Just saw a post in the Moodle forums that the first official Moodle mobile app was released earlier this month by Moodle HQ.

What I love about this app (and this is actually more what I love about the attitude of the development team creating this app) is that, of all the functionality they could have put into the first version of the app, what they decided to focus on was giving learners the ability to upload content captured from their mobile device to Moodle.

In other words, they have placed a high value on the ability of mobile devices as content creation devices.

From a pedagogical perspective, this is a much more interesting mobile application than one in which a leaner would be able to, say, access their grades. Not that seeing grades isn’t important (and they can still do that with this app as it provides access to a web version of your Moodle site for features not native to the app), but mobile apps can be so much more than simply provide quick access to information.

The decision of the development team to include an upload function so early into the app’s development says to me that these developers see that; that mobile learning is much more than letting learners access content. Right off the bat with the version 1 release, the Moodle mobile app puts a powerful pedagogical tool into the hands of educators, and gives the opportunity for learners to become mobile content creators.

The mobile apps will only work with Moodle 2.1+. For us at Royal Roads, this is one of the driving factors for us to upgrade to 2.1. However, using the mobile application is still a ways off as we are currently in the middle of a fairly lengthy migration project from 1.9 to 2.1, and are just about to begin involving other stakeholders outside of CTET and IT Services.  If you are from RRU and are reading this, we will be showing a really “alpha”, completely under heavy construction version of 2.1 at the CTET Open House on October 19th and gathering faculty & staff feedback.

As outlined in the Moodle mobile roadmap for some time now, Moodle has decided to create device specific applications, and the first app they have created is an iPhone app, available for download in the iTunes store. Android and iPad are up next.