However, if you’re going it alone, these resources might give you a hand converting courses to your shiny new LMS.

1. bFree: http://its2.unc.edu/tl/tli/bFree/

bFree is a file extractor for your Blackboard course archive files. Basically it sets up a way for you to manage the complete course file system of Blackboard courses that have been archived and exported.  While it won’t help you recreate the course structure, any of the resources, activities or test banks it will let you manage the files you’re extracting and also claims that it can create a new webpage format of your course that will mimic the original Blackboard format (if that’s the case, you can simply use the link to a file/website to link to “index.html” to recreate the uploaded course and files within Moodle.

While I haven’t used this utility to convert a course personally, I have seen it in action at the Moodle Moot in Austin and it works as described.

2. LSU Course Converter: http://moodleconverter.lsu.edu/

Louisiana State University’s web-based course converter is one that I have used in the past.  While it creates a very easy to use interface, the shortcomings are similar to bFree (activities and quizzes won’t be recreated).  However with LSU’s utility you can convert the pages/content folders into topics or weeks in a Moodle course (which is handy); after the conversion you’ll have more than just a file directory to work with.

3. Colgate Moodle/Blackboard Comparison Matrix: https://sites.google.com/a/colgate.edu/moodle/moodle-for-blackboard

If you’ve been a long time Blackboard user, all the terminology and the variety of Activities and Resources within Moodle can certainly make your work more daunting.  Luckily Colgate has created and published a simple “matrix” that helps to illustrate what if a feature in Blackboard has a Moodle equivalent.  So if you want to know what Moodle feature accomplishes the “drop box” or “announcement” feature, this is a great site to visit.

Bonus: Moodle itself: http://moodle.org

Believe it or not, one of  the best conversion tools exists in Moodle’s quiz engine.  The quiz activity quite easily converts exported Blackboard question pools (I can attest to the ease of use).  So while activities and resources might need a little manipulating to set them right within your new Moodle course, exam test banks should be exported individually from Blackboard and imported to Moodle’s “questions” area (you can even keep the same pool format).  Moodle.org also has a great Blackboard migration page (on which some of these resources are highlighted) http://docs.moodle.org/en/Blackboard_migration.

Know another resource that teachers in the midst or planning a migration would find helpful?  Share it in the comments.

• learn the “sent to” zip file process (Windows)
• how to upload
• how to unpack in Moodle

Here’s a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs7P3GOe7DI

You also might enjoy the same video creator’s video covering how to embed video in Moodle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeN98WEX8hc

If you want an even easier way, consider the multiple file upload module (Enhanced File Upload): http://www.moodlenews.com/2010/module-enhanced-file-resource/

Is a godaddy shared hosting account sufficient enough to be able to host and operate moodle?  I know a dedicated server is suggested, but they’re expensive.  I wouldn’t have more than 50 people on it at a time, so I’m hoping it would be enough.

This is a great question (and probably better answered by someone more technical).  But I’ll take a stab at it from my experience hosting two small sites on similar services.

There are many considerations you should make before settling on hosting for Moodle, here’s a few questions I would ponder (but there are certainly many more),

• how many courses will you have (is this for a school, just yourself with several courses, or just one course?)
• will students all be logging at once to take quizzes or work on assignments, or will students move through individually?
• how will you backup your data? (will the hosting company offer backup?)
• will I have FTP access? (this will be necessary to customize your Moodle and to upload larger files)

According to the shared hosting at Godaddy (https://www.godaddy.com/hosting/web-hosting.aspx), the “economy plan” features unlimited bandwidth and 10 GB of space.  The shared hosting also features cPanel-like tool for installation and upgrading of your Moodle (which is handy if you’re going it alone).

There are definitely downsides to shared hosting and not having a dedicated server (and administrator to help you out), but with the improvements that hosting companies like GoDaddy, Bluehost, Dreamhost and others are making (and the low cost) there’s a lot to be said for using their services for small Moodle installations.  With a few reservations I would said that the shared hosting, even at the economy level, would be an adequate pilot for a small Moodle site–If you can afford the risks.  If things start to bog or there are issues with upgrades or modules then you might have to revisit, hire a consultant or contact a Moodle Partner.

Be sure to backup your course, with user data on a regular basis as well.  You never ever know when you’ll need to restore it elsewhere.

Do you have a question for Mr. Moodle?  Ask away at http://goo.gl/6aU2.

There are over 160 search-able tutorials and text all formatted in an easy to use, printer-friendly format.

