Re: [Server-devel] RIT XS Teacher Reporting Project (Math4RIT)
Hi Jeremiah, great to have you people on board... (btw, what's RIT? ;-) ) I have a couple of brief notes for you below... On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 2:45 AM, Jeremiah Green jrgreen...@gmail.com wrote: Currently at RIT we are working on a project in which we hope to utilize modified Moodle modules and a customized XS School Server operating system. Excellent! Our goal is to allow results, or grades, from student activities to be readily available to teachers. Based on their wants and needs, the teachers can then generate custom reports on a class or student and have the ability to determine what types of problems students are finding most difficult. In Tim Hunt, the maintainer of the quiz module, has an XO and is very keen on the project. If you guys can help propose patches that make mod/quiz more usable on the XO (with the XO as client), for example Browse.xo compatibility issues, screen size usability, etc, I am sure Tim will be more to help. And he's got a machine to test it on too ;-) Something very important to note here: so far, the moodle setup on the XS is pretty raw, but I am gearing it towards supporting exploration (I'm hoping to add lots of content, or tools for local teams to addupdate tons of content), and what has been discussed on this list as narrative support (basically, organising content, activities, resources into a narrative kids can explore). So I am not emphasizing assessment. Computers are very limited in what they can help assess. Maths is one of the few areas where the expression of the problems and possible solutions is something computers can sometimes understand. In other words, computers generally don't understand most correct answers :-) and younger children need a fairly understanding model of assessment. Now, you probably know all this already, as you're probably already working with pedagogist and k-12 children :-) -- I'm just mentioning this because it's easy to just put math questions in a quiz format -- which if you are working with 8 year olds is not quite the low barriers of entry, no ceiling thing we are trying to build. Specially the no ceiling part! (One good bit of reading on moodle usage with young'ns is Mary Cooch's blog - and book - here http://www.moodleblog.org/?page_id=19 ) the end we imagine the XS environment running on an XO itself, allowing the I take that to be XS-on-XO... in schools where XS-on-XO is used, the teacher has his/her own XO too :-) http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Teacher_Reporting . It's a work in Right! If you take the XS-on-XO experimental image I've published recently, moodle is already installed and postgres is installed too. There is a small problem in that experimental image -- fixed in later images that I haven't published yet, but I'll try and publish one today/tomorrow -- that the database moodle aren't started automatically. You just have to do (only once) chkconfig --add pgsql-xs /etc/init.d/pgsql-xs start /etc/init.d/moodle stop /etc/init.d/moodle start and you'll be done. Moodle is running, and it'll also be running on the next boot! knowledge, we've been able to install the XS operating system, install MySQL, install PHP, with alot of tweaking got Gnome installed and running, That's a ton of work. Grab the experimental image, dd it to the SD card, and you're done ;-) It will have PostgreSQL -- the DB we're using for the XS -- PHP, the custom Moodle we ship, etc. No gnome, no UI -- there's no RAM for that ;-) In terms of development, from what I understand you'll be changing code on mod/quiz and maybe on the reporting UI. I've just merged the 1.9.4 code which has all the reporting UI revamp. I haven't tested mod/quiz or the reporting UI on the XO at all so I'll happily take patches that improve the user experience with those on the XO ;-) Two important emails... Experimental XS-on-XO image - http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/server-devel/2009-April/003243.html How to replace the installed moodle-xs with a development checkout to test the latest moodle code and to develop: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/server-devel/2009-March/003126.html cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@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 ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] RIT XS Teacher Reporting Project
On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 3:38 PM, Tim Moody timmo...@sympatico.ca wrote: You may be reinventing work already done, or at least started. Moodle integration into the XS has already begun and is expected to go further in the next XS release 0.6, though, admittedly, changes at OLPC could derail this. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Release_Notes http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Moodle_plan Good pointers. It is going slower than expected mainly due to ejabberd bugs and workarounds taking ages... but it is going... m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@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 ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] RIT XS Teacher Reporting Project (Math4RIT)
Hello All, Currently at RIT we are working on a project in which we hope to utilize modified Moodle modules and a customized XS School Server operating system. Our goal is to allow results, or grades, from student activities to be readily available to teachers. Based on their wants and needs, the teachers can then generate custom reports on a class or student and have the ability to determine what types of problems students are finding most difficult. In the end we imagine the XS environment running on an XO itself, allowing the teachers the same portability as the students. Our wiki page can be found here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Teacher_Reporting . It's a work in progress, so things aren't as neat or complete as it will be in the future. We've really only just started working with the school server environment and initially our development is using virtual machines, by way of Virtual Box software. Thus far using online documentation and previous Fedora knowledge, we've been able to install the XS operating system, install MySQL, install PHP, with alot of tweaking got Gnome installed and running, and installed Moodle. We modified the built in websever to use the moddle directories as default, but were unable to ever load the index.php page. Any suggestions on something we may have missed on the webserver end? Also, if anyone has any suggestions based on the information I provided above for any further resources please feel free to send them to us. Currently we concentrating on getting Moodle up and running and figuring out how the modules store things in the database. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Jeremiah Green RIT OLPC Development Teacher Reporting Project ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] RIT XS Teacher Reporting Project (Math4RIT)
On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 10:06 PM, Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.comwrote: On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 8:45 PM, Jeremiah Green jrgreen...@gmail.comwrote: Hello All, Currently at RIT we are working on a project in which we hope to utilize modified Moodle modules and a customized XS School Server operating system. Our goal is to allow results, or grades, from student activities to be readily available to teachers. Based on their wants and needs, the teachers can then generate custom reports on a class or student and have the ability to determine what types of problems students are finding most difficult. In the end we imagine the XS environment running on an XO itself, allowing the teachers the same portability as the students. Our wiki page can be found here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Teacher_Reporting . It's a work in progress, so things aren't as neat or complete as it will be in the future. I usually think of many teachers and many classes using the same XS. Does your model allow this? If so, it really doesn't matter to the teacher if Moodle is running on his or her personal laptop or on a central machine located somewhere in the school right? This sounds like a possible user issue to me. When the students and teachers use the same hardware, do the logon separately or do they just use the same user name or credentials? Even if they use the same credentials, our goal is to modify an existing module to allow us to enter more data fields into the database. I think using this we can add identifying information to both the applications, when they are initialized, and the database. We've also toyed with the idea that teachers, at least in the U.S., aren't going to have XO laptops. Unfortunately, we haven't had much interfacing with the teacher community as of yet, so were not sure what the infrastructures are at the schools. In the model I see the Moodle server, web server, and database server could reside on an XO, a teachers laptop, a single other school server, or separate servers. We've really only just started working with the school server environment and initially our development is using virtual machines, by way of Virtual Box software. Thus far using online documentation and previous Fedora knowledge, we've been able to install the XS operating system, install MySQL, install PHP, with alot of tweaking got Gnome installed and running, and installed Moodle. We modified the built in websever to use the moddle directories as default, but were unable to ever load the index.php page. Any suggestions on something we may have missed on the webserver end? Also, if anyone has any suggestions based on the information I provided above for any further resources please feel free to send them to us. Currently we concentrating on getting Moodle up and running and figuring out how the modules store things in the database. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Jeremiah Green RIT OLPC Development Teacher Reporting Project ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
