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Chapter 6:

Collaborate

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Chapter 6: Collaborate

Contents

Chapter 6: Collaborate .............................................................................................................. 1

What is a Discussion Forum? ................................................................................................ 2

Creating a Discussion Forum ................................................................................................ 2

Adding a Discussion Forum to a Site .................................................................................... 4

The Message Wall ................................................................................................................. 6

Adding a Message Wall to a Site .......................................................................................... 7

Adding a New Post to the Wall ............................................................................................. 9

Adding a Comment to an Existing Post .............................................................................. 10

Sharing a Site with other Schools ......................................................................................... 11

How to Send your Site to the MoE Repository .................................................................... 12

How to get Sites from the MoE Repository ......................................................................... 15

Copying Sites to My Sites ..................................................................................................... 18

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Chapter 6: Collaborate

The Frog VLE helps you and your students by making it simple for everyone to collaborate

easily across departments, classes and locations. Being able to collaborate seamlessly is

one of the major benefits of using a VLE. Frog provides multiple areas and tools to

enhance and promote collaboration across the whole of your school. Storage areas such

as Lesson Resources offer teachers a collaborative area where files can be accessed or

edited by multiple users. No more emailing files endlessly back and forth. Simply upload

your resource into the Lesson Resource area for other teachers to access or edit.

Using the Calendar sharing settings, details of your calendar can be shared with others in

your school. Sharing can be restricted by specifying individuals who can view your

calendar and individuals who have access to make changes to your calendar.

When added to a Site, tools such as the Forum and Wall Widgets allow real time

discussion while the File Drop allows users to upload and download files directly to and

from a shared Site.

The Frog Community provides a link to over 10,000 Malaysian Frog schools allowing cross

platform collaboration with other teachers. Groups can be created for others to join and

made either public or private. This on-line community of Frog users can share teaching

tips, best practice or offer support, advice and guidance to other teachers across

Malaysia.

The Ideas section of the Frog Community is where all teachers can view tips on how to

use their VLE based on past success stories from other users. All schools are asked to

submit their tips and tricks for others to use.

So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get together and collaborate!

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What is a Discussion Forum?

A discussion forum is an online discussion page where people can hold conversations in

the form of posted messages. The user creating the forum can ask a question (known as

a Topic) for others to respond to (known as a Post). The creator can also allocate a period

of time a response can be edited or deleted after it has been posted.

Instead of creating questionnaires try creating a forum topic instead. As well as being

more dynamic and engaging it is also a great way of saving paper and cutting down

expensive printing costs. Having pupils contribute their opinions on a forum is quicker and

more efficient than distributing and collecting a paper based questionnaire.

Creating a Discussion Forum

Click on the Quick Launch option in the Frog Bar and click Forums.

To post a new topic click on the Create Topic button.

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Enter the title for the topic in the Title box and a further description in the content area.

If you think your topic is important and you would like it stay at the top of the forum list,

check the Sticky topic box.

Click Submit to create your forum.

Your Forum topic is now posted.

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Adding a Discussion Forum to a Site

Begin by opening your Site in Edit mode. Create a new tab for your Forum. This allows the

forum to fill the page and makes it easier to read.

Now drag the Forum Widget onto the page.

Double clicking on the forum area displays the settings for the Forum Widget.

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You now have a number of choices on how the user can delete a post they make in your

forum.

Users can delete and edit their own posts:

● Never (default): Only the Site creator will be able to edit or delete a post.

● Temporarily: For 2 mins, 5 mins, 15 mins – once the user has posted their

message, they will only have a limited period of time to change or delete that post.

● Always: The user will always be able to change or delete their posts.

Note: The administrator is always able to delete a post should the Site creator not be

available.

To give the forum a title, add a Text Widget above.

Double click on the sample text display on the layout box.

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Enter the title for the Forum into the Text Widget content panel.

Click the Save Changes button to save your page.

To close the content panel click on the X button.

Note: You must set the sharing option on your Site as Can Contribute. This will allow users

to contribute to the forum.

The Message Wall

The Wall Widget creates a message wall on your site. Adding a message wall makes it

more interesting as it allows people to interact with each other through the Site. It is

similar to a discussion forum but unlike a forum does not have the ability to host multiple

topics.

A good use of a message wall is when lots of people may want to leave messages on a

Site. For example, the school badminton team may be about to compete in an important

match and pupils may want to leave a list of good luck messages to motivate the team.

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Adding a Message Wall to a Site

Begin by opening your site in Edit mode. Create a new tab for your Message Wall. This

allows the Wall to fill the page and makes it easier to read.

Now drag the Wall Widget onto the page.

To give the Message Wall a title, add a Text Widget above.

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Double click on the sample text displayed on the layout box.

Enter the title for the message wall into the Text Widget content panel.

Click the Save Changes button to save your page.

To close your site click on the X button.