Well worth a browse… https://quickguides.calstate.edu/public

1.  The lowest tech: this solution is simple, but new to me.  It was described by Emory Maiden through the MoodleMayhem list serv while we were discussing possibilities.  Here’s the run down,

• Open Chrome and click on “Customize and Control Google Chrome” (The wrench in the upper right).
• Select “Extensions” from the menu and then click on “Browse the Gallery”.
• In the search box at the top search for “IEtab”Click on the IE Tab link when it appears, it is by Blackfish Software
• Install the extension
• Go to into Moodle.  You will need to click on the Internet Explorer icon that is now on your tool bar in the upper right beside the Wrench icon when you want to switch to the easy editor but the fix has worked pretty well for us.  [editor's note: this does not work on Chrome for Linux]

2.  Higher tech: change some Moodle code.  This solution is from the Moodle.org forums and was suggested/provided by Pall Thayer and includes two small edits to Moodle’s php files [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=3945]:

step 1:
can_use_html_editor function in file /lib/moodlelib.php
line 6519 } else {
line 6520 return 1;
line 6521 }

step 2:
This will tell the HTML editor to use its ‘Gecko’ configuration for Safari and browsers that it identifies as “Mozilla < 1.3″, for instance, Chrome.
HTMLArea.checkSupportedBrowser = function() in /lib/editor/htmlarea/htmlarea.php
line 2408 //alert(“Mozilla < 1.3 Beta is not supported!\n” +
line 2409 // “I’ll try though, but it might not work.”);
line 2410 return ‘HTMLArea.is_gecko’;
line 2414 //return false;
line 2415 return ‘HTMLArea.is_gecko’;

The latter was attempted successfully by Ben Wilkoff, who mentioned “just used the hack to get HTMLArea to appear and it works great!”

There’s also the possibility of replacing HTMLArea, the default text editor in 1.X with TinyMCE (which will be the default in 2.0); but that process is admittedly more technical.

Are you a Chrome user?  Did either of these fit the bill for you?

Links

• Small hack: force the text editor to show in Moodle via Google Chrome: http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=3945
• TinyMCE: http://docs.moodle.org/en/TinyMCE

I wasn’t able to attend the session by Dr. A. T. Wyatt (@awyatt) which focused on the Microsoft OAM [http://www.educationlabs.com/projects/officeaddinformoodle/].  But the slides are available online.  The session focused on how to use/install the MS OAM, it’s pros and cons and future release information.

All in all there are some great case studies on specific users of Moodle resources and activities that may help you in your course.

These are the titles of a few select “Museum Artifacts”:

• Pre-Exam Question Forum
• Using Choice to let students self-schedule presentations
• Using the Glossary Feature for Languages Across the Curriculum
• Using the summary field to create “liner notes” for course materials

Find more and read them all at http://www.clamp-it.org/category/gallery/moodlemuseum/.

http://www.moodlenews.com/hosting/

You’ll find information on limits, basic plans, business plans and notes about the various variables we’ve found to differentiate the sites.  You’ll also see which are Mobile-enabled already (a few).  We’ll keep this up to date and edited as new resources become available and current hosters change their services.

Now there’s really no excuse to not take the Moodle plunge.

The m with a mortar board is the standard Moodle favicon.

For Moodle sites it looks something like this:.  This little icon is one of the first impressions someone gets from your site and is included as a standard for all Moodles.  That being said, you can easily change it to better reflect your site, school, organization or personal tastes by editing one file the applied theme folder.

Here’s how to change your Favicon.

First, either locate a new Favicon that you like or create your own.  I found a few cool ones in the Moodle forums of yore which include some cool color variations on the standard little icon: (click the link to download a zip containing those “flavicons” which were created by Timothy Takemoto.

If you have something else in mind, try creating your own based on an image or freehand at a site like http://www.favicon.cc/.  Beware though, creating 16 x 16 pixel images that look good is harder than you might think.

Once you have your image it’s time to navigate to your theme folder via FTP or web FTP (or have your network administrator do it) and replace the favicon.ico file with your own.  Here’s what the file structure looked like for changing the favicon.ico file in my “Pretty Simple¹” theme folder.

Where “joedle” is the name of my Moodle’s folder.  Replace that file, clear your cache and voila.  You and your users should see a new Favicon displayed when you next visit the site.

For more information check out the original Favicon discussion at Moodle.org: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=3487

¹Pretty Simple developed by Dan Humpherson [link]