Top 10 Moodle Myths

1. Once Moodle is stable, it will be put under licence. If it were any good, they’d already be charging for it
2. Moodle needs a full time, php developer on your staff- or at least a lot of technical support to run it in house
3. Moodle won’t be compatible with our other systems/software
4. Moodle just doesn’t have the commercial experience we’re looking for
5. You can’t just use Moodle out of the box – the basic Moodle install just isn’t that sophisticated
6. There’s no documentation, training or technical support available – you’re on your own
7. The Total Cost of Ownership is actually higher for Moodle than it would be with a wholly commercial platform
8. Moodle is just no good for an institution as large as mine
9. Moodle is just not designed to cope with my specific group of learners or customers
10. We have all our stuff on *******, it’s just not worth the hassle of switching to Moodle

Source: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Top_10_Moodle_Myths

Installing Wordpress on your Server

Download the source from the http://wordpress.org and extract or unzip it to the folder c:/wamp/www

1. Open the browser and type http://localhost/phpmyadmin and create a database for wordpress. I have created as wordpress.

2. Once the database is created, open a new window and type http://localhost/wordpress

3. First page may show error as give below

4. Click the “create configuration file”.

5. Provide the Databasse information to wordpress, in my case the Database name is wordpress and the username for my database is root and no password and hostname is localhost. (Always give a password to the database) See our video lecture to set a password for the Database)

6. Run the install and once the installation is over, it will ask for the blog title and the email

7. The username and a random password will be provided by the software. Make a note of it and do change the password immediately.

8. The following is the dashboard of the wordpress software which can be accessed using the link http://localhost/wordpress

Students Assignment and Project Management using Drupal

Modules Needed

• • Webform Module (download Link: http://drupal.org/project/modules?text=webform)
    • To create form to display the student particulars, assignment information
  • Captcha Module (download Link: http://drupal.org/project/modules?text=captcha)
    • This module is to avoid the automatic submission

1. Go to create content and click Webform
2. A page is opened with the following menus
   1. Menu Link title – “Assignment 1 - B. Tech (CSE)”
   2. Webform Settings - “Assignment 1 – B. Tech (CSE)” and write a short description like date of submission, what file type is permitted, what will be the grade, etc.
   3. Input format – Don’t do anything
   4. Webform access control – If only students are given access to submit their assignments, then enable students alone.
   5. Webform mail Settings: a mail will be delivered each time an assignment is submitted. If the teacher needs that, it can be enabled by typing an email address, else leave it blank
   6. Comment Settings: make it to Read/Write, so that the student can comment on the assignment submission , but the comment section can be disabled also
   7. Authoring information: give the name of the faculty
   8. Captcha: Enable a challenge to avoid automatic submission.
3. Save the configuration, now there is a screen to add the components, the following elements are needed to submit the assignments
   1. Register Number of the student: Can be populated as dropdown

i. If assignment is given to more than one student, then multiple selection is to be enabled

1. Assignment Title :

i. Max length of the title can be specified

1. Upload the assignment

i. File type should be specified like pdf, doc, rtf, docx

ii. File size should be specified: 1000kilobytes

1. Submit the form and the form is ready for viewing
2. Once the form is submitted by all the students, all the files from that particular folder is copied and can be sent for evaluation.

Student Project Management System

Same like Assignment Submission, but there is more number of form components needed as given below

1. The project can be done by a single student to a maximum of 4 students per batch.
   1. So, 4 drop down boxes are needed, the first drop down box being mandatory
   2. Any one student of that batch can login and submit the form
   3. All student particulars like students email ids, phone numbers, etc
2. Title of the project
3. Guide information like guide name, email and phone number
4. Project Venue like Industry, In house or Semester Abroad Programme
   1. A separate textarea for External Guide particulars
5. Project abstract
   1. Can be uploaded as a separate file or using a text area they can type.
6. Once the form is submitted by all the students, then the entire form is downloaded as an excel sheet and a project number may be allocated to each project like 2009001, 2009002, etc.
7. During each project review like 0^th review, 1^st review, 2^nd review and final viva, the relevant presentation and documents will be uploaded by the students. And even the information like how the project will be executed may also be collected.

So this project management is a very good application that can be done using the webform module given to the students/learners.

Not only that the feedback can also be collected from the student by giving a common userid and password to provide their feedback.

Installing Drupal

Assumptions

To get Drupal up and running, you will need all of the following:

A domain

A web host

FTP access to your web host

OR

A local testing environment

For building sites, either a web host or a local testing environment will meet your needs. A site built on a web-accessible domain can be shared via the internet, whereas sites built on local test machines will need to be moved to a web host before they can be used for your course.

PHP version

Drupal 6 will run on PHP 4.3.5; however, many contributed modules require PHP 5.2. For this reason, PHP 5.2 is recommended. The Drupal 7 release will require PHP 5.2.

MySQL version

Drupal 6 will run on MySQL 4.1 or higher; 5 is recommended. The Drupal 7 release will require MySQL 5.0.

Installing Drupal—The Quick Version

The following steps will get you up and running with your Drupal site. This quickstart version gives an overview of the steps required for most setups. A more detailed version follows immediately after this section.

Once you are familiar with the setup process, installing a Drupal site takes between 5 and 10 minutes.

1. Download the core Drupal codebase from http://drupal.org/project/drupal.

2. Extract the codebase on your local machine.

3. In your extracted codebase, navigate to the sites/default directory. This directory contains one file: default.settings.php. Make a copy of this file, and name the copy settings.php.

4. Using phpMyAdmin, create a database on your server. Write down the name of the database.

5. Using phpMyAdmin, create a user on the database using the following SQL statement: GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, INDEX, ALTER, ON databasename.* TO 'username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

6. You will have created the databasename in Step 4; write down the username and password values, as you will need them to complete the install.

7. Upload the Drupal codebase to your web folder.

8. Navigate to the URL of your site. Follow the instructions of the Install Wizard. You will need your databasename (created in Step 4), as well as the username and password for your database user (created in Step 5).

Drupal Terminology

Drupal, like most software applications, has a specific lexicon. Mastering Drupal jargon is useful for many reasons, not the least of which is that using Drupal-specific terminology can help you search for information more effectively. The glossary in this chapter will give you an overview of commonly used Drupal terms, and what they mean.

This list of terminology will cover our common tasks and features. For a glossary that delves into some of the technical aspects of Drupal, the Glossary page in the Drupal handbook is a useful resource: http://drupal.org/node/937.

Node: A node is a piece of content that has been created on your site. For example, if you create a page, you have created a node.

Content Type or Node Type: On your Drupal site, you will have different types of nodes, or content. The default install comes with two content types, Page and Story. As we progress through this book, we will create a variety of other node types, such as bookmarks, student blogs, audio nodes, and so on. While all types of nodes are content, different node types can have different functions on your site.

Post: A post is a piece of content of any content type. For example, if a user creates a page node, they have created a post.

Core: Core refers to the base install of Drupal. The core install consists of the essential modules and some basic themes for Drupal. Although any person who has an account on drupal.org can suggest a change to the core codebase, most changes to core are thoroughly reviewed by developers within the community, and only a small number of people have the rights to actually make changes to core. As a result, the core codebase is stable and secure. The core codebase can be downloaded from http://drupal.org/project/drupal.

Contributed Modules: These have been written and shared by members of the Drupal community. Unlike core, which represents the work of several hundred contributors, most contributed modules have been written by individuals, or small teams working together. Contributed modules extend the functionality of Drupal, and this book describes how to use various contributed modules effectively. However, you should be cautious when installing a new contributed module. Contributed modules have not been reviewed as thoroughly as core. An overview of all contributed modules is available at http://drupal.org/project/Modules.

Theme: Themes control the look and feel of your site. The core install comes with several base themes, and you can download a range of contributed themes from http://drupal.org/project/themes.

Menu: Menus provide lists of links, and can be used to create an organizational and navigational structure for your site. All menus can be seen and edited at admin/build/menu; additionally, all menus create blocks.

Block: A block displays content within a specific place on the page. All menus create blocks, but you can also embed HTML or PHP code within a block. Blocks can be administered at admin/build/block.

Region: Every theme defines specific regions; blocks can be placed into these different regions using the administrative menu at admin/build/block.

Taxonomy: Taxonomy can be used to organize content within a Drupal site. Drupal permits site administrators to create different taxonomy categories to organize posts. For example, when posting an assignment, an instructor might want to create two taxonomies: one for the type of assignment, and another for the subject of the assignment.

