Daily News

Daily News

by Hannah Hutton -
Number of replies: 13

Hello, I'm new to Moodle (using 2.7.7) and would like to include a daily news area for our students.  We are a secondary school with 1100 students, and currently using a system where we can do this.  Staff input their message, along with the dates they want the note to appear (so they can input a message far in advance), and it doesn't require any looking after as it runs by itself.  So I'm trying to reproduce something similar on Moodle and can't work out how to do this.  It is vital for our school - it is the only way we communicate daily messages to our students.  It's in one central place, and tutors go through these messages during morning registration, but because it's public, students (and parents), can view these at any time.

Does anyone have some advice on how I can set this up?

Many thanks!

Hannah


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In reply to Hannah Hutton

Re: Daily News

by Andy Chaplin -

A great point Hannah!

You can set just about any activity to appear and disappear at a specific time, but the Front Page News is instant.  It would be really useful to be able to set a time limit on this.

I'd also be interested to know if there is a plugin for this.

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In reply to Hannah Hutton

Re: Daily News

by Just H -
Can't say I remember coming across anything along those lines but the first thing that popped into my head if there isn't any existing functionality would be to install a mini "News site" with a publishing workflow (I'd use Drupal just because that's what I'm more comfortable with) and give authoring rights to relevant staff. Then in Moodle use something like the RSS Plus plugin to grab the content.
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In reply to Hannah Hutton

Re: Daily News

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Just thinking aloud really... is this something you can achieve with the Moodle Calendar? Not exactly perhaps, but it may fit your needs more closely. 
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In reply to Hannah Hutton

Re: Daily News

by William Lu -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

1. To enable the timed post:

Login as admin, tick the 'Timed posts'timed

Then, every forum in the site can be timed, include the Front page Site News forum.


2. Use Front page Site News:

Front Page Setting > Before and/or after login > News Items

n

Enrol some teachers as 'News announcers' to 'Front page teacher' role.


3. Use department course forums

If your school has many departments, create a department course as a Shared space, allow 'guest in', enrol all department courses as 'meta link', enrol 'department announcer' as teacher, enable timed post.

enable RSS feed.


4. Show department News at front page:

Create many RSS feed blocks for each departments at the front page.

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In reply to William Lu

Re: Daily News

by Just H -

Very cool, thank you Robert and William for highlighting timed forum posts ... I must have missed that functionality slipping in!

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In reply to Just H

Re: Daily News

by John Provasnik -
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William, in 2.6, the Timed Posts is "(Experimental as not yet fully tested)" -- do you know if this is the case for 2.7 and on?

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In reply to John Provasnik

Re: Daily News

by William Lu -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Hi, John

I don't have a Moodle2.7. In Moodle2.8, it still shows the same words sad.

c

But, it never bother me, it works well so far.




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In reply to William Lu

Re: Daily News

by Hannah Hutton -

Thank you, I think we have got this set up already.  So the forum appears at the bottom of my front page, with all topics visible and I can set the date on each one.  Although I have to "enable" each date first which seems a bit odd!  However, when I view it I can see all the topics, even the ones which have gone past their end date.  I'm assuming this is because of my admin rights.  My users aren't uploaded yet, but I'd really like to go and see what this forum looks like "live", ie. showing only the current topics that are still within date.

I'd also like this forum to be public so that anyone (eg. parents) can view this without any login - is this possible and where would I set this up?  I'm still very new to this, having a good look round and clicking on everything, but not always finding what I'm looking for yet!

Many thanks,

Hannah


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In reply to Hannah Hutton

Re: Daily News

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

My old school, a secondary school in Preston Lancs, does what I think you want. They have the front page open to guests and use the site news to post the latest school event news. You can see from the link that only a certain number of items are shown and then there is a "read more" link. To get parents viewing without a log in, see the section on auto-login guests in the documentation Guest access In the front page settings it is set to show news items when not logged in, and the limit is 5 - after which there is the "read more" link. See Our Lady's High Preston -just as an example.


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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Daily News

by Hannah Hutton -

Thanks Mary, that was really helpful with the guest access, did exactly what I need!  And thanks for the website details - I can see how that works as that's reporting on news after it's happened, whereas these are short messages relating to events happening later today/tomorrow/this week.

I've come up against another problem though - when adding a new forum message to add a dated news item, it does not allow the message to start and end on the same day.  That's what I need for most of my messages - they might be advising that a certain band is on today and I'd want that appear just on the relevant day, not on more than one day.  Does anyone know how I could get around that.  My forum is at the bottom of our current front page here (whereas my reporting on news/events in the past is on my main school website here).

Thanks for any help with this new issue!

Hannah

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In reply to Hannah Hutton

Re: Daily News

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Actually, I'm afraid you are ahead of your time, so to speak, on this one smile  A new feature to allow timed posts to have an actual time as well as a date has been added to the next version of Moodle out in November - see the screenshot. Until then I think it is dates only...


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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Daily News

by Hannah Hutton -

Thanks Mary, yes a few people have said that!!  Another "moodle mentor" has helped though - she says by putting just the end date in (and no start date) it will appear just on that date.  So I'm hoping that's my solution!

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