Dear partners,
Is there portable moodle version which can be imported course and course into it ? Because we need our employee to watch video and do quiz and activity in no intranet environment . Thanks a lot.
Hi Anderson, there has been a number of attempts at a standalone Moodle, for remote learning, the latest being Catalyst NZ, but that was a while ago now. Dan Marsden may have more information about that, but again, whether he continued working on that or not I don't know. .
There was a MOS, Moodle on a Stick, that is a Moodle that can be run from a USB, but do not believe that was continued. The problem has always been the medium onto which the Moodle is transported. I still think the smallest USB portable HDD drive is the likely candidate for a complete server environment. At 1TB, a complete server and Moodle can be setup, but then the issues around addressing and environments keep cropping up.
Best Bet: (for me anyway), a portable USB HDD, with self-loading OS, Linux based, that is plugged into a powered down box, and when powered up, becomes the OS for the box, loads the server, the DBMS and the Moodle automatically. The client uses it, closes it and shuts down, disconnects and posts the completed portable HDD back to its point of origin.
Otherwise, if you are talking about having a requirement of restricting some users to a single environment with no access to the local intranet, nor the internet, or anything you don't want them to access, have you considered a "zero-client" solution? This has been promoted for examinations in schools, but is not a cheap option. It is effective at restricting students only to those materials stored on their local machine, or those allowed by the admin of the zero-client network. If they do not have access to the machines prior to examination, then only material purposely placed on a machine are accessible. They are a variation on the Sun client-server workstations we used to have.
Thanks Colin,
we have a number of clients using our solution and are still adding further features to it. We currently use a Microsoft Installer package (MSI) to install apache/mysql as a windows service on the users desktop with a pre-configured Moodle site and some code which allows you to download full Moodle courses (excluding any existing user-data at this stage) from a "mothership" site and then sync user-completion records one-way back up to the "mothership" site.
Unfortunately the "packaging" components of this solution can't be released as open-source as they rely on proprietary tools to generate the installers, however the Moodle code that sits on the "mothership" and the "offline player" may get released publicly at some point.
We do have plans to develop linux/mac installers as well. If anyone is interested in our solution (and has a budget for it) feel free to get in touch.
Glad to put you on the spot Dan, anytime Nah, you're doing something seriously interesting, as we discussed in Melbourne. Would be excellent if there was a more or less permanent Open Source solution, perhaps a downloadable image that can be put on a portable drive and write protected. That would be the best option. The latest tech though, is beyond anything I have had time to keep up with over the last few years so wouldn't even attempt it, myself. I am sure there are a lot of people who have far better skills than I who could produce a cost effective solution.
You might need to tell us more.
One alternative is to load Moodle on a stand-alone PC or Mac, and then have your users come to this computer to watch videos and do quizzes. This approach would use one of the MAMP, XAMP types of installations.
Videos can be loaded on a flash drive and passes around.
Trying to install, and coordinate moodle installations on everyone individual computers would probably not be a good use of your time or effort.
Dear Rick,
Thanks a lot, I also find the information of XAMP as shown as the address http://elesson.tc.edu.tw/md221/course/view.php?id=233 (It's Traditional Chinese version). But is there guidance to modify the path to use device ?
Sorry, I cannot read Chinese. It appears to provide some directions for installing XAMP, which is good.
Well, you question is interesting. Might someone be able to install XAMP on a flash drive? Maybe so, but I have never done this. Could XAMP be put into a folder on a flash drive, and then could moodledata and htdocs also be on this flash drive? For me to answer this, I would have to experiment for awhile, and right now (I am teaching) I don't have the time. But maybe someone else has tried this. (Usman, if you are watching, what do you think?)
This "instance" of Apache seems to get initiated by the computer. So I am not sure if it would know to look at a different location for mySQL. And I don't know if you could then move the flash drive around if every computer had XAMP running on it.
I come to this question as an inexperienced Moodle use who has been playing around with installations for a few months to prepare myself to work on setting up a serious installation.
I have tried various WAMP, LAMP and XAMP stacks and have found the easiest approach is to use a Bitnami stack if you want to install on a single PC. Bitnami provides two options.:
- A self-contained Moodle installation with its own stack (I have installed this successfully on W10 and Linux Mint 18 running on a PC and Linux Lite running booting from an SD card on a laptop);
- A Bitnami stack into which you install a Bitnami Moodle module. This is my preferred option as I am also running TikiWiki and can install both modules into the same stack. Bitnami offer a variety of stacks and I prefer their Ruby stack as it works on both Windows and Linux (64bit only).
A third option which may interest you is to use a Synology NAS. It can run in a LAN without being connected to the internet and it has the option to install Moodle as an application. It provides all the infrastructure required and you need connect it to the internet only to download the applications (MariaDB is the DBMS used). I have installed this on my DS214se. It is a small, low powered NAS suitable for a handful of people so a number of people may access the same Moodle installation at the same time without having access to the internet. This functionality is provided on all the Synology Nas models, but I have not done volume testing on this so I don't know which model would best suit the number of people you envisage using the system. It can provide a mail system, but I have not figured this out, so I am yet to use that installation to send emails.
Both Bitnami and Synology keep up to date with the Moodle releases.
Hope this is useful.
PS. Editing as I wrote the above thinking you said they had no internet access rather than no intranet access. So my third option would not suit you. In any case, I assume they would not have internet access as it would be possible for a mobile device to access a web host through a mobile/cell phone connection.