Nov 4

Synchronous learning with Big Blue Button in Moodle

Posted in Add-ons, Blog, LT, Moodle, synchronous learning

Happy Friday, everyone!

I’ve just installed a fantastic module on my Moodle called BBB or BigBlueButton. It integrates into Moodle just like any other activity would and works a treat! I’m really excited about it all and the possibilities this presents to language teachers. It offers a range of features, most notably group web conferencing, desktop sharing, whiteboard sharing and recording, all right within Moodle. Very nice! There’s a big thread about it on moodle.org here as well.

This YouTube video gives you quick overview of the installation and use of BBB:

You can try it out on the BBB website here or on my Moodle. BBB also has some concise instructional videos on what to do when you’re inside the software.

As with all great things, there is a downside to this, which is the server required to run it all. Video streaming is incredibly taxing on the ol’ infrastructure and this is what they recommend to run it:

We recommend installing BigBlueButton on a dedicated (non-virtual) server for optimal performance. To install BigBlueButton, you’ll need root access to a Ubuntu 10.04 server with

  1. 2 GB of memory (4 GB is better)
  2. Dual-core 2.6 GHZ CPU (quad core is better)
  3. Ports 80, 1935, 9123 accessible
  4. Port 80 is available and not used by another application
  5. 400G of free disk space (or more) for recordings

Sure, you can build a machine like that for less than $500 and all the software required is free, but you also need a good, fast pipeline to push it all through. In countries like Australia, this would be a problem. Renting a dedicated server with such specs also wouldn’t come cheap…maybe $150-$250/month? There is also a company that offers hosting called Generic Conferencing, which has a variety of plans available.

So, all in all, the server hardware requirements aside, this gets a big thumbs up from me :D

Watch this space for more on BBB and Moodle.

My next article will be on Adobe Edge, a web design tool that is currently available for free and seems to be very exciting for language teachers! More on that soon…I’m currently moving house and still have a lot of unpacking and cleaning to do.

Cheers,

Guido

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Oct 3

Great new Moodle plugin: Drag and drop file upload block

Posted in Add-ons, Moodle

One of the more annoying aspects of adding content to your Moodle courses is the cumbersome process of uploading files. There are a lot of hoops and dialog boxes to jump through to simply add a single file to your course:

Turn editing on > Add file > upload a file > browse > locate the file > rename dialogue box > upload

That’s seven steps that have to be repeated every time you want to add a file!!

Sure, it’s not too bad…if you’re fast you can get through all that in about a minute, but it’s not just a matter of dragging and dropping a file in like you would with your file manager. Or is it..?

Well, that’s exactly what this little plugin does! It doesn’t work everywhere (only from the desktop directly into courses, not the frontpage) but I can live with that, seeing how that’s how we generally get files to and fro Moodle most of the time anyway!

Get yours here! Written by Davo Smith I believe. Thanks Davo :)

To install it, simply drop the unzipped and renamed folder (it’s a massive 56 kilobytes…) into /moodle/blocks, go to the notifications page under ‘Site administration’ and click upgrade. Dead easy!

It should then be available inside all your courses as a block. Just turn editing on, add a block and select ‘Drag and Drop Uploader’. Once your block is in your course (it can sit anywhere, so just put it at the bottom) and you’re good to go.

Please note that you don’t drag the files onto the block but rather directly inside the course section.

It doesn’t work in all browsers (So far, I haven’t got it to work in Safari, but I’ll keep trying). There is a thread on the Moodle forums about it here as well.

Let me know if this works for you! And thanks to Davo Smith for creating this.

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