Here’s an interesting (and unusually high production value) video of an iPhone mobile interface for Moodle:
Moodle also has a Java-based cross-platform mobile client which is not as pretty but seems to have decent functionality. (My impression is that this is fairly similar to the state of affairs with Blackboard’s mobile clients.) You can see screen shots here.
In the long run, we’re going to need to think seriously about creating more teaching and learning affordances that are mobile-specific rather than just creating mobile interfaces to existing LMS capabilities, but this is still a good step down the road.
Hi Michael,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I conducted an analysis of Lancaster University student’s affection toward iPhone (specifically) as we had some ‘loose’ comments about this. It has about 1% adoption among UK students and therefore I question whether the investment Moodle has placed into this technology is relevant at this time. In the future this may change however. I tasked Adrian Fish at Lancaster eScience to look at feasibility of developing/deploying a Sakai iPhone app. It is feasible, but whilst students don’t own them then I’d say the Sakai Project should focus on real development issues. The image changes, however, when deploying Sakai to business professionals as we do at Lancaster. Then 1/3 would value iPhone apps; but we are an isolated case. It may well be that US students are better equipped than those in the UK, but from a UK perspective please don’t rush into this but take a closer evaluation on the technologies students presently have at their finger tips and treat this as a metric for need.
Ali
Hi Michael and Alastair
Nice discussion.
You said that the iPhone adoption in the uk is 1%. Please, do you have data abou the iPod touch and android’s phones. This web app works with the iPod touch and androids phone as well.
Greetings
Carlos
ps we are still testing different mobile devices…
Here an example with an HTC hero..http://picasaweb.google.com/m/viewer#slideshow/carlos.kiyan/5446898382666090673/5446898719213420530
Hi All,
We are about to publish MTouch, the first and only native IPhone application for Moodle. MTouch does not require server side changes and is directly usable by the students.
For details : http://www.moodletouch.com
MTouch Desktop Download : http://www.pragmasql.com/home/moodletouch/download-mtouch.aspx
it works quite a bit faster if you load the page from an external browser rather than through safari. e.g. loading it from a pc not the ipod