Moodle 2.0 for Teachers: An Illustrated Guide (Revised)

MOODLE 2.0 FOR TEACHERS:- An Illustrated Guide An Illustrated Guide (Revised) M.J Rollins

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Moodle 2.0 for Teachers.

An Illustrated Guide.

Mark J Rollins

An Illustrated Guide | M.J Rollins 2

Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:An Illustrated Guide

First Published in Great Britain by Lulu Enterprise 2011 Copyright ©Mark J Rollins 2011 Mark Rollins assets the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved; No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Table of Contents MOODLE 2.0 FOR TEACHERS................................................................................................ 2 AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE....................................................................................................... 2 MARK J ROLLINS ...................................................................................................................... 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS.............................................................................................................. 4 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................ 6 Getting Started....................................................................................................................................................6

The Structure of Moodle...................................................................................................8 Settings................................................................................................................................................................9 Course Design and Components- Resources and Activities..............................................................................10 Course Settings..................................................................................................................................................11 Setting Up Course Area.....................................................................................................................................13

............................................................................................................................................13 File Management:-...........................................................................................................14 Uploading a file and File picker.........................................................................................................................14 Uploading Files within a course.........................................................................................................................15 Uploading a Group of Files (Zip and Unzip).......................................................................................................17

Adding resources..............................................................................................................18 Resources...........................................................................................................................................................18 Adding a Folder..................................................................................................................................................18 IMS content package.........................................................................................................................................19 Label...................................................................................................................................................................19 Page...................................................................................................................................................................19 URL.....................................................................................................................................................................20

.................................................................................................................................................... 21 Adding an activities .........................................................................................................21

Assignments.......................................................................................................................................................21 Assignment Types .............................................................................................................................................21

How to create a Quiz........................................................................................................23

Option for feedback:-........................................................................................................................................28 Flagging .............................................................................................................................................................29

Adding a Blog to Moodle.................................................................................................31

Suggested use of blogs:-....................................................................................................................................33

Adding Forums to Moodle..............................................................................................34 4

Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide. ..................................................................................................................................................... 34 ..................................................................................................................................................... 34 .................................................................................................................................................... 34 Suggested uses of forums:-...............................................................................................................................35

Other Hints and Tips.......................................................................................................36

Embedding Twitter into Moodle......................................................................................................................36 Making Moodle like Webpages.........................................................................................................................38 Adding a Slideshare to Moodle.........................................................................................................................41 Editing and tagging presentation......................................................................................................................41 Uploading ..........................................................................................................................................................41

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

MOODLE 2.0 FOR TEACHERS:-AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE. Introduction Moodle is the leading Open Source learning management system. Using Moodle, teachers can easily construct richly textured web based courses. A course can consist of a number of lessons, with each lesson including reading resource and activities such as:• • • • •

Web links Quizzes Assignments Survey Lessons

and social elements that encourage interaction and group work between students such as:• • • •

Forum Chat Wikis Glossaries

Getting Started This is a quick start guide to Setting up a Moodle Course.

This part of the course documents outlines:• • •

Course Settings Uploading Files Introduction to Resources and Activities.

Remember!

Experiment, you really can’t do much damage and if you do it can be fixed…..

There are some basic Navigation Tools you will require:-

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

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1 (Reproduced with kind permission by D Solon (www.davesolon.com) 1. Administration / Settings – Overall setup for your site. Course Name, Front page settings, Enrollment key, Guest access, how many topics boxes.

2. Turn Editing On/Off – This is where you turn on the editing so you can add resources, links, blocks, etc.

3. Add Resource / Activity – allows you to add resources and activities to topic boxes(weblinks, attachments, etc.)

4. Edit a Resource / Activity – each icon allows different editing of the specific resource to the left.

5. Example of a web page resource 1 6. Topic Box Editing Controls – allows you to rearrange the order of topic boxes, show/hide a topic box, or highlight a topic box.

