[Server-devel] EduBlog Question

[Tarun Pondicherry]

Hi Greg,
> Let me throw out a few more questions/ideas for you. These are kind of 
> stretch goals so let's get the previously defined stuff done first.
>
> 1 - Can we support a work flow like this:
> - Teacher (Senora Garcia) configures page to frog blog and asks kids 
> to post to that.
> - Pablo creates a blog post and send it to the teacher for review
> - Senora Garcia makes a few comments and changes on the post and then 
> sends it to Juan
> - Juan gets the post and edits it then sends it back to the teacher
> - Repeat until the teacher likes it and sends it to the public blog 
> (on moodle site visible within school only or on public blogger.com 
> site).
> - Also, nice to allow any student to see the post in preview 
> regardless of who has the next edit.
>
> I don't think I fully understand the Moodle version so maybe that will 
> be more clear when we get the new server version up.
I think this is something we would need to add support for.  Anyone who 
is logged in can comment (or we can just let the teacher comment) right 
now.  Sending it to someone else to edit would need to be added into ou 
blog I think.  I may be wrong, perhaps its something to ask Martin. I'm 
not entirely sure what the extent of OU Blog capabilities are.  I think 
it should be something for the next version.  Right now, the kid who 
wrote the post can edit it multiple times, and the teacher can use 
comments to give feedback.
Also, the only reason that I know of for pushing to a remote site is so 
that the xs's bw won't get used up when others look at the blog.  If its 
our own web server, we could just easily make the blog fully visible on 
the internet.
> 2 - Can we identify the student who made the blog post in the post 
> itself?
If you get them all OpenID's and give them permission to post on the 
blog, then yes.  Blogger doesn't allow arbitrary signatures to the posts 
(need google account or openid).  The user needs to log into blogger.  
Maybe registering OpenID's can be automated somehow?  It is something to 
look into.  Do the kids already have any online accounts?  Maybe one of 
them supports OpenID?
> 3 - Speaking of security. If EduBlog was running the XS as originally 
> intended we would have some control over who has network access to it. 
I am thinking we just ask the kids to enter their full names for now.  
Maybe we can ask full name and birthday or favorite something or other 
so it is unique to each kid sort of like a password.  Hm... how bout 
that?  We rename password to favorite something or other and use that as 
a password?  I'll try to make the session permanent so they only have to 
log in once.  This is my next target after the basics are looking okay.
> 4 - Can we allow posting comments to blog posts?
OU Blog supports commenting so any local blogs will have it.  We can 
push the comments to Blogger through the API (need to code support for 
it).  But, if they are viewing it through Blogger, they would still end 
up on the regular comment page for Blogger.  It is something we can 
think more about.  I am thinking in the future we include our own edit 
links, etc. at the end of the post to a remote site that links back to 
EduBlog.  I am also still hazy as to which area of commenting you mean 
(on ou blog or on blogger.com).

I also need to add support for some other things before looking at these 
areas.  Most critical is if Blogger decides to send a captcha, I'm not 
sure how to handle it.  Would the kids understand what to do?  Maybe we 
would need to queue the blogs until a teacher answers the request? (A 
bit more complex).

Thanks,
Tarun