Beyond the Basics ~ the Moodle Calendar

Have you or your students ever wondered how you are going to manage and track all of the important dates in your online class?

If so, then you are in luck. Moodle has a built in calendar that can track assignment due dates, group, course and personal events. Perhaps, best of all, this calendar can be exported to or synced with your mobile device or computer calendar.

Certain assignments (File uploads, quizzes, etc.) deadline information is automatically gathered when available from and deadline dates are designated by the instructor. Discussion Forums may added manually to the calendar by creating  a "new event" pertaining to the entire course or specific groups. Moodle users may also add "personal" events to their calendar - these events are only visible to the user.

For the complete story, new features and expanded explanation of the Moodle Calendar please visit: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Calendar.

Exporting/Syncing your Calendar: (Content Courtesy of MoodleDocs)

Subscribing to the Moodle Calendar

If you use an Outlook 2007 calendar, you can have your Moodle calendar events overlaid on top (or placed side by side) by following these steps:

1. 
   
   Go to the calendar view in your Moodle install and find the orange iCal icon at the bottom and right click it, choosing "copy link location". This link will permanently subscribe to the calendar events for the currently logged in user.
2. 
   
   Open Outlook 2007 and go to Tools->account settings->internet calendars->new.
3. 
   
   Paste in the address you copied from Moodle.
4. 
   
   Click OK and close. 
5. 
   
    You should now see another calendar available on the left hand calendar bar, underneath 'My Calendars'. Enable this and Outlook will update the calendar every time it opens.
6. 
   
   Right-click on the tabs to choose between 'side by side mode' and 'overlay mode'.

Backup a Calendar Moodle Calendar "Export calendar" and "iCal" buttons

1. 
   
   Click the "Export calendar" button located on the bottom of the calendar page 
2. 
   
   Select the items you wish to back up (select "All events" to back up the entire calendar)
3. 
   
   Click "Export" when you are ready to export Note: you can only export calendar events up to the next 60 days.

Copy a calendar for use on a mobile device, or to import a Moodle calendar into software such as Apple iCal, Microsoft Outlook, or Mozilla Thunderbird:

1. Click on the orange "iCal" button located on the bottom of the calendar page.
2.  Alternatively, when using "Export calendar" clicking on "Get calendar URL" will provide you with a URL which can be used with other calendar software to sync with a Moodle calendar

Note: you cannot select individual items to include in the exported file with iCal, all events will be included. You can then import the exported calendar into your desired software.