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Free Course on the MOOCH: Mobile Learning and Teaching with Moodle 2

Joseph Thibault — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:00:40 +0000

Here’s a free course available via the MOOCH (hub.moodle.org), “Mobile Learning and Teaching with Moodle 2. The course was shared by Nadav Kavalerchik and is available to download or view. You can check out the MOOCH entry here or the course here.

The course focuses on opportunities to learn about mobile computing in classrooms (with current events curated through Scoop.it), videos and demos of Mobile courses, additional web resources, Free mobile apps, mobile ideas for your courses and more.

The ‘Mobile Ideas for your Course’ section is my favorite. It pulls articles and ideas from sources helping you to learn how to use Google Goggles in the classroom, Google+ Hangouts, QR Codes, how to create slideshows and much more.

These resources and more are hosted at the Tempus-EFA project Moodle.

On the 7th day of #Moodlemas the community shared with me…

Joseph Thibault — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:43:02 +0000

mobile Moodl-ing!

6 Course-for-matting

5 a course about Jiiing

4 pretty themes

3 [awesome] plugins

2 Cheery images

and A freebie Christmas themed Glossary!

If you haven’t yet checked out all the goodies in our Mobile Moodle Matrix, check it out here: http://www.moodlenews.com/mobile/. But that’s not all there is, there’s a new Mobile Moodle app on the block which beat out the release of the official mobile Moodle app for Android: Droodle (I believe a mashup of Moodle and Droid). According to the site (https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ivoid.droodle),

Droodle is an Android client for the Moodle 2.1 platform. With Droodle users can view all of their subjects and assignments as stored within their school’s moodle. Users can also easily create calendar tasks for individual assignments. However, Droodle is not guaranteed to support all moodles.

The app was created/released by Richard Tiutiun and features a nice polished look which focuses on providing direct access to a users courses, activities, assignments, etc. Similar to myMoodle.

Get the official Moodle app for iOS and watch out for the official Android Moodle app which should be released soon/in early 2012 [link].

Don’t forget to stay-tuned for more #Moodlemas.

2.2 has been released!

Joseph Thibault — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:04:13 +0000

The second 6 month installment of Moodle 2.x releases has hit the digital shelves. Long awaited features like Rubrics, myMobile theme and LTI capabilities are included. Some features originally planned for 2.2 (like multi-tenancy) have been postponed until next June or later (release 2.3).

You can read the complete release notes for Moodle 2.2 here: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Moodle_2.2_release_notes
Download it at: http://download.Moodle.org/

Check out the Unofficial Clone of myMoodle Mobile for #Android

Joseph Thibault — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:30:13 +0000

More in Android/Moodle news: Juan Leyva has endeavored to clone the iOS app for Mobile Moodle onto the Android (and other) platform. Screenshots of the alpha release are already available. According to his post at Moodle.org,

This application is intended and has been designed to be easily customizable by Institutions (University, corp..). This application uses common web technologies (HTML5 + CSS3 + JavaScript) and the high level multi-platform mobile Javascript framework Phonegap.

Phonegap enables you to build your app once with web-standards and deploy to multiple platforms.

Please note that this app is not a replacement or improvement of the official app for iPhone (and Android when available). It has been designed to be a good starting point for creating your own custom app because is easily customizable and extendable using web technologies by anyone.

The app is currently an alpha release with some bugs to fix and some functionalities not working fine

This post is a call for help for alpha/beta testers in Android and also BlackBerry

If you’re interested in being a tester visit http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=191144

Developer Meeting Minutes/Recap

Joseph Thibault — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:00:53 +0000

I attended the last Moodle Developer Meeting on 11/22 as an observer and got to learn a lot about the process and thought that goes into each and every Moodle change/improvement. It was great to hear about the many cool features that are coming in December with Moodle 2.2 but a little bit of a bummer to hear that some of the coolest features have been pushed until mid-2012 with the release of 2.3. In any event, here’s a brief recap of the meeting’s discussion/agenda.

Additional information can be found,

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=190495 (a post by Moodle developer Sam Hemelryk)
http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Developer_meeting_November_2011 (the official minutes)

Here’s a truncated list of the features you can expect in 2.2:

LTI support – this allows Moodle to pull grades in from other services which could be great for 3rd party integration of web apps that might be used to supplement a Moodle course (LTI stands for Learning Tools Interoperability)
New Reports – these are now a standard type of plugin (so look out for awesome new reports that you can run on your site)
Perhaps the most useful/greatest improvement is Advanced Grading Plugins which allow for Rubrics and other types of grading tools.
myMobile theme now in core

Next in 2.3 (mid-2012)

Multi-tenancy (this was originally slated for 2.2)
Usability improvements (say good-bye to the “turn editing on” button
redesign of the Moodle assignment module
better help files
some Totara features integrated to core
and lots more.