Term: Terms, or tags, are specific items within a taxonomy. For example: a Physics instructor creates two taxonomies to organize assignments. The first is 'Type of Assignment' and the second is 'Subject'. If the instructor assigns his or her students to read an explanation of the Theory of Relativity, this assignment could be tagged with Reading (for Type of Assignment) and Relativity (for Subject).

User: This is the technical term for people using your site.

Role: All site users belong to one or more roles. Site administrators can assign different rights to different roles.

Anonymous user: Any person who visits your site and is not a member of your site is considered an anonymous user. The Anonymous user role allows you to specify how people who are not site members can interact with content and members of your site.

Authenticated user: All site members are authenticated users, and belong to the default authenticated user role. This default role can be used to assign a base level of rights to all site members. Then, other roles can be used to assign more advanced privileges to users.

UID1: This stands for User ID 1, or the first user on a Drupal site. UID1, by design, has full rights over your entire site. As a matter of best practice and security, UID1 should only be used as a back-up administrator account. Often, problems with your configuration will not be visible when logged in as UID1 because UID1 has more rights than other users.

Installing WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP)

1. Download WAMP from the following link. http://www.wampserver.com/en/ 
2. It is an .exe file, simply double click it and give the path as C:/wamp or whatever directory you want,give it.
3. Once installation is successful, an icon will be appearing at the bottom right task bar like this
4. Click the icon, a menu will be opened, click “put online” (this is to enable access to apache to other machines), if your ip address is 192.167.3.4, then any other machine which is connected in your network will give this ip address to use wampserver
5. Once you click the icon as specfied in Step 3, you will get the following menu

localhost –> to display the homepage of the wampserver
7. phpMyAdmin –> it is to manage the MySQL through a GUI, you can create databases, tables within databases, update, insert, etc
8. www directory is the place where you can put all your web application files. if your entire application is residing in a folder called as “pradeep”, then copy the pradeep/ to the www/ and the path to the pradeep/ is http://localhost/pradeep
9. Apache – to configure apache (like change of port address, server path change, etc)
10. PHP –> to configure PHP
11. MySQL –> to configure and work with MySQL in command mode.
12. http://localhost/ will display the following page
13. 
14. http://localhost/moodle will display the following page
15. 

E learning tools

There are various tools available for providing the lecture notes as content, video lectures, audio lectures, etc. Some of the tools are open source and some are paid tools. Its up to an individual to select the tool either as open source or paid source.

This post list some of the tools that are needed for Elearning:

Moodle 

Name: Modular Object Oriented Distributed Learning Environment

Software's used: PHP, MySQL4.1

For deplolying moodle in any environment, need for a web server is mandatory. Better Apache server can be used.

There are packages like WAMP (windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP) – This is for windows

and LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) for Linux Operating System.

Moodle can be configured for the following apps

Scalable upto 50000 students of a University

Online Quiz Examination (Objective as well Descriptive)

Students Attendance Management System

Course Management

Drupal

Drupal is the very efficient tool for Content Management System (CMS). Drupal is a general purpose Content Management System which can be configured as elearning package with the help of various modules provided by the drupal software

Versions: Drupal 5, Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 (alpha) – Drupal 6 is used widely.

Software’s used: PHP, MySQL

Again here also WAMP or LAMP may be used to install Drupal.

Drupal can be configured for the following apps

Lecture notes posting on a regular basis

Student Assignment Submission

Student Project Management

Wordpress

Wordpress is the famous blogging platform for providing lecture notes on a regular basis and posted under various titles (tags).

Wordpress is given as a software package of not more than 2.5 MB, which will be installed on a web server particularly apache (WAMP or LAMP)

Software’s used: PHP, MySQL

The lecture notes can be posted on a regular basis (daily or weekly) and even the administrator of a domain can invite other authors to register and post.

The learners can able to read the notes(posts) and if any doubts, they can able to post queries in the commenting section which is also provided as part of the wordpress software.

Wordpress can be configured for the following

Lecture notes posting

Solving doubts through Commenting Section

Easily post the Audio/Video lectures

and not only the above the list goes on and on.

(NB: All the softwares above are free and open source. you can cusotmize as per your use and redistribute it)