Offline Moodle
There is a project at the Open University in the U.K called Offline Moodle. Here’s the new idea which as in most “new” ideas isn’t actually new at all. It was an idea that was discussed years ago in the little LT building in Redlands, California by our very own LT staff. I remember my father used to tell me “there’s nothing new under the sun” I would argue with him vigorously, I discovered much later he was quoting out of Ecclesiastes.
The original LT discussion was something like this, “wouldn’t it be great if we could connect to the internet and do a very simple ‘push and pull’ operation on selected content sitting up on the Moodle server ? Effectually allowing one to participate in an online Moodle course in an offline way. It would be a solution for people who live in areas where the internet connectivity is very intermittent and of limited bandwidth. We didn’t have the resources or the will to pursue it at the time but like clothing fashion if you wait long enough usually it will circle back around.
Well the time has come and the official name of this project ‘Offline Moodle’ was born out of the 2006 Moodle Moot in Milton Keynes, England. I did a breakout session called “Moodle, where there is no internet” at this Moot. I shared my very crude version of CD Moodle (Moodle running on a CD ROM). Most of the people who were at the breakout session shared my vision but there were a few doubters, they would make statements like ” Moodle was designed for online interaction why would you want try and run it in an offline mode ?”
It would seem that offline stuff is beginning to be recognized as important by the big boys. Google Offline Docs is now beginning the roll out process. While offline may be a new discovery for others we here in LT have been talking about it for years. I guess you could say we don’t quite have the budget that Google has but we have the eternal budget which is definitely much better in the long haul.
Let’s answer the question again of why Moodle ? Here’s the new update as of January 1, 2008. How many people out there are using Moodle ? According to Wikipedia there are 16,927,590 Moodle users and 1,713,438 Moodle courses worldwide. I announced sometime back that Moodle was the most popular learning management system on the planet based on some obviously extremely conservative figures. I think for those that might have doubted before these new figures shatter all doubt. This must also say something about the complexity of the interface. We’re talking Moodle in 196 countries and for the OLPC (one laptop per child) project the Moodle interface is simple enough. This project is targeted toward children who do not have computing experience.
Now the Logical question, we’ve heard about Portable Moodle now your talking about this new fangled “Offline Moodle” being developed by the Open University, what’s the difference? Let me state it in these terms you’ve heard it put “you have to crawl before you can walk” well Portable Moodle is basically crawling and Offline Moodle is going to be like running. Moodle was designed for internet interaction and activity. Portable Moodle was designed basically for no internet connection but will work in a very manual and crude way in a limited internet connection context, requiring you to download the course and then restore it into Portable Moodle. Offline Moodle will combine the best of both worlds. You can selectively download what you want from a particular course the moment you have internet and will be able to seamlessly and selectively push your new data back up to the online course. This has hugue implications for areas with limited bandwidth internet.
Well there you have it and it’s called Offline Moodle. If your interested try checking out Offline Moodle for yourself the guest login in will take you to a list of courses of which Offline Moodle is at the bottom.
