[Server-devel] EduBlog Revised Project Plan

[Martin Langhoff]

On Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 6:39 AM, Tarun Pondicherry
<tarunpondicherry at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've finally figured out how to get ou blog working.

Cool.

> This we'd have to do with any design approach, so its no problem doing this
> within the OU Blog Module.  But, I don't think its enough for early
> deployments; the UI also needs to be simplified.

Well, you can't tell what options to remove until you get real users
using it, and you spot which options they don't use ;-)

> This seems like a significant task to me, but perhaps doable with your
> guidance!  Several things must be done:

I wasn't intending to put all of in on your shoulders...

> - Make Moodle render well in Browse

I know. I am expecting some help on that... So if you can make do
initially with a spartan moodle theme and a simplified course (remove
blocks!). Or are you seeing specific big bugs?

> - Automatically authenticate so that students can directly access the post
> blog entry page w/o logging in and navigating to it

That's a Browse + XS issue. I will be trying to coordinate this next week.

> - Simplify the HTML Editor in Moodle

All html editors have complex UIs. And writing an html editor *is*
incredibly complex. So simplifying a UI is the easiest task. In any
case, (a) there's an option to disable the htmleditor and (b) there's
a simple patch that allows you to replace the html editor with
something else (peiple use it to play with FK editor and others)

> - Simplify the way Moodle is installed and configured (even I had difficulty
> with setting up ou blog!)

Package all this (.deb, .rpm)

> - Remove all the complicated options

We'll hide all that :-)

> If the teachers in Uruguay don't already use Moodle, they will also need to
> be taught how to set up courses, etc.

The blog can be a sitewide blog - either using teh vanilla moodle
blog, or a oublog in the "sitecourse" (aka the front page). IF they
mainly want to use the blog, it will be right there, no need to fiddle
w courses...

(Of course, they'll want to know more about moodle anyway ;-) )

> I realize that a lot of this will have to get done anyway, so I'm wondering
> how much the Moodle on XS team plans to finish by August.
So far the Moodle on XS team looks like:

 - Julian Ridden - has offered to build a theme for us
 - Gary Anderson has also offered help re theming
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=73022
 - me!

I am right now @ a MoodleMoot - my main goal here is to get more
people involved...

>  This will give us
> a better idea of what work we need to focus on to get something working by
> August if we use Moodle.

Agreed.


m
-- 
 martin.langhoff at gmail.com
 martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
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