Which repository to use?

Which repository to use?

by Glenys Hanson -
Number of replies: 2

Hi there,

In the past, I've felt in control by having each of my Hot Pot exercises in a folder along with all its related files: audio, video, images.... The links from the Hot Pot exo to the media files were all relative. I've been able to easily move these folders around from one server to another, to display the exo on Moodle or elsewhere, through the HotPot module, or QuizPort or Book. All the links worked everywhere.

Now I gather, I should be doing things differently by using a repository, or maybe several repositories. I've already been doing this with my Flash videos: I've uploaded them to YouTube and inserted them from there with an absolute link. That's been fine - I have relatively few videos - and YouTube seems likely to be around for a long time. However, I've got far more images and sound files and I'm not sure how to manage them elegantly, easily and not to have to redo all the links in the foreseeable future.

I've tried to display my Hot Pot exercises in Book on Moodle 2.4 and none of the media files appeared (they did in TaskChain). I'm experimenting with Stan's suggestion for using the JW Player for displaying a playlist in a Hot Potatoes exo. There too the playlist code requires an absolute link.

There are so many repositories (Moodle doc Repositories lists 13) I've no idea which one(s) to choose. What have other people done? What suggestions do you have - in particular as regards future proofing?

Cheers,

Glenys

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In reply to Glenys Hanson

Re: Which repository to use?

by Gordon Bateson -
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Hi Glenys,
there seem to be too issues to address in your post:

  1. should we use relative or absolute links in files?
    if you are using the HotPot or TaskChain module you can stick with relative links. If you use the Book module, you will need convert the links to absolute links. Note that you may be able to do this automatically if you insert some additional Javascipt into the HotPot exercises, something akin to what we did for Claude:
  2. what kind of repository should we use?
    You can most easily share files between activities and courses if you use a "File system" repository. Basically this allows you to store you files on your server's hard disk and then Moodle has access to these files. If you are using Moodle 2.3 or later, you can add those files within Moodle activities resources as an "alias" or "shortcut". This means that changes to the file on the hard disk should be reflected in the activities and resources that are linked to the file. Philippe has reported that this linking does not work 100% satisfactorily, and I also have had mixed success in the past, but this SHOULD be the best way to share files if it works as advertised.

regards
Gordon

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In reply to Gordon Bateson

Re: Which repository to use?

by Glenys Hanson -

Hi Gordon,

That's very clear and helpful - embedding one hotpot in another and moodle 2.3 too, though of course I don't know how to create the appropriate JavaScript.

As for repositories, I've tried the "alias" system too and it hasn't worked for me either. I thought it was just me not doing something right as I'm still not very used to Moodle 2. Would an external repository would work any better?

Cheers,

Glenys

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