Note: You must set the sharing option on your site as Can Contribute. This will allow users

to contribute to the forum.

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Adding a New Post to the Wall

To add a new Post to the wall, type your text in the box and then click the Post button.

The Post will now appear underneath the text box.

Notice that each Post is date stamped with the day and time of creation.

Any new messages written to the wall will always be added to the top of the list.

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The creator of the site will receive a notification in the Notifications panel each time a user

creates a new post.

Adding a Comment to an Existing Post

Users can comment on existing posts by clicking on the blue Comment link.

Enter your comment into the text box.

Click the Comment button to leave your comment. Your comment will appear underneath

the original Post.

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The creator of the original Post will receive a notification

in their Notifications panel each time a user comments

on their post.

The creator of the site will also receive a notification in the

Notifications panel that a user has left a comment on the

message wall. This is to keep them informed of all

messages have been left on the wall that they have

created.

Sharing a Site with other Schools

Your Frog VLE has the functionality to share your best sites with other schools so that they

can use them too. You can also search for sites that other schools have submitted and

use them within your own school.

As your VLE is hosted in the cloud, it is a simple process for all schools in Malaysia to

share their sites with each other. To ensure that only sites of good quality and accuracy

are shared, sites are uploaded into a holding area for approval by the MoE. This area is

called the ‘MoE Repository’.

Overview of the site sharing process between schools.

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Once a site has been approved by the MoE it will then be made available to find in the

FrogStore. The process for sharing a site is shown above.

How to Send your Site to the MoE Repository

If you have a great site that you have been using in your school then why keep it to

yourself? Other schools in Malaysia could benefit enormously from using the site as well.

Sharing a site only takes a minute of your time but can make a huge difference to other

schools and their students.

Note: Please ensure that all the content within your site is up-to-date and accurate.

Remember that content (text and images) that have been used may be subject to

copyright restrictions. Please include the correct credits and sources where appropriate

before uploading the site.

Click on the Quick launch icon in the Frog Bar and select Sites.

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Ensure that the My Sites area is selected in the left hand column. Only sites listed in this

area can be sent to the MoE Repository.

Click on the site to select it.

Click on the Actions drop down menu and select Send Site to MoE Repository.

You will now be prompted to add tags before sending your site to the MoE Repository.

Adding Tags is compulsory in this section.

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In the Push to MoE Repository area, there are three

steps to complete; Category (1), Form Group (2) and

Keywords (3).

In the Category drop down menu there are two

options available: Subject and Co-curricular. Select a

category and click on the Add button. The chosen

option will appear underneath.

In the Subjects/Co-curricular drop down menu, select

a category and click on the Add button. The chosen

option will appear underneath.

Select the Form Group for your Site. Select a Form

Group from the list and click on the Add button. The

chosen option will appear underneath.

Next, you have the option of adding Keywords associated with the site. This is useful

when someone is searching for a site but doesn’t know the name. Try and add words

here that are relevant to what a user might type when searching. For example, for a

science site we could add ‘liquid’ ‘gas’ ‘solid’ ‘melt’ ‘freeze’ ‘ice’ ‘molecules’ and

‘evaporate’. When a user uses any of these words in their search, this site will be included

in the search results.

Enter your keywords into the Keywords box. Then,

click the Add button.

Note: You can add multiple selections when tagging. Simply, select another item from the

list and click the Add button again.

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Click on the blue OK button. Your site will now

be uploaded to the MoE Repository where it

will await approval.

Note: Once a site has been sent to the repository, it may take some time before it is

approved. Sites are not made visible in search results until they are approved.

How to get Sites from the MoE Repository

Any sites that have been approved by the MoE can be downloaded from the FrogStore

and used by your school. It is important to remember that sites downloaded from the

FrogStore are stored and managed in the My Library area of the FrogStore.

Select Quick Launch in the Frog Bar and click on FrogStore.

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In the FrogStore click Sites in the FrogStore menu.

In the Sites section locate the site you want to add to your VLE.

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Click the Add button under a site to add it to your Library.

After clicking the Add button a confirmation box will inform you that the site has been

added to My Library. Click OK to continue.

You can check that the site have been added to My Library by clicking on Sites in My

Library. The sites should now be displayed.

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Click the X button in the left hand corner of the FrogStore window. This will return you to

the VLE.

Your site is now ready to be copied into the VLE.

Copying Sites to My Sites

To access the sites in My Library click on the Quick launch icon in the Frog Bar and select

Sites.

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Click My Library in the Sites Menu. The downloaded site will be displayed.

Double click on the site to be copied.

A confirmation box will ask you to confirm that you want to copy the site to My Sites. Click

Copy to continue.

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The window will refresh to display the site in My Sites. It can now be edited, duplicated or

deleted.

Note: Downloaded sites are managed from the My Library area of the FrogStore. Sites

downloaded from the FrogStore must be copied into My Sites before use.

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Notes:

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