Moodle Rolls Out Official iPhone App

New free app provides Moodle course management system access for Moodlers on the go.

On September 19, Moodle HQ announced the release of the official Moodle mobile app for iPhone. The new, free app only works with Moodle 2.1 or later and can be downloaded from the Apple Online Store. The nine-year-old Moodle project provides a free, open-source course management system (CMS) that is released under the GNU Public License and used by educators around the world to produce Internet-based courses and web sites.

Moodle can be installed on computers running PHP and that support an SQL-type database, such as MySQL. The software runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux operating systems. Moodle 2.1 was released in July with a new question engine, the ability to restore the course contents from Moodle 1.9 backup files, and new support for mobile devices.

The new Moodle iPhone app is also compatible with the iPod Touch and iPad running iOS 4.2 or later. The app doesn't replace the Moodle interface but does allow users to upload pictures and video, record and upload audio, view participants in your courses, send private Moodle messages, work offline with automatic synchronization, and access the web version of your Moodle site.

The Moodle.org site provides statistics that show details about who is using the CMS. According to those stats, the rapidly growing Moodle community currently includes 1,112,368 teachers and 45,879,426 users spread across 212 countries. The site also provides extensive documentation to get new “Moodlers” up and running, including a demo school, tool guide for teachers, and a community “cookbook” with contributed recipes that provide examples of Moodle use in educational environments. Moodle's active community of users and contributors provide another resource for new Moodlers.

Moodle conferences, known as MoodleMoots, are organized around the world. Moodle's first free virtual conference was held August 17-21 via the WiZiQ Virtual Classroom, and video archives are now available.

Moodle plugins, packages, themes, and language packs can be downloaded from the project's website.

• Wireless / Mobile
• Mobile Apps
• App
• course management system
• education
• iPad
• iPhone
• Moodle
• open source