7. Block Editing Controls – allows you to hide, delete, move side to side and up and down.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

The Structure of Moodle Once the course is set up, you will be presented with the Skeleton of Moodle, divided into three sections as outlined below.

The far left is the Administration side of Moodle, that allows you to manage your Course content, such as Edit Course Setting, Assign Roles, look at Grades, check on Participants etc you will quickly get the hang of this.

The Central section is like the Contents page of your course, where you can Add Resources, links to files, web pages and give instructions.

The far right is the Social side of Moodle, here you can set up News items, information for students, a calendar of events etc. Again this is straightforward just give it a try.

Administration and Navigation Most important one initially is My Profile and My Private Files

Course Design and Content Allows you to Add Resources and Activities, also general topic information

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Blocks General information HTML Mashables (Twitter)

Settings

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Course Design and Components- Resources and Activities.

Once you’ve upload your files, it is time to design your course; there are two ways to use Moodle, one as a Passive source linking to Resources or as an Active mode, linking to activities.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Course Settings This can be completed at the initial set up or edited at any time during the courses life by clicking on Settings under Administration.

Add the course name, short name and course ID (if you require one).

In the summary text box add a brief, interesting outline of the course, you can include image, web link, video etc.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Choose topic format, for example • weekly • topic • social (these can be modified any time).

(Leave these at default for moment)

• • • •

Create groups Make available for students Force a language Role renaming, for example change Manager to Boss ect

Scroll down and for the rest of this page, leave at default settings for the moment until you are more familiar with Moodle; then Click Save Changes.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Setting Up Course Area.

You will have set up you course content area, so depending you will have Weekly format Topic Format Social Format.

Whichever you have chosen the Setting Up course content procedure is the same.

First Click on Turn Editing On, the screen will change and editing icons will have been added.

To add a Title to a Week or Topic click on:Edit Summary.

To add a Title to a Week or Topic click on:Update Icon (the writing hand) You can then add, text, images, links etc just like a normal word processing programme Once complete click Save Changes.

Repeat this for each Unit, week, topic etc. it helps to organise content.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

File Management:Uploading a file and File picker In Moodle 2.0 onwards, each user has a private files area for uploading and managing a set of files. These files can only be accessed you are if you are sharing a course with another teacher.

The private file’s area is accessible via Navigation > My home > My profile > My private files or the My private files block.

It is available as a source within the file picker when selecting files to use in a course.

To add a file to your private files area • Click Navigation>My profile>My private files • Click "Manage my private files" button

• • • • •

•

Files can be renamed, deleted, moved by clicking on the icon to the right of the file

This is the tool bar to control up loading files.

Make a new folder and name it.

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The standard file picker Add-Create folder popup will appear.

If desired, create or move to a folder, Click on the Add button Browse for and select a file Click the 'Save changes' button.

Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Uploading Files within a course Once you've added a file to your files area, you can easily add it as a resource for your students.

Turn editing on > click add a resources > file Click on Add a resource and then file in the drop down list

•

•

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Give the file a name and a brief description in the HTML editor window (this can be switched off) Then scroll down and click on Add under select files.

Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

• • •

This is the file picker window adjacent to select file.

Click on upload a file and browse for file to attach.

Once the file is uploaded click save

Server Files Are files that are associated with and accessed via..... system> course category> course and can be accessed whilst in the course. These files are available to share across courses and can also be accessed by other teachers on your course.

In Moodle 2.0 onwards, files can be upload and stored in a one of a number file repository, with their management via Site Administration > Plugins > repositories including Google Doc, Dropbox, Flickr and Picasa to name a few.

Repositories

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Recent Files These are files previously uploaded or accessed, that are cached within the File picker area and again can be accessed within the course area.

This produces a File Picker repository; these are behind the scenes and cannot be accessed

by Students unless you link to them via the course Design and Content area as an Add Resource or Link If you require to Upload a large number of files it is best to first Create a Folder, then Zip the files you require (for example use Winzip).

