During the long months last year that I spent writing my book Moodle for Teaching 7-14 Year Olds, I was comforted by the thought that another Moodle colleague João Pedro Soares Fernandes was also toiling away on his publication – which I am glad to see has just now come out.  It’s a great read -in fact, I spent all today reading it (instead of marking) and have learned a lot. You can read a sample chapter of the book (from the Packt website) by clicking here This chapter shows you how to integrate multimedia elements  in quizzes, lessons and assignments and also how to create interactive exercise and games – just  my sort of thing! It has to be said though, that Moodle 1.9 Multimediais about 75% Multimedia and 25%  Moodle , but that is exactly how it should be: this book is aimed at those who already know the basics of uploading resources and creating activities in Moodle  and who are now looking for more exciting ways to enhance their students’ learning. While Moodle can do a lot of wonderful things – don’t I know it – sometimes it is useful to look outside of its Walled Garden to the Wider Web and gather in the Best of the Rest. This is what João’s book does: it covers, thoroughly, practically and in an easy-to-grasp manner a wide variety of  image, sound and video applications that can be embedded in Moodle or work alongside Moodle to the benefit of teacher and student. The full details are here but I particularly enjoyed the chapters on pictures (using GIMP) sound (with VLC and Audacity) and video (including instructions for Movie Maker and Photostory) Wherever possible he refers the reader to  free or  Open Source software and includes a huge range of “fun” Web 2.0 apps, many of which I know and love (Voki/Voicethread/Jing/Everything Google) and some new to me in the sphere of mind-mapping/ floor planning…oh and many more.. There are sections on assessment  with HotPotatoes and J-Clic and videoconferencing with Google Chat and DimDim. Most useful of all I felt  though, is the chapter dealing with Copyright, an extremely important issue in these times when we could (in theory) get any image, sound or movie we want off the internet without a second thought. João reminds us what we should and should not do in this respect. In conclusion: an enjoyable read! This book does not replace a Beginners’ Moodle manual such as Moodle For Teaching 7-14 Year Olds,  or Ian Wild’s Moodle Course Conversion but is complementary, offering additional functionality with more engaging features for those teachers who are ready to raise their Moodling up to the  next inspiring level -and take their students with them!

Here’s how to add an extra (non-standard) activity module to Moodle. I finally downloaded Quizport today -the successor to the HotPot module developed by Gordon Bateson. I am looking forward to having a play/practice with it well in advance of its inclusion in Moodle 2.0. As I got it and installed it onto one of my moodles I did a screencast with some basic instructions that should fit any activity module. (In fact, they should also work for blocks as well if you upload into the blocks folder instead of the mod folder) Watch the screencast below or read the step by step.

1: Go to www.moodle.org and click on the tab downloads>modules and plugins

2: Search for the activity module you want (use the search box at the bottom) and download the correct version as a zipped folder to your computer

3: Unzip it

4: Open up your ftp client (a program you can get free or cheaply -such as smartftp/cuteftp

5: Connect to your Moodle and locate your moodle folder (what it’s called depends on your set up)

6: Find the folder/directory called mod and go inside it. You will see other activity modules such a choice/forum/assignment

7: Drag over the unzipped folder from your computer into the mod folder

8: Go to your moodle site and log in as admin

9: Click on Notifications. This will bring up a whole load of tables that should (!) give you a success message.

10: To be sure, click on modules>activities>manage activities and make sure your new module has its eye open

11: Go to the course you want to use it in – turn on the editing – click on Add an activity – and it will be there!

As for myself, I will post back when I’ve got more experience of Quizport