iPhone on Moodle update: a growing team, but where is Apple?

The iPhone on Moodle project I mentioned last week is speeding up and when listening to the Moodle/iPhone buzz, the momentum is growing. So it's time for an update to introduce the new (old :-) kids on the block.

In addition to our Peruvian/Belgian team my colleague Carlos Kiyan (a formidable networker) has persuaded a couple of Moodle/iPhone guru's to jump on board of the project team:

1.Lewis Carr- United Kingdom
http://lewiscarr.co.uk/about

2.Hiroki Inoue-Japan
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/hiro_inoue/about

3.Julian Ridden-Australia
http://www.moodleman.net/about-moodleman


So a BIG HOORAY and thank you to all of them!! Their help is already enabling extra possibilities. Julian was kind enough to set-up a dedicated space for the project (http://iphone.moodle.com.au); for which we are immensely grateful. At this moment there is not much on it, as we are using it to exchange ideas within the project team. What is discussed? Well: CSS tweaks, php work-arounds, just chatting...

As we are running up to the release of the code, we are waiting to hear all the feedback of the above mentioned guru's. For they bring the extra confidence we need to publish what is developed.

For those of you interested in some screenshots of the iPhone/Moodle application, please have a look here.

Now inventions are never done out of the blue. If you want to see the history evolving from just a couple of ideas and ending up with more developed results look at the Moodle forum here (you can login as a guest or register) and discuss or add to everything that is said there. Some of the long Moodle members have been pointing us in the right direction, so we are also VERY grateful for all their support.

Some of you have been asking if we contacted Apple. Well, we did, but no reply from that front yet.

So here I launch a warm appeal to all the Apple people (read: if you know someone that works for Apple, please give them a nudge).

Dear Apple/iPhone people, we would like your support as well. Please do not misunderstand our humble team, we do not want anything for ourselves. We would however surely be happy if we could get the same mobile learning project out somewhere else in a low resource setting. For we have depleted the Tibotec REACH grant that we won for 2009 (it was funding for one year). So we would surely love to help start up a similar health project or why not a train-the-trainer project through mobile learning in other low resource settings. Such a project does not demand a lot of investment, the application we brought together also works on iPod touch.

And to all of you: if you know of a developing region that would benefit from a similar project, let us know, or let Apple know! Maybe if we all ask very politely, they will allow a similar project to come to live using the open source code for iPhone and Moodle.