These can be uploaded as a Zip file and then Unzipped within Moodle, the procedure is outlined in the next section.

Uploading a Group of Files (Zip and Unzip) With editing turned on, click on “add a resource” and “File” click on add and upload the zipped folder (ie file).

Click on the icon to the right of your zipped folder and choose “unzip” Click on your unzipped folder and show all the files inside it.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Adding resources Resources Resource types enable almost any kind of web content to be inserted into the course.

Basic Resources include:-

Adding a file is outlined above.

Adding a Folder Make sure editing is on and then click on “Add a resource” and in the drop down window pick Folder. Give the folder a name and description in the general window.

Now add content>option via File Picker, in which you can upload a new file or link to a file in either of your repositories. Click save and return to course where you should see your folder (Test Folder)

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

IMS content package An IMS content package allows for packages created according to the IMS Content Packaging specification to be displayed in the course. We will not look at this in the basic Moodle for Teachers.

Label A label enables text and images to be inserted among the activity links on the course page. A very useful tool to make your course content variable and dynamic.

Page A page enables a web page to be displayed and edited within the course.

The Page content is fully editable and you can add images, moodle media content, hypertext links and facilities to embed HTML coding to name a few.

As a beginner leave the rest of the option as default then click Save and return to course.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

URL Linking to a URL is similar to Moodle 1.9, click on Add a Resource and URL, give the link a name and then description if required then choose a link in content box.

If you have external links within your repositories you can add from there or the standard way is copying and pasting a URL

As a beginner leave the options and parameters as default, make visible is set to show and then click Save and return to course.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Adding an activities Assignments Click on turn editing on

then

The assignment activity module allows teachers to collect work from students, review it and provide feedback including grades.

Students can submit any digital content (files), including, for example, word-processed documents, spreadsheets, images, audio and video clips. Assignments don't necessarily have to consist of file uploads. Alternatively, teachers can ask students to type directly into Moodle using an online text assignment. There is also an offline activity assignment which can be used to remind students of 'real-world' assignments they need to complete and to record grades in Moodle for activities that don't have an online component.

Assignment Types

There are 4 types of assignments: We will just look at upload single file as an example Upload a single file This could be a Word document, spreadsheet or anything in digital format. Multiple files may be zipped and then submitted. After students upload their files, the teacher will be able to open the submission and use the Moodle interface to assign a grade and offer comments as feedback. A student may submit a file as many times as they like up until the deadline. Only the latest file is retained, and this is the one the lecturer marks.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Advanced uploading of files - options include: multiple file submission, allowing students to type a message alongside their submission & returning a file as feedback.

Online text - students type directly into Moodle, teachers can provide online feedback.

Offline Activity - teachers provide a description and due date for an assignment outside of Moodle. A grade & feedback can be recorded.

Example of “Upload Single File”

Type in (printable format), instructions, can include images, and hypertext links to documents or webpages.

Here you use numerical grade or scale already produced, set time available from and until.

Set prevention of late submission and option for allowing resubmitting, alert to teachers via email and file size.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

How to create a Quiz

Click on turn editing on

then

Give the quiz a name and instructions for the students to follow.

irst turn

This section is used to organise the display, and grading.

The section below allows you to add restrictions and password requirements.

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The following sections are quite important and allow you to vary questions and review options, for example students could be allowed to see own responses> overall feedback but leave specific feedback until later so a student could retry the question after receiving general feedback that could point them to a review site or notes.

Once you have set up the quiz, go back into main page click on the quiz and then you will be presented with the Editing quiz window.

Click in Add a question and select question type A description of question type is given to the right

Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

In this example we will look at a simple Multiple Choice option.

Type in the question you wish to ask the student and any instruction, in the question text box.

In this example I will refer to an image. So first we need to upload or link to the image.

