Instant Moodle: Basic Hands-on Workshop in Moodle LMS

These links are used in the Instant Moodle workshop, given at the Hawaii TESOL 2009 Conference, held at the University of Hawaii, Hilo Campus, on February 14, 2009.

Following and learning from these existing (semi-permanent) resources will put participants through the basic steps needed and equip them with the knowledge involved in setting up, adding basic content, and managing an online course using Moodle. A course can be created quickly and easily for free on Ninehub. (see link below). The live workshop presentation offers guidance for building learning activities and assignments to make an online classroom that can be an integral component of anyone’s teaching.

List of Quick Start Links:

• Quick Start Guide to Moodle - a one-page beginner's guide and overview (Colby-Sawyer College)
• AUB's Moodle Tutorial and Tips page - absolutely the best starting point
• Teaching with Moodle (Moodle.org Docs page)
• Teaching Documention (Moodle.org Doc page)
• E-learning MyMoodle Tutorial Books, American University of Beirut (AUB)

Print Resources and Video:

• Moodle Quickstart Guide for AUB Faculty - PDF 836 Kb
• Treadwell.cce.cornell.edu | MOODLE Documentation - video lessons for students and teachers
• Video Tutorials on how to use Moodle (go to the Learning Moodle (Making Hybrid Classes section) and login as guest) - There are a series of many video tutorials on each major step of making a Moodle course.
• Example of a course teaching checklist - part of the Lappian Moodle site of tutorials and useful Moodle information

Hands-on Moodle:
Try it out for yourself. These answer the question: Where can I actually try Moodle?

• Moodle.org Demonstration Site
• Ninehub.com - create your own instant Moodle site and add courses. It's free (but may become limited soon). You'll have full admin rights which is great to find out what features and capabilities exist, but it can be a bit daunting - at first. Use the basic tutorials (text and video) first to understand the basics of using and setting up a course and activities with it.
• D.Brooks' Edvantix.ninehub.com -- The Moodle Training Course for ESL Teachers is a course that already exists - so set-up isn't needed. You'll be a TEACHER once you sign up and have the rights to add content and create activities.
• Try setting up some Moodle activities. Remember in some cases, you may need to upload some necessary files( Office documents, audio or video media, etc) in the Files areas.

Instant Moodle I: Set up your online class today (45 minutes / PC or Mac lab)

A summary of the workshop by David Brooks
at Hawaii TESOL Conference
Feb.14, 2009 12:40-1:20 UCB 114 (lab).

Handout: Moodle Quickstart Guide for AUB Faculty - PDF 836 Kb
This quickstart introduces you to the Moodle resources.
Find here the PDF version

This workshop puts teachers through basic steps involved in setting up, constructing learning activities, and managing an online course using Moodle. The free Moodle hosting service, Ninehub, has several advantages over trying to do so yourself. The presenter will briefly explain what a learning management system (LMS) like Moodle offers. He provides guidelines for choosing a selecting a Moodle host, and leads you through hands-on steps to accomplish enrolling students, organizing the course content, and managing assignments.


Moodle is an increasingly popular learning management system for schools and colleges, which exceeds its expensive rivals, Blackboard and WebCT. Not only is it free Open Source software, but it is based on a social constructivist theory of education. There is a simple-to-use test-making module within it for creating powerful online tests that include use of media files, multiple question formats, and both simple and sophisticated grading functions. Further, it has several useful activity modules for enhancing communication and student-teacher feedback, such as the forum, journal, and survey.


The presenter is using Moodle to help Japanese college students learn international communication in an EFL course. The workshop will be appropriate for teachers of any experience level wanting to add online components to a course or who would like to create a fully online classroom. Since it’s free to start and develop the course, you can begin small and build up your repertoire of skills and the level of student involvement.

Watch a brief video on what Moodle is

Click the link above to view a short video presentation on what Moodle is.

How to Sign up for a Moodle Course

This video demonstrates how to create, verify and login to a moodle site the first time. Suitable for both students and teachers. For best playback (slow connection), please download this video and watch it locally.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7569894546776927656

The Basics Moodle Stuff: A tutorial on how to do important stuff

It's rather a long tutorial video (sometimes rather banal), but is useful still.

http://www.houseoftutorials.net/video/moodle1/

It has the basics of how to set-up a course, create labels and activities, making an assignment, setting up grades, enrolling a student (without email confirmation), and other important basic information about making Moodle work. It assumes you have full administrator rights (such as on Ninehub).

Multimedia Plugins in Moodle

There are two ways to display for playback audio and video files in a Moodle activity or quiz or test item.

1) Embed using the HTML code

Use the Moodle Editor; first toggle the HTML Source (using the < > button). Now you can paste in the embed code (snippet of HTML code that most sites give (but not always).

The Google video above was pasted into this blog entry using a snippet of HTML code (embed code).

2) In some cases, the file you want to play is one you have offline. It's not available online.
a) First, upload it into the FILES area of your Moodle site.
Note: Many media file types are supported (See the Moodle Docs page below to find out which ones do work). There was a video tutorial on how to do that above:

b) Then copy the full URL of that file once it has been uploaded into your FILES area.

c) Insert the HREF code (like the one below) for this multimedia file into your text.
BE SURE TO SWITCH to < > (Toggle HTML Source). Change (paste over to replace) the "filepath.com" to the URL of the file that you copied in step b.

Sample < href = " filepathname.com "> Media File Link < / a >

(remove excess spaces -- see Moodle Docs link just below for a visual model to imitate)

d) Be sure to change the full filepathname ("URL between the quotes"), and also give it an understandable label (replace: Media File Link).

For more detailed info, see:
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Multimedia_plugins

What is Web 2.0

http://web20applications.wetpaint.com/page/What+is+Web+2.0%3F

See an amazing video introduction to the meaning of Web 2.0 as a new evolutionary juncture in human information systems and digital communications. It's easily overlooked, but I would suspect may be the single most powerful reason we can attribute to the election of America's first president who is a person of color. It's an hypothesis that I will leave undefended at the moment since that's not the purpose of this post.



Some useful links about iPhone and Web 2.0

http://whyilovemyiphone.blogspot.com/2009/02/now-you-can-print-photos-for-free-with.html

http://goingweb20.blogspot.com