[Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 10, Issue 21

Sun Feb 10 20:56:51 EST 2008

I dont know how I got on this email list.  I am an English teacher who can barely work a computer but I  DO need computers for a school in the slums of Nairobi Africa that my students are sponsoring. We have raised money for electricity and internet connection. Does any one know how I can get free computers shipped to my 450 kids who get 1 meal a day and who have amazing courage and intelligence. The school is called The Mercy Care Centre. You can google it to meet my children. Thanks--I've been reading the emails you have sent me for a month and am blown away by your skill and lingo. Cheers, betsy garrard in Lynchburg VA

-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Pearson <tpearson at us.ibm.com>
To: server-devel at lists.laptop.org
Sent: Sun, 10 Feb 2008 6:40 pm
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Server-devel Digest, Vol 10, Issue 21

Team, 
Ok, I build some sample screens for discussion purposes.  These are static HTML, and I hosted them 
up on my personal website (http://www.990tony.com/olpc) so that you can all see them from either your XO laptop 
or regular PC. 

==> Home Page 

http://www.990tony.com/olpc/index.htm 

Here I chose a simple 2x3 table grid.  Graphics I pulled off the OLPC and OLE-Nepal websites.  The Nepali text 
was cut and pasted from (www.laptop.org/index.ne.html) just for example purposes only.  I don't speak Nepali, 
so no idea what these words mean.  Basically, a simple "Welcome to the Schoolserver!", with options to click 
on the "Moodle" logo and the "OLE Nepal" logo as launch points. 

For the XO home page on the Browse activity, we could change the "Schoolserver" link to point to the appropriate 
school server IP address or hostname. 

I chose a simple pallet of white and green for this screen. 

While the Nepali script reads beautifully on Firefox on my PC, it does not show up at all on my XO, not in Brose, 
not in Opera, not in Firefox.  In all cases the UTF-8 is converted to tiny boxes with small numbers inside.  Perhaps 
I need a "Nepali Language Pack" for my G1G1 version of my XO laptop? 

==> Information Screen 

http://www.990tony.com/olpc/info.php 

This is actually just a one-liner <?php phpinfo(); ?> that I found useful enough for debugging that we might 
consider making it part of the official build.  Note that in the above case, you are getting the details of my 
ISP hosting service (IpowerWeb) which has PHP v4, Apache, MySQL v4, etc.  Lots of good details here. 

==> Moodle Main Screen 

http://www.990tony.com/olpc/moodle1.htm 

I have put "moodle" as a directory: /var/www/html/moodle and this page is a crude emulation of the main 
page.  (Sorry my HTML skills are not very good)   Note that the "You Are Not Logged In (Login)" appears 
both in the upper right corner and lower center of the page.  Both are active links, you can follow them to 
the Logic screen (see below).  The course schedule and calendar are just flat JPG images for show. 

Note in the upper right corner I also have put a pull-down menu.  The current Moodle only supports English, 
I went and added a second choice "Nepali (in local script)" as a second choice.  Again, just for show. 

==> Moodle Login Screen 

http://www.990tony.com/olpc/moodle2.htm 

On this screen, if you already have a username/password, then you can enter them into the left and 
push LOGIC button.  There are also buttons for "Guest Login" and "I forgot my Userid/Password". 
On the right panel are the steps involved to create a new account.  If you select "New Account" 
then you are taken to the "New Account" screen (see below). 

As for the statement "( Cookies must be enabled in your browser )" I would like to get rid of that, 
or perhaps find out if there are special actions needed for cookies in the "Browse" activity.  I have 
both Opera and FireFox2 on my XO laptop for testing purposes, but would like everything to work 
under "Browse" activity. 

==> Moodle New Account 

http://www.990tony.com/olpc/moodle3.htm 

On this screen, we see that the upper bar maintains a history.  Tucson-->Login-->New Account 
sort of like a "You Are Here" indicator.  I like that. 

Here the assumption is that the user already has an email account of some kind.  I went ahead 
and made "Nepal" the default country. 

==> My thoughts on this.  These are the standard Moodle screens, however, I have seen discussion 
about "Single Sign On" (SSO) as well as using public/private keys, based on XO nicknames and UUID 
values, machine serial numbers, and so on.  I would think a Moodle username/password would be 
enough (perhaps in combination with PAM modules) to provide the additional features like "shared 
folders" and "personal folders" that could serve to collaborate files, as well as serve as backups. 

School --> Grade --> Teacher --> Teams  --> Students 

School -- files for that particular school, the cafeteria lunch menu or vacation schedule for example, that applies to all grades 
Grade -- files for just the second graders, or just the sixth graders, age appropriate, students read-only for their grade level.  Teachers of that grade level can write access. 
Teacher -- files for an individual teacher's class.  Teacher has write access to their area only, Students read-only 
Teams -- If the teacher wants to group kids off into teams to work on a project, then she could 
create teams, and each student would then be assigned to a specific team.  All students on that 
team would have read/write access to the files.  Teacher would have read/write access.  Other 
students would have no access at all.  (When I taught High School economics, I would split class 
into four teams, and each ran their own "mock company" or their own "stock portfolio" and we 
would treat it like a competition) 
Students -- each individual student has read/write access to their own files. 

Whatever scheme we come up with, I would hope that 

(a) For each XO, it could determine the default username, based on the XO serial number/UUID, 
browser cookies, or whatever. 
(b) Allow an override, so that if another student's laptop is down, they could enter their username/password 
onto a fellow student's laptop, and access their files that way 
(c) In the event a broken laptop is replaced with a new laptop, there are administration ways to indicate 
that this is now the default username for this laptop, and to re-attach or re-assign the folders/files accordingly. 

Thanks 

Tony Pearson
Senior Storage Consultant, IBM System Storage™
Telephone: +1 520-799-4309 |  tie 321-4309 |  Cell: +1 520 990-8669
email: tpearson at us.ibm.com |  GSA: http://tucgsa.ibm.com/~tpearson
Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/InsideSystemStorage AKA: 990tony Paravane, eightbar specialist 

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