[ale] Linux Help Desk Call Apps?
James P. Kinney III
jkinney at localnetsolutions.com
Thu Nov 6 12:25:52 EST 2003
That is where my app was headed. It supported a series of quizes
selected randomly from a test bank that was used for pre-lab "force the
student to read the lab book" testing. During the lab, the students
logged into the online lab notebook to record their observations and
data. If they had not taken the pre-lab quiz, they were locked out. The
final lab report page was sent by email as a PDF to each student in the
lab group.
The admin pages were still in development and are not ready for use by
anyone but a perl wizard :) Basically, the admin pages will allow a
teacher to design a lab notebook using modules (text entry, data forms,
data processing, graph box) and build multiple lab types from the basic
framework. The second admin page build test bank questions based on
topic headings. The 3rd page select topic heading for each quiz so that
quiz content can be modified quickly. The student data is tracked so
that the teacher can get the exact quiz and question/answer layout that
the student got.
It desperately needs to be rehacked to use a database instead of the
flat files that were getting unwieldy to maintain. There is also the
need for some javascript to add for some specialized error trapping and
to make the spreadsheet a bit easier to use.
A second app-in-progress was a hideous test bank program. Each question
had 15-30 answers to choose from. Each wrong answer could be arrived at
by a mistake. This allowed for partial credit on a multiple-choice test.
It also allowed for every student to get different numbers but basically
the same test with problems in different orders. It was only the real
hard-nosed instructors that liked that one. :)
On Thu, 2003-11-06 at 12:01, Jonathan Glass wrote:
> To go off on a small tangent...
>
> Something I think would be useful to develop is a web-based testing
> system for teachers. The teachers input the questions and appropriate
> answers (or select from a DB), then presents the test to the students.
> Once the student finishes the exam, the correct answers appear on the
> screen, along with his grade. The teacher gets a real-time admin screen
> showing who has taken the text, average time taken, and pretty graphs of
> the grades.
>
> A professor at Macon State designed such a system using ASP.Net and
> tight Office integration (and he doesn't want to OSS/GPL it). I think
> something comparable from the OSS world would be a help for
> teachers..although I'll admit to not having done market research to see
> what commercial packages are available. I've only had professors ask
> for this.
>
> My $0.02
>
> Jonathan Glass
>
> James P. Kinney III wrote:
>
> >Great point, Dow. I guess I've sat on the web application I wrote at
> >Emory for providing a web-forms based spreadsheet with graphing and
> >curve fits long enough.
> >
> >The more stuff that is "out there" the more weight the opensource
> >process gets.
> >
> >On Thu, 2003-11-06 at 11:16, Dow Hurst wrote:
> >
> >
> >>You may not expect the interest of other people in the code since your
> >>being humble. However, since I've been thinking about open source
> >>lately and it's impact on people's lives, I think you may find that your
> >>code could be a nice project on sourceforge. It can grow, if watered,
> >>into something businesses would want and would pay support for. The
> >>code can be GPL'd but still companies will pay for support. I think it
> >>is amazing to see the projects that start out like this one and grow
> >>into world influencing pieces of software. Think about the influence of
> >>Apache, GCC, and Gimp. I am in the midst of my first install of Gentoo
> >>1.4 and have been thinking philosophically as I watch compilation
> >>happen. I think my Celeron 333MHz laptop will become useful again due
> >>to this project. Gentoo's install isn't that bad either for the benefit
> >>down the road. Just amazed once again at the power of people like you
> >>being involved in open source,
> >>Dow
> >>
> >>PS. There is never enough variety of software.
> >>
> >>Jonathan Glass wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>Oh yeah! I have a verbal ok to publish the s/w w/a GPL license.
> >>>Wesleyan's only request is they get the updates, too. :)
> >>>
> >>>I'm preparing for the GRE over the next 4-6 weeks, but after that I'll
> >>>have time to publish that code on my web site. I'm not sure how many
> >>>people would care to see it, but it will be available.
> >>>
> >>>I think I'm going to post my notes on some of my other projects as well
> >>>(SMB auth via PHP, PDF printer for Samba that acts as a Windows printer
> >>>and emails the resulting PDFs to the user, etc).
> >>>
> >>>Life is good, and information wants to be free!
> >>>
> >>>Jonathan
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>A comment you made is why I see Open Source software as inherently
> >>>>better than closed. You said you'd post it (given permission, of
> >>>>course) "after cleaning it up". If you know no one outside the coding
> >>>>group will see the source, why make it pretty? Granted, I'm not a coder
> >>>>, but I can see that being the case.
> >>>>
> >>>>Brian
> >>>>
> >>>>Jonathan Glass wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>I use Perldesk to catch incoming email to "helpdesk at ibb" and
> >>>>>"help at ibb"...
> >>>>>
> >>>>>I wrote WesHelpDesk for Wesleyan College that does all the required. It
> >>>>>interfaced with Exchange 5.5 via LDAP for user info, NT 4 for
> >>>>>authentication, and a local smart-relay for outbound email and paging.
> >>>>>ALl ticket updates automatically get sent to the end-users, and
> >>>>>escalations get sent to the Director. Because everything is MYSQL
> >>>>>driven,
> >>>>>the Director is able to use ODBC to generate usage/tracking reports.
> >>>>>Pretty cool 6 month project...earned me As for 2 different classes (DBA
> >>>>>and Web Design). :)
> >>>>>
> >>>>>If anyone wants to look at it, I'll ask the Director for permission to
> >>>>>GPL
> >>>>>it, and post the code somewhere (after cleaning it up a bit..of
> >>>>>course!).
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Thanks
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Jonathan
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>All,
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>It would be nice to put a computer to catch help desk calls, log them,
> >>>>>>email them to techs, or have the system page them etc. etc. I seem to
> >>>>>>rember reading a review in Linux Journal. Anyone remember which one?
> >>>>>>Any
> >>>>>>one successfully putting a computer box to catch the initial calls?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>Regards,
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>John
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>_______________________________________________
> >>>>>>Ale mailing list
> >>>>>>Ale at ale.org
> >>>>>>http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>_______________________________________________
> >>>>Ale mailing list
> >>>>Ale at ale.org
> >>>>http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>
> >>>_______________________________________________
> >>>Ale mailing list
> >>>Ale at ale.org
> >>>http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >>>
> >>>
>
>
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--
James P. Kinney III \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \ one Linux user /
Local Net Solutions,LLC \ at a time. /
770-493-8244 \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com
GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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