[Server-devel] Edublog notes (was: Re: The road towards xs-0.3 - update)

Tue Jun 3 09:46:36 EDT 2008

What do we provide for the schools which don't have internet access
right now ?

Should the XS contain some blog hosting software which can actually
host the pages created by this tool ?    (Pardon my ignorance of whether
Moodle already contains such.)

wad

On Jun 3, 2008, at 9:27 AM, Greg Smith (gregmsmi) wrote:

> Hi Martin,
>
> On the sanity check, that's not it :-(
>
> It my fault for not explaining it better! I really hope Tarun, Marcel
> and Pablo are more in synch... It will be more clear once we get some
> draft/static HTML pages in place.
>
> I'll take some HTML editing help if anyone thinks they can mock up 3
> static HTML Pages based on the text here:
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Blog_Educativo_Plan_del_Proyecto
>
> Here's another earlier write up which includes a network diagram which
> may help explain the parts.
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Educational_Blogger_Project
>
> We do not plan to code, host, share or serve any blogs! All we will
> build is a simple front end that let's users create a blog post and
> click once to have it appear on a Moodle Blog, Blogger.com, Drupal  
> etc.
>
> Kids enter content, clicks post and that's it. The back end SW running
> on the XS takes that post and puts it on the blog e.g.
> http://centenarioescuela38sg.blogspot.com/
>
> The SW we will build on the XS may include Apache + PHP + DB for HTML
> towards client and probably XML + RPC or SOAP towards blog API. There
> will be three main web pages and we will build no client code on  
> the XO
> at all, just support Browse! I need it to be simple so we can build  
> in 7
> weeks.
>
> Three web pages towards the client then APIs towards supported blog
> systems on XS. That's everything. Let me know if that explains it  
> better
> or its still not clear.
>
> I'll think about the database comments too. Let me see what fields and
> tables Tarun thinks he needs and I'd like to get his input.
>
> Tarun and Marcel, let me know ASAP if the description above is not
> clear. I think we are in synch but it never hurts to re-ack (there's a
> reason why TCP is a triple handshake :-).
>
> BTW better book mark those two links. The main Uruguay page just got a
> major re-edit and those links are now very hard to find.
>
> Other than that the new page is packed with info and links thanks to
> Pablo! http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Uruguay
>
> Thanks,
>
> Greg S
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Martin Langhoff [mailto:martin.langhoff at gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, June 02, 2008 5:38 PM
> To: Greg Smith (gregmsmi)
> Cc: server-devel at lists.laptop.org
> Subject: Re: Edublog notes (was: Re: The road towards xs-0.3 - update)
>
> On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 7:09 AM, Greg Smith (gregmsmi)
> <gregmsmi at cisco.com> wrote:
>> Sanity check on our high level concept.
>>
>> The core idea of this software is to present an easy to use interface
>> so kids can post to blogs. Enter text, click post you are done.
>
> Yes, and that's fantastic. But if I understand it right, we are  
> talking
> about 3 stages:
>
> 1 - Blogging tool on the XO -
>
> Something like Drivel, lets the user blog on the XO even while
> disconnected. New articles and edits get placed in a queue and pushed
> out when we see the XS. This needs Sugar integration work so it's a
> candidate for a write-from-scratch effort or, more likely, a wrapping
> around the abiword-based Write.xo .
>
> 2 - Blog on the XS
>
> This should
>  - display blog entries like a normal blog does
>  - receive blog entries and edits from the xo-based tool
>  - allow new blog entries and edits from a web UI
>  - allow "approval" stages
>  - "forward" blog entries & edits that are tagged 'public' to an
> internet-hosted blog
>
> Some of this aspects are _complex_, even if they sound trivial. So I
> heavily recommend a pre-existing blog tool. Grab something that is  
> good,
> offers good APIs, is well maintained and known to be scalable.
> And then patch it here and there to do what we want :-)
>
> 3 - Blog on the Internet.
>
> This bit is not under our control ;-)
>
>> Let me know if you have any comments or questions and I hope its  
>> clear
>
>> now we are not building another blog hosting system.
>
> Ok, so my understanding (and hope) is that you are building #1 above,
> and patching an existing blog tool for #2.
>
>> Back to the DB. The EduBlog web app needs a table to store its own
>> info (e.g. configured blog URLs, blog user name/pass, posts submitted
>> but not approved by teacher, options set for each student, etc.).
>> Should we store that in the same DB that moodle is already using and
>> just create some new tables or should we create a new DB for our own
> use?
>
> If you are talking about the queue of blog entries on the XO-based  
> tool,
> you will probably want to use sqllite. For the XS-based local
> blog-and-foward tool, you _really_ need to get your head around how  
> the
> core tool works, and you'll find that you want to add a few columns  
> here
> or there. Most blog tools will already have a "Config"
> table to hold configuration, so that's easy.
>
>> In the future we may want to run a query on the moodle DB and web app
>> DB. E.g. get user name, class and school from Moodle DB then look up
>> configured blogs in web app DB.
>
> IME the blog tool will expect to have a copy of the user profile to be
> able to run joins across the data, and grab the relevant bits. So  
> you'll
> want to copy the "user profile" data into it, and lock down the "user
> profile" editing in the blog tool itself.
>
> It's a bit of work - I know - but it's very important that we avoid
> reinventing the wheel. Building a blog is a huge job - easy to get
> started, but pretty near impossible to get to the level of polish you
> expect, and to keep it maintained long term.
>
> If we reuse an existing blog, what we get is
>
>  - a solid base to build upon
>  - a pre-existing community that can help you, and that will keep
> improving and fixing the blog for years to come
>  - if you hit a bug, and fix it, it can be merged upstream
>  - if you develop a useful enhancement - the review stage you mention
> and the "forward to another blog" are good examples - it can be merged
> upstream
>  - a few customisations that are local to us - hopefully minimal
>
>> BTW last time I wrote an SQL query it ran against Oracle 8 (AKA years
>> ago) so let me know if my use of "DB" and "Table" is unclear or not
>> relevant for PostGres.
>
> Database and table are more than relevant - they are crucial :-)
>
> The most important thing is to pick the best upstream, understand it
> thoroughly (warts and all), and develop a good relationship with the
> existing upstream core dev team. If you guys get that right, the  
> rest is
> a SMOP :-)
>
> cheers,
>
>
>
>
> m
> --
>  martin.langhoff at gmail.com
>  martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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