If you’re interested in attending a Moodle Developer Meeting be sure to check the schedule at http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Developer_meetings. The next meeting is February 2012.

Moodbile 0.2 beta released: supports HTML5 mobile browsers, Android app in the works

Joseph Thibault — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 13:52:21 +0000

Great news on the Mobile Moodle front, Moodbile, an alternative app for Moodle has released its 0.2 beta version which includes Moodbile Server for Moodle 2.0, and a new Moodbile Client for HTML5 Mobile Browsers. Also announced is a Android app pending release, possibly this week.

Try out the app and the services at http://www.moodbile.org/.

Check out some of the great screenshots at http://flic.kr/s/aHsjwFNzDP

Responsive Design: Mobile Development Considerations for Moodle

Joseph Thibault — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:00:01 +0000

Stuart Lamour has a really interesting post about Moodle Mobile apps vs. responsive design at the eLearning Team Blog for University of Sussex. In the video that accompanies his overview of best practices in design and the future of mobile development he highlights how Moodle might be factored for Mobile viewing right out of the box (or theme rather) instead of forcing a download or enabling a Moodle mobile app. There are some good points and some great design tips if you’re looking to change your Moodle theme and to incorporate some usability features for mobile users.

There’s no doubt that mobile usage of sites will continue to grow in the future, aside from considerations of usability with the site there will be a growing importance of managing and upgrading content to run on mobile handsets as Flash and other products simply won’t work and will disrupt anytime/anywhere learning that students are used to. You can check out the video that Stuart made below which shows off their cool (and flexible) UofS site; you should definitely check out the full post though: http://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/elearningteam/2011/11/09/moodle-mobile-the-future-of-moodle/.

Top 30 reasons to move to Moodle 2 by @ghenrick

Joseph Thibault — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:00:04 +0000

Gavin Henrick has pulled together 3 (three) top 10 lists for why to move from Moodle 1.9 to 2.0. The three presentations are available at his blog and the each already has a voice over presentation video available on Youtube. Each presentation highlights another set of new/changed Moodle features and discusses (quickly) how they impact the online classroom. From blocks to repositories to comments to mobile apps…many of the cool new tools are covered and highlighted.

10 reasons to move to Moodle 2

10 reasons to move to Moodle 2 Part 2

10 reasons to move to Moodle 2 Part 3

If you’ve been curious why you might/should make the transition from an older Moodle model to the newest these are some great resources to check out. You can also join in a little community discussion by posting your top modules to the comments at Gavin’s post: http://www.somerandomthoughts.com/blog/. In any event, you should DEFINITELY subscribe to Gavin’s blog (http://www.somerandomthoughts.com/blog/). This great resource provides loads of reviews of Moodle modules and plugins and is a wealth of knowledge if you’re looking for a little bit of information on the new 3rd party integrations and tools available for Moodle 2.0.

See the Official Moodle Mobile app (My Moodle) in action with this video by @mylearningspace

Joseph Thibault — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:30:49 +0000

Here’s a ~10 minute video that highlights all the cool stuff you can do with the official Mobile Moodle app, My Moodle which was released a short while ago. The video was created/shared by MyLearningSpace (@mylearningspace) of Australia. The video highlights the login process, navigating the profile/courses and also using the built-in “take picture” activity and other cool tricks that My Moodle enables. My Moodle is available for FREE in the app store for iOS devices (iPhone and iPods) and works with Moodle 2.1+.

iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/app/my-moodle/id461289000

Direct video link: http://vimeo.com/29710407

MoodleTouch and mTouch+ now available for iOS5

Joseph Thibault — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:30:04 +0000

Ali Özgür, developer at PragmaTouch, the makers of MoodleTouch and mTouch+, just announced that their apps are now available and compatible with iOS5. The upgrades are now available to all customers. The apps run for the low price of $2.99 but provide some easy to use features for both 1.9 and 2.0.

If you’re local Moodle hasn’t yet made the jump to supporting the official Moodle app (MyMoodle) then this is one of the only viable options (it requires no setup on the server). For more information about MoodleTouch and it’s sibling products for Android, iPad, and Windows phones visit http://www.pragmasql.com/moodletouch/home.aspx.

For more information about Mobile Moodle apps visit http://www.moodlenews.com/mobile/