Click on the image icon and the drop down window will give you the option to Insert/edit image

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

The following window should appear, find upload an image or URL of an image. The images can be modified using appearance options.

Find the file you wish to use (personal files or USB etc) click on the file > open >

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

General feedback is text which is shown after a question has been attempted.

Unlike feedback for a specific question which depends on the response given, the same general feedback is always shown.

Decide on one or multiple answers eg if you want just answer A, B or C to be correct rather than A and B for example

Below the answer you can give Feedback for a specific question which depends on the response given.

Type in the first of possible answers and the grade use “none” for incorrect answer “100%” for a correct answer.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Option for feedback:General feedback General feedback is text which is shown after a question has been attempted. Unlike feedback for a specific question which depends on the response given, the same general feedback is always shown.

Other options include overall feedback for a correct answer and partially correct answer.

This helps you to give constructive feedback without giving the answer directly so the students can try answering the question again,

So with the feedback options •

General

•

Specific

•

Overall feedback

When the student submits the question, they will see the answer-specific feedback next to the option(s) they selected, the overall feedback in a box below the options, and if applicable, the general feedback underneath everything else.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Once you have your bank of questions you can then manage your question in the question Bank by adding to quiz, moving, repaginating and deleting them.

Quiz Administration facilitates the ability to edit settings, roles and permissions, filters, backups, edit quiz, preview, create categories and import/export question in a variety of formats

Flagging The flagging facility has been added to Moodle 2.0 quiz, this is so students can flag a question for a variety reason for example, they may not be fully certain of the answer and may wish to return to it before submitting.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Quiz Navigation for students, this is one of the improvements to Moodle 2.0, instigated by the OU, making Moodle Quiz more navigable by students, for example indications to what quiz and questions have been completed or flagged.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Adding a Blog to Moodle The main changes in Blog module are:• Support for comments on each blog entry • Removal of group-level and course-level blogs (these are converted into forums on upgrade) • Support for external blog feeds (synchronised to Moodle blog)

Blogs can be set up as a Site Page or as a Blog with the Course Blocks

Click on Add entry

This is a simple Blog to show the functions available within Moodle Blog. notice you have full HTML editing functions, so you can format

text, add images, add

links, Moodle media table and attachments and embed HTML code.

By adding Tags, this makes the Blog more specific to searches and easier for someone to find a particular theme.

Once you are happy click save changes.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Once your Blog has been created you then have the option to edit it or delete or create a permalink. Adding a permalink allows you to send this link to someone else via email.

As well as the Course Blog, you can also link and embed External Blogs. By clicking on the Blogs under Settings and choosing external block you are provided with the following window

Click on Registering an external blog, add the URL of the blog (Enter the RSS feed URL for your external blog), give it a Title, description and tags, click Save changes and you should have an embedded list of blog post from the linked site.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Suggested use of blogs:Class Blog -Each week a student is the class blogger and posts to review what happened in the day/week. A class blog can provide the opportunity for students to discuss topics out of the classroom environment. With a blog, every person has an equal opportunity to share their thoughts and opinions Curriculum based Blog-for example the results of a field visit, ask students to collaborate and upload images of the field trip, collate data and formulate hypothesis.

Quick response-effective feedback, give students chance to give and receive effective feedback, for example:• • •

What was the least clear point of the lesson?

What was the most important point?

How useful was the lesson?

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Adding Forums to Moodle Forums can be structured in different ways, and can include peer rating of each posting. The postings can be viewed in a variety for formats, and can include attachments. By subscribing to a forum, participants will receive copies of each new posting in their email.

Click “Turn editing on”

Give the forum a title, and then you have a drop down choice of forum type.

A description of the and use Under theforum Add an activity can be given in fully editable text drop down and chose HTML window.

Forum

A single simple discussion - is just a single topic, all on one page. Useful for short, focused discussions.

Standard forum for general use - is an open forum where any one can start a new topic at any time. This is the best general-purpose forum.

