school server and content

[Martin Langhoff]

On Jan 27, 2008 5:08 AM, sulochan acharya <sulochan at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just want to add to Bryan's email about our plans for the school server in
> Nepal, and how we might wanna manage content so that it is easier for kids
> to use the XO with the server.

Hi Sulo,

I think your ideas match the overall plan for things. Some notes below...


> On Moodle:
> >
> > I am just thinking out loud. These might be really bad ideas.
>  >
> > 1. Authentication : Can we use a client side script to secure autologin so
> that
> > kids dont have to remember login info. The login should take kids to
> > whatever (predefined) course they are enrolled in. No front page, no
>  > selecting etc. This login info should be tied to the XO.? How big a
> > concern is security ?

Yes - Ivan has said that the XO will identify itself to the server via
OpenID somehow, which would provide the SSO you want. If OpenID is too
hard, and there's an easier way to do it, I will be happy to use it --
but I need to get some more info from Ivan as master of all things
Bitfrost (which is the security scheme XOs use).

> > 2. Really simplify the UI. Use feature like Chat, Workshop, Database
> > and maybe assignments and thats it. More modules, more confusing it
>  > is.

Yes! - have you seen my notes on the wiki? In short

 - a theme that follows Sugar's HIGs and look-and-feel where possible
 - non-essential modules disabled
 - replace Moodle's chat with facility to invoke the XOs chat

> > 3. Create groups and separate them and make other groups invisible,
> > and tie each user to whatever group they fall under. Like grade 2 will
> > only view Group 2 and work within it.

Yes. Here we have an interesting case -- course/group management (who
is in which course/group) can be done in Moodle, as there are good UIs
and APIs to manage that. So it will be in Moodle, and may be that the
XO "reads" that info too for other purposes.

> > 4. Question: How do we let students save their documents in the server
> > (not as a part of moodle, but something done outside moodle)? Something
> that is tied to the journal would be perfect. Can
> > moodle handle something like this?  Some sort of archiving that will
>  > let students easily save and retrieve files? I guess we should be able
> > to write a custom web page to do this and access it from within
> > moodle.
> Maybe even a Puttyssh or ssh with a GUI ?

The intention is to have the students always save locally on the XO,
and have a backup script run regularly (rsync over ssh?) to copy the
docs to the XS. IIRC there's been some progress on this, if you search
server-devel@ archives. I do not think that the students need to be
aware of file storage in the XS (except for uploading a file to moodle
or other webapps, for example). The main purpose of the backup is to
recover the data in case the XO is broken/stolen. Further down the
road we may want to extend it into an archive so that kids can keep
old stuff on the XS, and only current stuff in the XO, but that will
need a UI.

cheers,



martin