This course is designed to:

• introduce you to the school VLE (Moodle)
• give you a few starting ideas as to what you can do with a VLE
• show you how to upload and embed files on the VLE
• give you some pointers for some possible next steps for you.

What on earth is a '' anyway?



Moodle is the name of the software powering the school website. It's a bit like saying 'Word' is the name of the Wordprocessor that you use.

Moodle is a VLE, or Virtual Learning Environment. It's kind of like facebook, but designed for teaching and learning, rather than for viewing drunken photos and 'poking'.

If you'd like some more information about the school VLE and how it is designed, you can have a look back at the 'Big friendly guide to olchfa.org.uk'.

What can I do with it?

There are lots of things you can do with a VLE, but we're going to concentrate in this session at:

1. Uploading documents and powerpoints to share with students
2. Creating links to websites for students to access
3. Embedding videos and other learning materials
   

Why would I bother?

There are many benefits to giving students easy access to learning materials outside from the hour or two they spend in our classrooms. These include:

• Allowing students to go back and consolidate their learning, or recap points they didn't completely understand
• Provides managed extension opportunities both for those students with a keen interest, and those who fall into the 'More Able and Talented' category
• Allow students who are absent from lessons to keep up to date with work
• Provides an easy avenue to share student produced work

1. You won't break it!
Everyone who has started on Moodle has done so by playing around and seeing what works. Get stuck in and play around, but don't be afraid to ask if you get stuck

2. Tabs.
Most web browsers allow you to have different pages / site open in 'tabs' which you can easily click between.



You can make any link open in a new tab by right-clicking and choosing 'open link in new tab'. Why not try it with this link.

You can make a new tab by holding down the 'ctrl' key and pressing 't'

3. Turn editing on

Before you can do anything to the site you have to press the 'Turn Editing On' button. You will find this in the top right hand corner of the screen.

Each department has a series of 'courses'. These are pages that can only be accessed by staff / students who are logged on to the site. This means that you can post materials here without worrying about them being open to the whole world.

For today's session you can use one of those (open a new tab to this page and go to your departments pages) or you can use any one of the dummy courses we have set up for today.

a. Uploading a file

You can upload any file (word document, powerpoint etc) to the VLE for students to access.

1. If you haven't already done so, turn editing on
   
   
2. Decide where you want the file and click 'Add a resource' in that topic
   
   
3. Choose 'Link to a file or website' from the list
   
   
4. Click on 'Choose or upload a file'
   
   
5. Click on 'Upload a file'
   
   
6. Browse to the file and click 'upload' (in a similar way to adding an attachment to an email)
   
   
7. Find the file you want the students to access and click on 'Choose' to the right of it
   
   
8. You should now be back in the window where you started. Make sure you click 'Force Download'
   
   
9. Scroll to the bottom and click 'Save and return to course'

b. Creating a webpage: An alternative to uploading

Once you have uploaded a file then any student can download the file and view it. However, sometimes you might not want them to download a whole file, it might be easier for them just to be able to read the information online.

An alternative for Word documents

Rather than uploading a word document, you can create a page on the VLE.

To do this, click on 'Add a resource' again, but this time, choose 'Compose a webpage'.

Type in a name - this is the text that will be displayed on the course page.

Copy the text from your word document and paste it into the website.

Click either of the save buttons.

c. Adding links

As well as adding files, you can create links to external websites. The process is very similar to before.

1. Click 'Add a resource' and choose 'Link to a file or website'

2. Add a name for the link

3. Paste in the URL (web address) of the site you want to the link to in the 'Location' box

4. Click 'Save and return to course'

d. Embedding

Much online content can be 'embedded' in a webpage, rather than having to send students off to view it on another page. This has several advantages, the biggest of which is that it gets rid of the 'comments' that many websites (such as YouTube) have on their pages, many of which are not suitable for us to be directing students towards.

We're going to look at how you embed a video from a services such as Youtube, and how you can create and embed an online slideshow as an alternative to uploading a Powerpoint. In fact, any site that provides 'embed' code for it's content can be treated in the same way.

i) Embedding Video

1.Choose 'Insert a webpage'



2. In the main section, click the Toggle Html Source Button

3. Youtube' and similar sites include an 'embed' section



Select All the text in the 'Embed' window and copy it (hold down 'ctrl' and press 'c')

4. Paste this text into the webpage you are creating on the VLE. Click 'Save and display'. This will bring up the window for you to check if the embedding has worked.


