me to enter some text. I will get started by clicking on the small hand in the top block and I will see this: 12

3 I will ignore the Section name information. I will enter some descriptive text directly into the Summary box. I will then use the word processing toolbar to make my title stand out. Once I have finished, I will scroll down and Save changes. The result will look like this in your course site: Your students will not see the small icons. Nor will they see the pull-down menus. If you return to your Course administration panel you can Turn editing off. Then you will see exactly what your students will see. 13

4 Let s turn editing back on. Now you will see the tiny icons again. I will add some content from my computer along with a couple of Web sites. To do that, I will use the Add a resource menu. First I will Add a resource and pull down to Folder. I will give the folder a name, add a little information. Then I will click on Create folder. This will enable me to include several items inside this folder Word documents, audio files, videos, PowerPoints, and so on any files that are already on my computer and do not have to be linked to the Internet. When I click on Create folder I will see this: I will then enter the folder name and click OK. Let s continue... 14

5 This is the File Picker, a brand new feature in Moodle 2. The file picker lets you add files to your new folder by locating them in any of several places. In this case, I ve already done some research and have downloaded several items that I want my students to consider even before the course begins. This is also an ideal place for my course outline and perhaps even a brief video introducing the course. Once you click on Upload a file, follow the prompts to browse to the file, give it a name, and upload it. Now I can click Add again to upload additional files that I have selected. I followed the same procedure to add my course syllabus and a brief video that I downloaded to my computer earlier. My students will then see this: 15 Now I can scroll down to the bottom of the page to Save and return to course. I will also Turn editing off.

6 When they click on the folder they will see At some point I might decide to add more content to this folder, delete outdated content or edit what is there. To do this, I will Turn editing on and click on the editing icon. Then I can click on Preliminary resources to return to my open folder. Then I can add new items, delete old ones, and so on. When I have finished, I can scroll down to Save and return to course. I can follow these same steps to develop each module in my course. Need help? romeo@romeomarquis.com Skype: romeomarquis Let s move on... Step3: Adding links to resources on the Web Now I want to add a couple of links to Web sites that I want my students to use. I have selected three: The International Association for K-12 Online Learning The International Society for Technology in Education Digital Learning Now From my course site I will Turn editing on > Add a resource > URL. Then: 16

7 I will enter the name of the Web site. I will add a bit of information. I will enter the URL. I will scroll down to Display > New window. Finally, I will scroll down to Save and return to course. Now I can Turn editing off to take a new look at what I have done so far: At this point I have added the content for the introductory module of Online Learning and Systemic Change. Step 4: Adding interactivity through an online discussion forum Turn editing on > Add an activity > Forum 17

8 In this case I want to facilitate a discussion about the International Association for K-12 Online Learning Web site. Then I scrolled down to Save and return to course. I would like to change the order of items so that the discussion forum will be directly under the Web site to which it refers. I also want to indent it for additional emphasis. Note the tiny arrows to the right of the link to the forum. The arrow pointing right allows me to intent the link. The up-and-down arrows enable me to change the order of items. I will begin by clicking on the upand-down arrows and then click in the area to which I want to move the forum. Then I will click on the right arrow to indent the forum. Once I then Turn editing off, your students will see: 18

9 Note the News forum in the introductory block of the course site. It is different from all other forums. It is not an interactive forum. Only the teacher can post into the News forum. When that happens, everyone enrolled in the course receives the teacher s post as an . I use the News forum every Monday to post my Moodle Monday announcement to my entire class. In my Moodle Monday s I typically add two or three short informational items plus the current week s priorities. Nobody in my classes can say, I didn t know... Now I have a complete introductory section at the top of my course site. I have posted some background information directly into Moodle, I have created a folder with several files inside, I have created links to external Web sites, and I have created an interactive forum placed directly under the appropriate link and indented the forum link. I can now repeat these same steps to create Modules 1 6. My introductory module (the zero section) includes background information for my course. Modules 1 6, by contrast, will focus on specific topics that reflect the major topics in my syllabus. I can use the News forum for my Moodle Monday announcements, the current week s priorities and any other reminders that I deem necessary. But isn t this time consuming? I m already overloaded! There is definitely a time commitment required for developing a Moodle project. However, there is a huge time savings later. Let me explain... 19

10 In my Course administration panel I have two important links Backup and Reset. Once I have taught your course and I am ready to close it, I will click on Backup. This will create a zip file including all course and students data as a permanent record. Then I can click on Reset to empty my course site of all student data while I retain all my course data and my site is ready for another group of students no need to rebuild my course. Now all I have to do is tweak it as needed and I m ready to go. There are times, however, when I want to insert an announcement or other information pertaining to only this course and not to a future section of the course. I can do that with a Label. Here s how: Suppose I want to add some dates for my discussion forum without changing the instructions in the forum that I want to use each time I teach this course. With editing on, I will Add a resource and choose Label. I can insert the dates I want and then scroll down to Save changes and return to course. I will then use the up-down and right-hand arrows to position the label exactly where I want it. Finally I will Turn editing off. Once the assigned dates have passed, I can simply delete this label as we move on the the next assignments. When I use labels in this way, they will not be included when I reset my course. I am now ready to develop the remaining modules in my Moodle course. Happy Moodling! Need help? romeo@romeomarquis.com Skype: romeomarquis

11 Part 4: Essentials for teachers whose course sites have been upgraded from an earlier version of Moodle Where Did My Course Files Go? First, please browse through Part 1 of this booklet to familiarize yourself with Moodle s new look. Then browse through Part 3 for teachers with a new course site in Moodle 2.1 pay close attention to the File picker and how it is used. Moodle 2.0 has dramatically altered the way files are uploaded and managed. This can be alarming at first, but don t worry, all your files are still there. This section will help you locate your files. To locate your course files Turn editing on. Next from the Add Resource menu choose File. Scroll down to the content section and click Add. 21

12 This will bring you to the new File Picker menu. Your upgraded course files are now located in Server files. Click on Server files. You have two options for viewing these files: View as icons or View as list. We found that View as list is quicker. We will locate an image used in the Sticky Topic, or top 0 section summary. By clicking on the + sign in front of the Course section summaries and Drilling down we ll see the.jpg file of the image used in topic summary 0. Drilling down in each topic summary we can see all of the image files used in the summaries in this course. Clicking on Legacy files we ll find.doc,.docx,.jpg,.html,.ppt, gif,.bmp and any other files used in this Moodle course. Looking in each folder we will see the files specifically used in each topic! 22

13 Getting use to the new file system will take a little time, but now you can relax and know that all your files have made it successfully to your new upgraded Moodle course! The huge benefit now is that you can conserve file space and you can share files between your courses without having to re upload them! You ll just navigate to the file picker; locate the file, click, and Voila! Your files will be linked! You can even share files between teachers! 23