2/6 Adding Course Materials: Folders, Files, and Links

Adding Course Materials:

Folders, Files & Links

@joe_edtech / @LisaBerghoff

It's not a secret. One of the reasons I love Schoology is that I am a control freak. I don't want a sequential stream or timeline. I want to put all of my materials in folders, organized the way I want them organized. In a Schoology classroom, that kind of organization is easy. 

If you already have a course, all of the instructions for this post are pretty easy. They all start in the same place. Go to your course and select "Add Materials" from the top of the page:

Folders

The most important thing for me is that I can set my course up in folders. My PD course is set up by topic, like this:

To add a folder, go to "Add Materials" and select "Add Folder" from the drop-down menu. The following "Folder" wizard will appear:

The only thing you have to do on this page is give the folder a title, but you have several additional options. For those of you a little more gifted for color and flair than I am, after you title your folder you can give the folder a color based on themes, standards, content, or just because you like things to be pretty. The "Description" you add, should you choose to do so, will be visible to students. If you choose to give the folder a Start Date, Schoology will create a calendar event for the folder. An End Date will simply remove the calendar from course calendar on a given day. 

If you set up your whole class in advance, the availability drop down gives you a lot of options for automating your class:

Published (Visible to students).

Unpublished (Hidden from students).

Publish on start date.

Published during date range.

Then click the blue "Create" button to finish.


If you create all of your folders and then decide that you want to move them around, no worries. This portion of Schoology is drag and drop. Simply click and hold on the folder you want to move and drop it into the right position. However, you can always edit the folder, or copy it to additional sections of the course, by clicking the gear next to the folder on the right side of the screen:

For those of you as crazy as I am, yes, you can have folders within folders. While there is a limit, it is a pretty big and ridiculous limit. I read "folders that have more than 100 levels of subfolders" in the help section and stopped caring because I know I'll never have that many subfolders. If you do, I think the message is - stop it.

Files and Links

OK, now that you have your folders, you'll want to add some items for your students to access. From the same "Add Materials" button you used before, choose "Add File, Link, or External Tool:"

You'll get another pop up with those three choices in it:

If you want to add a PDF, Word file, Excel file, movie file, or JPG, click the "File" button. 

You'll click the "Attach Files" button and search for your documents saved on your computer. You have the option to align the item to standards, publish it/unpublish it for students, and add the same file to multiple courses at the same time. There is a 512 MB/file limit, but there isn't one in Google Drive. So if you have a larger file you want to share with students, add it to Google Drive and share the link to the file using the directions below.

If you want to add a website, a document you have stored in Google Drive, or a YouTube video, click the "Link" button.

You'll start by pasting in the link you want to share. Then you have the same options as you have with adding a File plus one. If you share a link, you can decide whether you want that link to appear inside of Schoology or in a new tab by itself. 

There is one more little feature the "Add Link" wizard that I have always loved. And it is the option to pull the title of the resource directly from the URL. So, for example, I might want to add the story from CNN on the upcoming SpaceX launch. In the past I'd just share the URL:  https://www.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2018/02/05/spacex-falcon-heavy-launch-elon-musks-tesla-mars-orbit-cnntech-original.cnnmoney/video/playlists/spacex/ . However, now I'll paste the URL into the "Add Link" wizard and click the two reversing arrows in the Title box and...viola:

The title is added for me. Yes, I really am that easily amused.

There final option on this menu item is to Add External Tool. This may be where we add textbooks, subscription database items, or other online tools. However, this is just complicated enough that it deserves a little further explanation. So it will be included both in a future FTT blog post and some future PD opportunities.

Good luck and have fun building your folders!