1. Introduction

There are many external tools which you can not find included in Moodle itself. Examples of these tools would be Padlet, Mindmup, Googledoc, Wikispaces, etc..

In the future Moodle could have some of above mentioned collaborative tools included in itself, but in time surely many new will come. Therefore it is necessary to know how to handle them, i.e. learn what are the best ways to connect them to an existing Moodle page.

Basically there are two ways to foster these tools via Moodle - you can either insert the simple link inside Moodle page that will lead to these external tools, or you can present the same tools inside the Moodle page itself (if you don't want to move from the Moodle environment). Be aware that some considerable 'scrolling' might be needed in second case.

Lastly, some of the collaborative external services allow you to share the collaborative space with selected individuals or rather individual email addresses only, with anyone who is provided with the link or make the space public. When you share the collaborative space through Moodle, the most convenient way to go is to choose the second option, so to allow anyone who has the link to view and edit. Otherwise, you will need to authenticate each single user separately. To "view" because you need participants to be able to access the document, map or wiki, and to "edit", because you need participants to be able to contribute as well. After setting the sharing option properly, add the link to the Moodle course.