Glenys Hanson

Hi Joseph,

Nick already knows he "did a doozie" - is there a way for him to pick up the pieces?

If not, Nick, then I hope your students will be as tolerant of your mistakes as you are of theirs. Most of mine are - which is fortunate because I specialise in doing doozies. (Didn't know the expression but I love it.)

Cheers,

Glenys

Hi Derek,

I knew someone was going to ask me that question but didn't feel like rereading all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about the file picker.

I have tracked it down, though, and it's part of a very useful blog post written by Marc Drechsler: Moodle 2.0 file mangement in July 2010 just after the Australian MoodleMoot.

"Another partially related problem

I never really thought about this until Martin’s discussion with the group yesterday, but, and I’ll say it loud and clear now – Moodle is not meant to be a file repository. When I look back at Martin’s original pedagogical drivers of social constructionism then it makes perfect sense that storing files should be low on the list of priorities. Learning in a social constructionist world isn’t about downloading and reading files, its about collaboratively constructing them with others – a critical distinction.

Learning in a social constructionist world isn’t about downloading and reading files, its about collaboratively constructing them with others

The problem though is twofold:

1. 1. Many online learning courses are nothing more than places to download lecture notes, i.e. a files repository; and
   2. Moodle has always supported this quite happily in the past, even with the limitations given above."

And I understand Mark's article much better now than when I first read it.

Though I'm more of a constructionist myself than a social constructionsist. Sure, working on a task in a group can help, but every individual in that group has to have their own personal sequence of "Ah, ha!" moments to master the new skill.

Cheers,

Glenys

Hi there,

Now to see if I've got it about My Private Files. For example, if I want to show off my cat, I can put it in My Private Files* and then link to it from here:

Everybody, even non-logged-in guests can see it, but if I move the forum elsewhere the link will break. If I'd used the file picker, I'd have been able to move the activity without breaking the link.

On the other hand, I can easily find the image again if I need a demo picture.

And, more important, students can do this!!!

I'm slow, but I feel I'm getting there.

Cheers,

Glenys

*Navigation > My Profile > My Private Files & remember to click on "Save changes" - I didn't of course just now.

Hi Matteo,

The texts you refer to do help though they are awfully difficult for non programmers like me. But I understand that "content-addressable storage" means that thanks to something called a "SHA1 hash of the file contents" the magician is able to see inside a file and recognise that all my 01.mp3 files are different files and store them separately.

It really is magic!

Cheers,

Glenys

Hi Tim,

That's really helpful. I think I'm beginning to understand. Can I paraphrase to see if I really do?

1. Files are attached to (owned by) particular resources or activities.
2. The same file can be duplicated in several resources/activities but it is only stored once on the server.
3. Duplicating a file is different from copying a file. (But I don't really understand this.)
4. When a resource/activity is moved to another course (or a different Moodle platform) the files remain attached (unlike in 1.9 where links are sometimes broken).

I don't understand how the Moodle magician recognises a file as being the "same" document. For example, in my hundreds of Hot Potatoes exercises, I have hundreds of files named: 01.mp3 but in each exercise the content of the file is different. Does the magician understand that the 01.mp3 in Exercise A is not the same as the 01.mp3 in Exercise B?

Cheers,

Glenys