Its an Iphone App, but is it ready?

The Oxford Online Learning classroom can now be accessed via the My Moodle Iphone app. But was it worth the effort of setting this up?

This is a question I am still pondering several days later.  Downloading the app directly from the Iphone app store and with only a minor amount of tweaking I soon had it working with our Online Courses.  Would we want to recommend our students to download it?

Whats it good for?

It’s definitely good for contacting your tutor while you are on the go.  If you’ve just had a thought on the bus to work and don’t have a pen, the app provides a great way to contact your tutor.

It’s also good for uploading memos and pictures to the site for retrieval later.  But how often a student of History GCSE Online, for example, would need this functionality is up for debate.

Did it disappoint?

Well, it only really has four functions at the moment. Two of those I would recommend our students to avoid. The web function is disappointing because it only manages to take you to the main webpage of the VLE – it doesn’t  log you in.  Similarly, the help function takes you to Moodle help pages at moodle.org which aren’t very friendly to Iphone browsers.

So should you get it?

Not yet!  I know the guys at Moodle are looking at ways to improve it, and its only a matter of time before it becomes useful.  As soon as it is, I’ll let you all know.

Greg Smith