[Server-devel] EduBlog Revised Project Plan

[Greg Smith (gregmsmi)]

Hi Tarun et al,

Great work! Thanks for scoping and laying out the pieces. 

A few comments:

1 - Just to be safe, double the times and see if it still fits. 

2 - I don't like the risk in the "group edit and teacher review"
section. Let me know what info you need to keep it at 1 week or less.
For starters, there's no group edit needed. They can share "browse" if
they want to edit concurrently. I was thinking of just "post" or "start
over" as the first pass.

3 - I need the UI done first (static is OK). Start with plain text and
an image button. No formatting, no video, just flush out the work flow
(e.g. create post, click OK, see preview in HTML, click OK again and it
goes to teacher queue). Do it in basic HTML to avoid "sugarizing". Let's
get something to show and we'll see what people ask for next. I know we
want to reduce the risk by doing the other parts but I need to confirm
the customer demand. I see the simple front end as the main value of
project and we will need a minimum of 4 rounds of review to get it
right. 

Any UI/Web page designers out there who want to help?

4 - I can live with Moodle as the base. My only hesitation is still on
config of Moodle. I know people can learn to use/config moodle, but I
don't want to force them to do that. It should be easy for any teacher
with no sys admin help or even e-mail access to take a default XS with
EduBlog installed and starting posting blogs. That is, install then hit
EduBlog URL and that's it. Do a full Moodle config later if you want.
Let me know if that's possible (can be phase 2). 

5 - Leave auth to the end unless there is some trivial way to start.
Short term, we only plan to share this app off the hosted site. That's
the goal for August delivery and Auth will change a lot after EduBlog is
hosted in school.

6 - Put in time for Debian version and XS + Fedora version. I hope I can
get someone else to help package if you can create the core code.

Video is important, e.g. this site is all video:
http://www.sextosdela37.blogspot.com/

If we allow linking to video posted on Internet instead of upload from
XO, does that help?

BTW even if it's a "must" requirement you don't have to do it. Just get
consensus its not possible in the time allotted. Then I have to reduce
the forecast :-( Just comment on which requirements you can meet and
which you can't and we'll go from there, no need to change the demand
level of the requirement.

We're on the right track! Don't let the project management overhead get
in your way. Do whatever you think is right to be productive. If there
is a decision that is blocking you let me know and we'll make a call one
way or the other.

On customer side, I got some more feedback from Uruguay lead. My
impression is that when the Ceibal education committee says its
important Latu will install it. If we get a bunch of teachers clamoring
for this app then we should be OK.

So the focus through August is proof of concept on the hosted XS.
Install in Uruguay schools will come later. Nonetheless I want to
architect the app to run on Debian and Fedora XS so we are ready.

In the mean time, its still hard to get technical details on Uruguay XS
with Debian. 

Does anyone at OLPC have the Uruguay XS config? 

Let me know who has the info and if you need approval from Latu to share
it I can open a thread to get that.

HTHs. Comments and input most welcome. One more round and I'll copy it
to project page.

Thanks,

Greg S

-----Original Message-----
From: Tarun Pondicherry [mailto:tarunpondicherry at gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 9:15 AM
To: Martin Langhoff; Greg Smith (gregmsmi)
Cc: server-devel at lists.laptop.org; marcel r
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] EduBlog Revised Project Plan

Hi Martin, Greg,

This is my current proposed plan of action. If both of you approve, I
will push ahead with coding as well as dividing into concrete subtasks
that other developers can help with.

We will modify Moodle blog or ou blog for EduBlog. (Only one area of
work depends on the blog module we choose). The major changes are as
follows:

Moodle Modifications:
Add Post to remote blog feature (API + Blogger plug in) - use the
Blogger.com API with Zend Gdata and ngeblog (needs work to deal with
images) - 1-1.5 weeks
Simplify UI for HtmlArea - plan to mimic the Write interface - 2-3 days
Feature to post for teacher review and group editing - needs more
discussion (will try to get more info on SoC project, may need to
reimplement with ou blog) - depends on code reuse (1 week at best, upto
3 weeks if none existing)
Feature to preview before posting - 2-3 days Create/Simplify Teacher UI
- needs more discussion Create/Simplify Admin UI - needs more discussion
Authentication mechanism - not in my hands, hard code stuff for alpha


I plan to work in that order. The only Moodle pages the end user sees
for this are the post to blog page, the admin page (which is blank for
ou blog) and a teacher page. Those are the only three Moodle pages that
need to be created/modified. I will count on authentication and theming
being taken care of by the time we need it. However, if it is not done,
we can implement a quick working theme in a few days for just those
pages. If authentication isn't decided, we can hard code a few things
for the beta, or use a name only authentication as a temporary fix if
the system is used right away.

Greg, I took another look at the requirements, and would much prefer
that video is not a must. Everything else I think is okay for August
beta. This also requires that the XO be online to use the system. 
(Unless there are mechanisms in Browse to cache and send post queries
later that I am not aware of).

Please comment, and let me know if you approve.

Thanks,
Tarun