Increase MoodleCloud storage with external storage

Increase MoodleCloud storage with external storage

by nkostakis1 Kostakis -
Number of replies: 6

Hi,

would you please help me understand the basics of moodle storage: we're using a MoodleCloud instance offering 200 users and 400 MB storage space. As we have 195 users, with c. 150 being students, when they submit assignments to their teachers (which they upload to moodle as pdf/jpg files, this 400 MB is used up very quickly. 

Is there a way to use external storage space so that material submitted / uploaded by student goes there instead of using that precious 400MBs?

Thank you very much

Nikolas

(Edited by Mary Cooch - original submission Tuesday, 17 November 2020, 8:28 PM)

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In reply to nkostakis1 Kostakis

Re: (possibly very stupid) storage question

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
It's not a stupid question at all; it's a very good one smile In fact with MoodleCloud you are encouraged to do just what you suggest. Have your students store their work in external sites such as Google Drive, NextCloud or OneDrive and send you the link. Look at the question ""What does file storage mean?" in the page: https://moodle.com/moodlecloud/
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: (possibly very stupid) storage question

by nkostakis1 Kostakis -
Thank you for replying.

We feel that younger students (ages 10 to 14) are not tech-savvy enough to manage/use dropbox/onedrive/etc links. Most of our students don't have these. And the building block in Moodle that allows students to submit their homework a nice drag-n-drop feature that accepts files, not links.

400MB (or even 1GB for the largest MoodleCloud offering) seems inexplicably low. Storage in hosting is very cheap these days, these offerings could / should offer 10 times the storage. Or, allow the connection to external storage.
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In reply to nkostakis1 Kostakis

Re: (possibly very stupid) storage question

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
What kind of homeworks are your younger students doing? I mean what kind of assignments are they uploading as PDF or JPG? I am only asking because I used to be responsible for pupils aged between 7 and 10 and they used the online text assignment type which worked much better since mine were mainly adding text. If their assignments are text then they could type straight into Moodle and you could comment directly on their work.
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: (possibly very stupid) storage question

by nkostakis1 Kostakis -
The way assignments are currently given out by teachers, submissions pretty much are in pdf or jpg, scanned/photographed pages off the students' copybook. This creates big files. Online test assignment sounds good (although I'm not sure how it would cover maths notation and Greek), nevertheless the solution we're looking for is an immediate and drastic one, a way to increase storage. Does MoodleCloud allow to use external storage to store data?
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In reply to nkostakis1 Kostakis

Increase MoodleCloud storage with external storage

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
You can do Maths notation and type in Greek using the online text type assignment. I am not sure what you mean by does MoodleCloud allow to use exernal storage to store data - that is what using Google drive, OneDrive etc is all about surely?
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Increase MoodleCloud storage with external storage

by nkostakis1 Kostakis -
Google/OneDrive etc can be use for I would term 'outgoing data' or techer-to-student. No problem there.

It's student-submitted files, or 'incoming data' that's the issue. MoodleCloud offers just 400MB or 1GB for this, it would be desirable (and technically possible) to link to an external storage service (AWS S3, OneDrive etc) and all submissions could be stored there.
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