Each person posts one discussion - Each person can post exactly one new discussion topic (everyone can reply to them though). This is useful when you want each student to start a discussion about, say, their reflections on the week's topic, and everyone else responds to these.

Q And A Forum - The Q & A forum requires students to post their perspectives before viewing other students' postings. After the initial posting, students can view

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide. and respond to others' postings. This feature allows equal initial posting opportunity among all students, thus encouraging original and independent thinking.

Additional setting include, giving a time period to postings, allow rating of postings and group modes.

Don’t forget to click save, then return to main page,

Suggested uses of forums:Peer Forum- working in pairs, review learning topic for a week, a peer review adds to this possibly starting a new discussion.

Q and A- allows single question post that students must answer before seeing response of the other students. Could use answers to lead into doing a quiz.

Debates -assign students into groups to debate different sides of an issue, for example evidence for and against global warming to support arguments (could be graded).

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Other Hints and Tips Embedding Twitter into Moodle Open Moodle course area.

Then click Turn editing on

In the Add a block area, select HTML In the new HTML block select configuration

Give the block an appropriate name.

You then need to copy and paste HTML coding into the block Goto the following webpage http://twitter.com/widgets/which_flash Then choose “get widget”

Click on my website Customize your widget, setting, appearance and dimensions

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Finally Finish and Grab Code

One you have the code copied return to Moodle and paste code into HTML block.

To finish click and save

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Making Moodle like Webpages Best way to achieve a webpage like look, I use icons and link each Icon to a Unit within the course.

To avoid copyright problems, access a free icon provider such as http://www.iconarchive.com/ Turn editing on In the blocks section Add A Section Link.

This will allow you to link to a Unit area, but also show the URL for this, and by copying this URL you can then create a link.

(Tip:- Keep a list the URL in a word document, so you can paste them back in later.)

In the topic outline, click on the little hand icon, to edit. To space your Icons, create a table (Insert Table). Once you have created your table, click in the first cell.

Then click on the Insert Image

You now need to insert an image

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

To upload a file click on browse, this will give you access to your files on your computer, pen drive and file repositories etc.

Click on Find or Upload an image, at which point you will be able to access File Picker, at which point you can either upload a new file or access a file you have previously upload or from a external file repository, for example Dropbox

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Click OK and the Edit Topic window will appear and you should be able to see your image.

Now you have your image, click on it and then click on the Insert Web Link You are then presented with the following window; paste the URL of the Sectional Link in the Link URL: window modify your options as you wish.

Click Updates and Save Changes.

You should now have an Image that is Clickable and will open to the Section Link

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Adding a Slideshare to Moodle First create an account with Slideshare, this is entirely free and only takes a few minutes.Once account is created is is straight forward to upload your Powerpoint presentations into Slideshare.

Create a Powerpoint presentation as normal Editing and tagging presentation.

Uploading On the main screen of myslidespace, scroll down until you find Documents and a box with ”Upload your first slideshow”.

Click on this then you will be presented with a browse for files option.

Click on this and find the file that you wish to upload.

The supported formats are outlined.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

You can then enter details and tags for your slideshow, for example if you want it to be public, private, adding tags and a description of the slideshow.

Once you are happy, click publish and the message slide being converted appears, this may take several minutes depending on size of file.

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Once the presentation is uploaded, click on the slideshow you wish to use and embed in to Moodle, you will see on the right-hand side a small window with the embedding code, copy this by left clicking in the window(it should turn blue) then right click your mouse and copy.

Once you have copied the code, return to your Moodle Site.

Turn editing on and then..

Click on Add page> give the page a Title and description then, in the content window add the COPIED HTML code and PASTE.

Once you have opened the page, toggle to the HTML editor and simple paste the Embedding Code

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Moodle 2.0 for Teachers:- An Illustrated Guide.

Click Update to finish the embedding.

Below is the Slideshare as seen in the Moodle window.

Save and Return to course

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