19 March 2010 8:10 PM
by Ignatia/Inge de Waard
Our iPhone for Moodle web application aks for your feedback
Today we have opened the demo site of the iPhone Moodle site I talked about in previous posts.
Feel free to have a look at http://iphone.moodle.com.au/ and share your remarks on one of the fora. The only thing you need to do to get access to the fora is to register (for free).
Thank you for your willingness to have a look and exchange your ideas with us. Once we go through all remarks, and we incorporate them in the existing code, the code will be released.
How the project come about
Just a quick narrative of how the project came about.
Tackle what you know will be a benefit
This project came about by accident. It was never our attention to develop a Moodle/iPhone/iPod solution from the start. Actually, we were just happy working on a continued medical education for HCWs that previously did not have access to updated learning material. But as we got feedback from the HCWs in the field, we saw the need to adapt Moodle to enable complete access for the iPhone. The iPhone did work with the MLE, but it did not allow access to all the interactive features of Moodle. So we only took action as it had a clear purpose that could benefit our learner target group.
Standing on the shoulders of giants
The coding got developed by looking at what was already there, and thinking about what would be relevant to have.
Trust the world and its communities
Whenever we were confronted with a problem, it was posted on one of the mobile Moodle forums, so everyone could think collaboratively. An open community that can give support while developing any type of application is a strong benefit for any endeavor.
Move forward starting with little steps
- First stage: we looked around for recoding that had been done all around the world. We found two main developers that really made a difference: Hiroki Inoue from Learning Design located in Japan and Dale Mugford from BraveNewCode located in Canada. They had been doing ground breaking work for iPhone access to other php-programs.
- Second stage: the researchers and developers of both institutes (ITM and ITMAvH) started adapting the code. The first steps of the coding were discussed in the community forums of Moodle (http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=104599). All along people tested the web application.
- Third stage: an international team of Moodle and/or iPhone experts joined the final stages of the coding process to ensure we could offer a demo site that was functioning well. The international team made sure the code was understandable to all, by adding extra information were needed. A dedicated site was set-up: http://iphone.moodle.com.au/ (thanks to Julian Ridden for setting it up, previously we were working on a much slower server of our own).
- Fourth stage: the demo stage: on the central iphone/moodle website a demo site is opened from 19 March 2010, today. This enables everyone to come to the demo site and try the web application via their own devices.
- Fifth stage: the open source code will be released under a Creative Commons General Public license. Free for all to download, adapt and share.
Sent from my iPhone
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