In Moodle 1.x, the Resource module offered the teacher in a course the ability to upload their documents, create web pages in Moodle, or even display a directory of materials. Users, who had particularly large files, say SCORM packages or multimedia for example, were able to upload via FTP once they knew the directory number for their course and were granted the rights to do so. Moodle 2.0 does away with most of this, using a different philosophy for file management. It has more functionality and is more secure; however, for some it might initially appear more complex to manoeuvre.
Compare and contrast the Add a resource… drop-down in Moodle 2.0 (on the left) and Moodle 1.9 on the right:
Note the simpler, clearer terms:
- File (instead of link to a file or web site)
- Folder (instead of Display a directory)
- Page (instead of Compose a web page/Compose a text page)
- URL (instead of link to a file or web site)
In Chapter 3, Editing Text and Adding Files and Chapter 4, What's New in Add a Resource we'll look more closely at the way you can display content in Moodle 2.0. While you are still able to upload all your word-processed documents and Powerpoint presentations, you can also easily embed media from other sites such as http://www.youtube.com/ or http://www.flickr.com/ from the new text editor (based on the popular tinyMCE editor as used in WordPress for example). Here's a screenshot of the so-called File Picker where you can see that, alongside files already in Moodle and files you might want to upload, there is a link and the facility to search YouTube:
