Skip to main content

Moodle 2.4 Blocks and the Dock

Link to PDF version of this post.


The dock was introduced in Moodle 2.0 and it allows students and teachers to customize the look of the class home page by moving blocks off of the home page and into the dock, located on the upper left edge of the browser window. The following instructions cover how to dock and undock blocks.
The advantages of docking blocks is that they remove some of the clutter on the screen by getting items that may be used less frequently out of the way. They also allow access to blocks from the dock, something that is very handy when you have scrolled down on the class home page. Without the dock, you would need to scroll all the way back up to see the blocks. Instead, they are always accessible at the upper left edge of your browser window.
The option to move blocks to the dock can be turned off system-wide.

Three column class home page

media_1371066225180.png
The contents of a class will appear in the same format as it did in Moodle 1.9. By default, each class has three columns, although that can be changed by the student, as you will see below. Blocks are located in columns 1 and 3.

Moving blocks into the dock

media_1371066298324.png
One big change with Moodle 2.0 is that each participant in a class can modify their view of the class by docking any or all of the blocks. This allows anyone to customize the appearance of the course home page but does not affect how others see the page.

Move a block to the dock

media_1371066329476.png
To dock a block, click the thin rectangle icon next to the name of the block.

The dock

media_1371066349739.png
In this example, the Navigation block was moved into the dock and now appears at the left edge of the screen in the upper left.

Accessing the block from the dock

media_1371066389665.png
Click the name of the block to access it from the dock. All of the options will appear in the pop-out menu.

Docking all the blocks

media_1371066534261.png
If you choose to put all of your blocks in the dock, you will see only the course content on the course home page. All blocks are accessible through the dock on the left edge of the screen.

Undocking a block

media_1371066570551.png
To move a block from the dock back onto the course home page, click the larger rectangle icon in the pop-out menu that appears when you click on the dock.

Block returned to course home page

media_1371066588144.png
The Activities block is back on the course home page. To move it back into the dock, click on the dock icon.

Undock all blocks

media_1371149306878.png
If you want to move all blocks back to the class home page, click the Undock all icon, located below the list of Blocks on the left edge of your browser window.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Blackboard Podcasts

I've been searching for podcasts about Blackboard and have come across a few. Some are too site-specific while others could use a little more polish before I would recommend them to others. However, one podcast I did find to be useful and high quality is Teaching with Blackboard by Jason Rhode at Northern Illinois University. Episode 5, posted last week, discusses how to incorporate RSS feeds into Blackboard using Feed2JS , a website and tool for converting an RSS feed to JavaScript which can be copied and pasted into your Blackboard course. This gives you a relatively easy way to add dynamic content to a course. For many instructors, RSS may be a foreign language, but I think if you listen to the five minute podcast, you will learn enough to get the idea. If you want more, Jason's previous podcast covers RSS and podcasting in more detail.

QuickSource Guides to Blackboard

The Resource Network in Harrisonburg, Virginia, publishes fold out guides to various software applications like MS Office, WordPerfect, Adobe Acrobat and more. They have student and instructor guides to BlackBoard for $4.00 each. Prices are lower if you buy in bulk. I got mine yesterday and they look nice and are easy to read. Each one covers the important things you need to know to use Blackboard as a student or instructor. They are also available through Amazon.com for $4.95 each.

Avoiding lost work in Moodle

When students are working in our installation of Moodle, there are some common ways that their work can be lost. Because Moodle doesn't save what you've written until you click Save (assignments) or Post to Forum in Forums, anything that interrupts your connection to Moodle can lead to lost work and frustration. Interruptions include computer problems or network outages or disconnections. If you are writing anything longer than a paragraph,  it's a good idea to use a text editor to do your writing and then copy and paste into Moodle so no matter what happens, you won't lose any of your work. If you combine your use of a text editor with an online backup plan, you'll have a secure backup of all of your work even after the class ends and you can no longer access it (see below). You could use a word processor like Microsoft Word, but you may need to save your work as plain text first to avoid seeing formatting errors when you copy and paste from Word into Moodle. A