I recieved a comment to my posting about Loving Moodle so far from Jonathan Boutelle, CTO of Slideshare. He requested that I elaborate on how I was able to get Slideshare working with Moodle, since Moodle by default will not allow embed and object tags.

First let me say how excited I am that the CTO of Slideshare read my blog. I am a HUGE fan of Slideshare, even though I only recently learned of the service and began using it. Before Slideshare, I used to open my presentations that were initially created in MS PowerPoint in OpenOffice Impress. I would then use the Export as Movie command in OO, and that would create a .swf file that I could then post for students to view. I had to code my own embed tags and play around with sizes, etc. Slideshare has taken care of all of that for me. Thank you, Slideshare. Posting this entry is the least I can do.

So with no further adieu.

The first thing you must do to force Moodle to allow embed and object tags is remove the security barrier. When looged in as the administrator, click SECURITY –> SITE POLICIES and look for this checkbox.

So naturally one needs to check that checkbox. That is the easy first step. You have to be careful with this one, because now we are allowing anyone and everyone to utilize these tags. For my class, I don’t worry too much, but it can be a risk for other classes.

So what do we do? Media filter, of course!Click on MODULES –> FILTERS and look for MULTIMEDIA PLUGINS. If you enable it, you can decide what types of media files you will allow or disallow. This is an important plugin because a careful check reveals this box…

That is the key box to make sure you change. You can decide for yourself how you want the rest of the boxes to be, but this one (if you have this plugin enabled, mind you) can be the difference between Slideshare friendship and antagony.

So there you have it. Jonathan, I humbly submit this to fulfill your request!