Topic outline
- General
- How to follow webinars in this course
How to follow webinars in this course
This course is made up of a few units. Each of these units contains a webinar. Each webinar must be completed to get the final certificate.
To complete a webinar we have to do actions required by the webinar, mainly clicking and typing. You have a couple of attempt for each action. If both goes wrong you fail that action. You can fail up to 20% of all actions in each webinar. It
is quite difficult not to pass a webinar at the first try but, if this happens, you must redo the webinar from the very beginning. Furthermore, actually clicking and typing is neither interesting nor profitable. You are supposed to try
the actions you see in the webinar in a parallel, real, environment on your computer. So, if you cannot understand how to follow a webinar, after following this webinar, you will be able to follow a webinar.
- Hosting SCORMs in Moodle
Hosting SCORMs in Moodle
In this webinar we first show how to backup an existing Moodle course you teach. Then a similar backup is provided from the internet and you are asked to restore it to your Moodle system. This will create a (nearly) empty Moodle course that basically contains two things. The first item is an example SCORM module that can be the right start for your course. We will simply duplicate it to add more SCORM module. The second relevant item is a RSS feed that will enlist all modification to this course webinars. You can connect to this RSS feed to advertise your course creation to social media. There is another webinar on how to do this here
- Create webinars using ActivePresenter
Create webinars using ActivePresenter
This short webinar gives links to retrieve Active Presenter 5.5 that was given away for free times ago. This limited versio is perfect to create simple and compact SCORM modules. We will see how to create them. A tiny Active Presenter document is provided.
- Add a SCORM from an Active Presenterer webinar
Add a SCORM from an Active Presenterer webinar
In this webinar we take a SCORM module coming out of the export process in Active Presenterer and link it into a Moodle course. We assume that you have exported the SCORM module to some folder that is mirrored by Nextcloud. So to follow this webinar you have to set up a Nextcloud server as explained here. This ensure that you can update the SCORM module and students going to Moodle will always get the most recent version of your webinar.
- RSS from Moodle
RSS from Moodle
In this webinar we show how to create a RSS that collects news about a Moodle course. RSSs (Really Simple Syndication) are text files where you can find small excerpt describing WWWW Who Where What and When for various situations. In this context we consider them as the starting point to create posts to be forwarded to Social Networks describing what we are teaching and which materials are available. In the end all this will result in a better SEO placement with links associated with descriptive items without duplicating writing efforts. The magic about sending all this to Socials is then considered in this course.
- Certificates (part one)
Certificates (part one)
In this webinar we present the Moodle support for generating course certificates for learners. First we will see how to add a couple of plugins that support certificate generation. Then we will connect SCORM grading to certificate delivery so that only students completing all the activities can download the certificate.
- Certificates (part two)
Certificates (part two)
In this second part we will create and edit a certificate template for a course. Templates are system wide and can be used for all the courses in a Moodle system.
- Certificates (part three)
Certificates (part three)
In this last part we complete a dummy course as a dummy student and find out that actually a PDF certificate becomes available for download. The certificate comes with a QR Code that encodes a URL to the Moodle system. Following that URL the system validates the certificate and shows the contents of the relative course.
- Referencing persistent contents
Referencing persistent contents
Sometimes, in a course, we want to reference contents in a file in a transparent way. There are two options for this. They are covered in these two webinars (here and here). Transparency means that, when we change the content of the file, the new version must be available immediately for the learner. In this Nextcloud is great since we obtain transparency w.r.t. local copies, possibly from a portable media like a USB key. Sometimes, however, we are more interested in persistency rather than transparency. In this case we hotlink contents and fear that the hotlink becomes a dead link. The idea to avoid this is to link to a copy of the content from the Internet Archive. If this is not available we can ask Internet Archive to store one for us. In this webinar we will see how to do that.
- Platform indpendent web operations (part one)
Platform indpendent web operations (part one)
Sometimes, in a course, we want to show some installation or maintenance operation that basically is a sequence of trivial file operations. The most elegant way to do this is to use some CI/CD tool like Jenkins. There is a webinar about this here. Nevertheless using Jenkins will require some non-trivial scripting ability from you to prepare scripts for the intended operations. Second, probably your learners will be left with a bunch of scripts from you, probably, they do not understand. Most of the time it is better to show them directly what these scripts are supposed to do... So you are left with the task of showing your students how to, e.g., rename a file on the server, zip and download a folder, upload a file and things like that. All these trivial operations can be done in some environment like CPanel whose look and feel heavily depends on the provider you are using. You might not want to have webinars that can become rather obsolete and useless when your provider changes the GUI of the service they run. (This happens very often, really don't know why!) Similarly you might want to have different students to use different providers but following all students that way is going to be an headache during your lessons. So, in this webinar, we point out three pieces of software i.e., Filezilla and a couple of file managers, that can be easily installed by your students and can act as a wrapper providing a uniform look and feel for all your webinar operations dealing with file handling. This is just one of several webinars on this argument. All the webinars install a file manager on different providers. Also the file managers are not always the same. This apparent confusion is to offer several examples in the hope that at least one works. Indeed not all managers do all the operations very well on every provider. Probably the KODExplorer is the best solution and we will stick to this in our webinars. You might find this too powerful and possibly misleading for the average student. So my advice is to follow all the webianars here give a try to all the proposed managers and then choose one. However you can skip this and take another webinar and possibly return to this one later on...