You can also embed a video diectly onto the main course page. To do this choose 'Insert a label' from the 'Add a resource' menu and paste the 'embed' code into the box in the same way.

ii) Embedding slides: An alternative to Powerpoint

Many of our students don't own a copy of Microsoft Office, which makes it harder (although not impossible) for them to view any Powerpoints that you make available via the VLE.

As an alternative, you can create online slideshows which the students can view through their web browser. These are simplified versions of the slides, so may not work for complex powerpoints, with lots of animation or complex transitions, but they do allow students easy access to the materials when they need them.

1. Open a new tab and go to docs.olchfa.org.uk

2. Log in with your school email username and password

3. Click on 'upload', then upload the powerpoint that you want to add

4. When it has finished uploading you will see the slides (although images may take longer to appear). Click on 'Share' in the top right of the screen and choose 'publish / embed'



You can now either add a link to the slides by following the instructions above for adding a link or create a webpage and embed the slides on that.

a. Changing the number of boxes on a course page

Each course is divided up into a number of numbered boxes (or 'topics'). You can add or remove topics to suit the course you are building.

To change the number of topics, go to the 'Administration' menu in the left hand sidebar and choose 'Settings'

From here you can change the number of topics using the dropdown list




If you want to prepare your course ahead of time, but only allow students access to some parts of it, you can hide any topic from student access by using the icon.

b. Adding Images

You can add images more or less anywhere you can add text (the exception being in the name of a file or link).

You can either show a picture that you have uploaded to the VLE, or one that is online somewhere. Before you do either, you should check that the image is not covered by copyright.

1. Click on the edit button ( ) where you want to add the image

2. Above the textbox should be this icon ( ). Click it

3. If your image is online, right click it and choose 'Save image location'. You should then paste this into the 'Image URL' box. You will need to add a brief text summary of the picture in the 'Alternative text' box - this is for screen reading software. Click 'OK'

4. If your image is on your computer, browse and upload the file at the bottom left of the window. Once it has been uploaded, you can click on the file and the 'Image URL' box will be automatically filled in. Add alternative text and click 'OK'

5. You can resize the image by clicking and dragging any of the corner icons. (By using the corners you ensure that the ratio of height:width stays the same)

c. Moving, hiding or deleting

Next to each item that you've added are a series of icons.


Indent - will move the title / link in to the right

Move up or down - clicking this will open a green rectangle between all the existing elements on the page. Click the one where you want the file to be places.

Edit - returns you to the screen where you created the page / link

Delete - removes the file. You'll be asked to confirm. Check the title before you hit yes!

Hide - this greys out the name and means that while you can see the file, any students visiting the site won't. This means you can get all the resources together ahead of time, and just unhide them as you need.

d. Adding sidebar blocks

In many cases we've added blocks of text or images to the left hand side of departmental pages. We've done this using 'blocks'.

There are a range of blocks, many of which we still haven't got round to playing with, but a couple of useful ones are:

HTML - Allows you to add text / images in blocks. Anything you can add in a webpage you can add here, as long as it fits!

RSS Feed - Allows you to pull content from a site with an RSS feed (such as the BBC news site). Have a look at the Business Studies or PE pages for examples.

Congratulations!


What next?

• Add more resources...
  
  
• Share what you are doing, and ideas for future developments with the rest of your department...
  
  
• Have a look at what some of the other departments are doing with their pages...
  
  
  

Taking it futher

We've barely touched the surface of what is possible, but hopefully given you enough to get started. By far the best way to see what's what is to have a play around! But if you'd like some more guidance try one of the following places:

• Have a look at the LEA course to see some of the next steps that you can take...
  
  
• Have a look at the Moodle site itself, particularly the pages of advice for teachers on how to use the software
  
  
• Search Google, Youtube or Twitter for some other great examples of what people are doing, and get connected to other people who are using Moodle.

• Keep an eye on the 'Big Friendly Guide' course and the help forum for advice ideas and further inset opportunities