[Server-devel] Edublog notes

Tue Jun 3 10:22:53 EDT 2008

I second this request for off-internet solutions.

I am currently cooperating with a Bolivian Ministry of Education project 
for community/school centers which depends largely on blogging and such 
tools, so I am following this thread closely for concepts / ideas / 
solutions that would be obsessively user friendly.
It would be just the best of both worlds if the same tool were used for 
XOs when we do get a deployment there!

Yama

John Watlington wrote:
> 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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