- Platform indpendent web operations (part two)
Platform indpendent web operations (part two)
This second webinar installs a file manager used in part one on a different provider. This time we used 000webhost. This is to offer another example in the hope that at least one works fine for you. Note that the file manager we use here is the same as in part one. So if this is working for you no need to follow this webinar, too. Indeed not all managers do all the operations very well on every provider. So changing provider could be an option. In general we feel that the KODExplorer is the best solution and we will stick to it in our webinars. We will present KODExplorer in part three. You might find KODExplorer too powerful and possibly misleading for the average student. So my advice is to follow also this second webinar and give a try to all the proposed managers. However you can skip also this and start with KODExplorer and possibly return to this one later on.
- Platform indpendent web operations (part three)
Platform indpendent web operations (part three)
In this webinar we install KODExplorer onto a shared webserver. KODExlporer (KE) is open source and is written in PHP. KE is not just a file manager. The most recent version is distributed as part of the KODBox package. KODBox is a complete cloud system that includes KE. KODExplorer is distributed with a set of plugins that provides web viewers for most common file types like .pdf .docx .xlsx and so on. Paid plugins add editors while the free distribution contains only bare viewers for the usual file types. So, basically, the free version provides a file manager and a cloud server. The paid components add online editors in the style of Office 365. For the tasks required in this course KE is more than sufficient, We have not considered the cloud server and therefore the installation proposed here do not use the MySQL database. Probably the KODExplorer is the best solution and we will stick to this in our webinars. You might find this too powerful and possibly misleading for the average student. If you fell so, try to use one of the file managers in the first two webinars.
- Advertising
Advertising
As teachers we can create wonderful materials in a course but what if no one is looking at that? Probably our students are looking elsewhere. If one takes a look at most popular pages on socials it seems obvious that they will not save the world. Therefore it is wise to try to post something not completely stupid to Socials. If we develop a nice webinar about, for instance, using Internet Archive, why not advertise this on our Facebook page. The first answer is, probably, because we DO NOT HAVE a FB page. Ok, let's get one. OMG this is going to be a HUGE waste of time. So I feel that I prefer to concentrate on producing webinars and I have no time to waste to advertise them on FB, TW etc. It would be nice if some lines about what I am doing daily will go to socials AUTOMATICALLY. That's what we start to set up in this course: automatic posting of Moodle events to our blog, then bounching to socials. To follow this webinar you need a copy of Wordpress running your blog. You can set up one for free. Details on how to do that are here. To have the whole picture you have to complete all the course here. This short webinar simply shows how to connect our Moodle instance to our WP instance.
- Localization
Localization
You can generate easily a
multi-language version of your webinar. Activepresenter 8 supports
this! You can do this by adding multiple closed captions to your SCORM
slide show . Then the Activepresenter SCORM player will propose your
listeners multiple subtitle selection. In this webinar we show how to
add a single subtitle track. So you will have written displays in
English in the webinar plus display wording translation in Italian in
the subtitles. In particular we will show how to generate an XLIFF file
containing all display texts. Then we will show how to feed this XLIFF
through a free translation service to get a translated XLIFF. Finally we
will see how to insert the XLIFF translation in the webinar as
subtitling. Basically you will get a two language version of your
webinar automatically with no effort. Then we will go furter ans show how to obtain multiple subtitles with Activepresenter 8. In general you can activate autotraslation for your Moodle site by putting this code inDashboard>Site
administration>Appearance>Additional HTML >When BODY is opened: <div id="google_translate_element"></div>In some situations {pageLanguage: 'auto'} works better than Here is another alternative. In Dashboard>Site administration>Appearance>Additional HTML >When BODY is closed put :
<script type="text/javascript">
function googleTranslateElementInit() {
new google.translate.TranslateElement({pageLanguage: 'en'}, 'google_translate_element');
}
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="//translate.google.com/translate_a/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit"></script><script type="text/javascript">This shifts the language selection at the end of the page. If you select a language then you will have a banner with further options. You can have this banner at the end of the page, too, using the CSS in Dashboard>Site administration>Appearance>Additional HTML >When BODY is opened
function googleTranslateElementInit() {
new google.translate.TranslateElement({pageLanguage: 'en'}, 'google_translate_element');
}
</script>
<div id="google_translate_element"></div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="//translate.google.com/translate_a/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit"></script><style type="text/css">.goog-te-banner-frame {top: initial;bottom: 0;}</style>In Moodle 4.04 you can put inDashboard>Site administration>Appearance>Additional HTML >When BODY is open :
<style type="text/css">.goog-te-banner-frame {top: initial;bottom: 0;} </style>and put in a text block the HTML code
<script type="text/javascript">
function googleTranslateElementInit() {
new google.translate.TranslateElement({pageLanguage: 'en'}, 'google_translate_element');
}
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="//translate.google.com/translate_a/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit"></script><p dir="ltr" id="google_translate_element" style="text-align: left;">Select to translate the page</p>
- Add a free picture library to the Moodle file picker
Add a free picture library to the Moodle file picker
Moodle file picker comes with Wikimedia image search. This adds Pixabay free picture repository. Qbviously this eye image comes from Pixabay. Most of the pics in these presentation are chosen quickly using this mechanism. No copyright problem. Maybe you can add a credit to the author in the alternate text for the image. However, very often the author is not mentioned at all. Be careful with proprietary logos. You can find commercial logos in these databases as not copyrighted images. Yet using them can be taken as a Trademark infringement and should be avoided.