Portable Moodle
Portable Moodle like the name suggests is based on the world’s most popular course management system (CMS) which is just plain Moodle. Moodle was designed on the world’s most popular web development platform LAMP or Linux, Apache, Mysql and PHP. Portable Moodle is based on WAMP (Windows, Apache, Mysql, PHP and will run on any version of windows. Win95 up to Vista. Portable Moodle was created completely with Free and Open Source software. Which means it can easily be modified and changed according to the need of the context.
Any person with basic windows skills can develop and deliver courses using Portable Moodle.
It can be run on any kind of media ‘Read Only’ or ‘Writable’ media, the only requirement is that the media be recognized by the Windows Operating System. Moodle is now in 70 languages in 196 countries. Portable Moodle supports up to 250 plug-in modules written specifically to extend the capabilities of Moodle. Moodle now has an estimated community of over 1,000,000 users. The moodle.org site alone has 330,000 registered users. The pedagogical model used to develop Moodle is based on Social Constructivism.
The idea that Moodle is the most popular course management system in the world is a very important point. Another important point is that Moodle is 100% ‘Open Source’ which means that it’s free and easily modified. What this means for Portable Moodle is that a course developed online can easily be transferred to Portable Moodle and used. Why is this important ? Ultimately if the Moodle vision plays out as planned we will have various Moodle communities niching out in various subject areas. This is already happening in various public and private elementary and secondary school systems around the world.
For instance you have various groups developing courses in the area of “Animal Husbandry” well any course developed could be made available downloaded and restored into Portable Moodle modified and then distributed via CD ROM or USB stick or any readable or writeable media recognized by the Windows OS. Let me say something here back in one of the elections you heard the phrase “it’s the economy” ! Well let me rephrase it “it’s the community” and say it again “it’s the community”. Moodle has a huge worldwide community which translates into a huge advantage for Portable Moodle. In fact many of you might have heard about the famous $100 Laptop (now$188) OLPC which is planned to help children in developing countries. Moodle is working in concert with this project to make Moodle courses available to children around the world who have access to an OLPC.
Portable Moodle was actually created with the idea of only using it in a web based environment. Well it was kind of like Reeses “hey you got your chocolate in my peanut butter” of how it came about I was walking around with my Web based Moodle and crashed into the need for a more portable version thus the idea for Portable Moodle was born.
The natural question “gee if you can’t get to the Web anymore won’t that axe out all of Moodle’s functionality”. Another nice feature about Portable Moodle is that because it has a built in web sever (Apache) it can easily be used as Learning Center server by plugging in the ip address of the host computer.
