As the semester is coming to a close it is time again to backup the latest version of your courses.  The following screencast shows how to backup your Moodle course for archiving:

Here are the steps:

1) Go to your course main page.

2) On the admin panel click “Backup”

3) If you are creating a template, uncheck the box that says “Include enrolled users” then click next.

4) Make sure all components that you want included in your archive are checked (they should be by default) then click next.

5) Click perform backup (this may take a while so this may be a good time to get coffee

6) Press continue, then click the download link next to the “Backup” file you created.

7) Save the file somewhere you can find it. 

Let me know if you have questions,

Doug

Short post today – without a screencast to watch (woohoo!). I found this excellent Mahara tutorial compliments of the American University of Beirut.

Follow this link to access it.

Cheers,

Doug

Hot Questions is a new Moodle Activity module used to collect burning questions from your students and proritize them. Students can either post their own questions or “like” questions posted by others. The most “liked” questions bubble to the top. Take a look at the screencast below for more details.

To add a Hot Question to your moodle page:

1. Turn editing on.
2. Select one of the “Activities” drop downs.
3. Choose Hot Question.

Cheers

Doug

Let me know if you have questions,

Doug

In this screencast, I look at the Moodle Database tool. This tool enables you to create forms and store data in a variety of ways. It has data fields that include text, numbers, dates, pictures, and any form of digital file. It allows you to edit how the information is stored, searched, and displayed. Here’s a short screencast outlining the tool:

Cheers,

Doug

If you have a mobile application that has the ability to subscribe to an iCal feed, Moodle supports this. You just need to copy the address from the iCal button that appears at the bottom of your calendar. Below is a demonstration of how this works using Mac iCalendar.

Cheers,

Doug

This one’s a little more on the techie side of things than my usual posts. As many of you know one of the proposed changes for Moodle in the 2.1 release at the end of June is the addition of a legacy backup restore function. Currently, Moodle 2.0.x will not restore a 1.9 backup file. Playing around this weekend I found a managable solution to this. Here are the steps.

1. Download and install a copy of the Mac (in my case) or PC versions of Moodle 1.9.x.
2. As admin, restore all of your old 1.9.x backup files into new courses.
3. Download the zip version of Moodle 2.x from the main download directory and unzip.
4. Copy all files from the 2.x moodle directory into the htdocs/moodle directory of your desktop version. 
5. Browse to http://localhost/moodle and login as admin.

At this point you will be prompted to upgrade. Say yes. If you use 3rd party modules as we do, you may encounter places where you are told that they are not compatible with 2.x. If that happens you will need to either delete these or upgrade them in your htdocs/moodle/mod directory – then press continue in your web browser.

Ultimately the upgrade will finish. Just run a system backup and presto – out will pop the Moodle 2.x .mbz backup files. Just upload these back to your object repository for use on the production server.

Let me know if you have questions, but this trick worked for me, and really didn’t take much time. (In reality you could do this on your production server, but make sure to back it up first!)

Cheers,

Doug

If you are both a Geogebra user and a Moodle user, there is a very easy way to post your Geogebra models to Moodle so that students can interact with them.

1. Create your model in Geogebra.
2. From the file menu choose Export -> Dynamic Worksheet as webpage
3. Switch to the advanced tab and select the features you’d like to display
4. Change the dropdown from File: html to Clipboard: Moodle
5. Press the “Clipboard button”

Now all you need to do is go to your Moodle course and add a label, webpage, discusison post, etc. When the editor appears press the <> button then right click/paste. The rest is automatic.

Here’s a screencast to make it clearer.

Cheers,

Doug

Cheers,
Doug

I just discovered a new tool for creating screencasts! Screencasts are the video clips I’ve included in previous posts that show some or all of your computer screen while also recording narration. So far I’ve been using Jing and Screencast.com to create these which has worked wonderfully so far.

The other day however, while looking for another tool, I came across another excellent way to create screencasts without having to download any software or sign up for an account. To create your screencast:

1.  Make sure you have something interesting on the computer screen to demonstrate and a microphone plugged in…
2. Point your web browser to http://www.screencast-o-matic.com and click on the “Start Recording” button. (Say yes if it asks you for permission.
3. Stretch the box that appears over the section of your screen that you’d like to demo.
4. Press Record

Once you’re finished, return to the screencast-o-matic browser window and select what you would like to do with the video – including upload to screencast-o-matic, youtube, or download to your computer. If you choose to download the video the software gives you the option of three different formats:

• mp4 – Good for importing into iMovie
• avi – Good for importing into Windows Movie Maker
• flv – Good for importing into Moodle

The free version of Screencast-o-matic (SOM) gives you up to 15 min per video – which is plenty for a tutorial. Remember you’ll want people to view it

Feel free to share your own screencasts in the comments below.
Cheers,
Doug