Moodle: Web Presence and Parent Communication the Easy Way Grade

Moodle

Moodle is an Open Source Learning Management System (LMS), akin to Blackboard and WebCT. The Moodle people call it a Course Management System (CMS), but I think that's confusing because some people use the term "content management system" (I consider Drupal an example).

Moodle requires a web server, PHP, and . These tools are available for popular platforms sometimes called LAMP, WAMP or MAMP.

Moodling Around

The first activity is to create your account in Moodle, and then log in as the administrator to give your new account administrative privileges. You'll then create a course, make yourself a teacher for the course and see what it is your teachers will do. See http://mymoodle.occ.utk.edu/. Then you'll play with creating a course. The procedure goes something like this:

  1. Go to the Login page and click the "Create new account" button.
  2. Fill out the form. Check email. Follow the URL. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
  3. Log out.
  4. Log in as admin with the password on the board.
  5. Click on "users" on the left hand side.
  6. Click on "Assign Admins"
  7. Click your name on the right-hand side of the screen and the left arrow to make yourself an admin.
  8. Click on "tetc2005" at the top of the page to return.
  9. Click on "courses" and then "add a new course"
  10. Fill in the blanks and add yourself as a teacher on the next page
  11. Click on your course and click the "Turn editing On" button.
  12. Add some "activities" and "resources".

    Getting Your Own Moodle

    We'll now move on to looking at how to run your own Moodle; you can do this on the one that we have been using, but if from what you see so far you're interested in having your own Moodle for your classroom, school, or district, send me jay@utk.eduan email with the word you'd like at the end of this URL: http://lugh.sunsite.utk.edu/moodlesites/. After I have created it for you, you can go to that URL and click on your Moodle. The first time you'll go through about a dozen install screens, just keep scrolling down and pressing next.

    Stuff to look at

    1. Course Categories and Creating Courses
    2. Site Settings
    3. Themes
    4. Modules
    5. Blocks
    6. Filters
    7. Backup
    8. Authentication
    9. Assigning Teachers, Creators and Admins

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