[ale] Notes from Jun 19th meeting

[Jim Kinney]

On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 3:12 PM, Brian Pitts <brian at polibyte.com> wrote:

> Jim Kinney wrote:
> > Daniel: note that TeacherTool is very specifically a thin client,
> classroom
> > server model tool. I've been looking at the process of extending that
> > functionality to incorporate multiple classrooms on the same server
> (can't
> > have two teachers at once currently doing spotlight :( and to also handle
> > the next generation of chubby (LNS term - thanks Aaron) and thick
> > client/diskless workstations. The rearchitech is required because the
> > connectivity is different between the three different flavours. The
> teachers
> > will need a single tol that is connection agnostic. That requires some
> > elegance in server setup that does not currently exist.
>
> I'm curious what you think about iTALC. [0] It seems to have gained the
> favor of Edubuntu. [1]


I have not tinkered with iTalc other than a cursory dig on the site. It is
very slick in many respects (iTalc supports windows clients where
teachertool is linux clients only). Given that TeacherTool was tailored for
the K12LTSP (i.e. RedHat/Fedora/Centos) build, I would expect it would be
difficult to drop it into Edubuntu without some work. Also, teachertool uses
a gui widget set that is not Ubuntu standard (I think - I'm sure fltk can be
added).

iTalc can run on a windows machine which can be a plus. But it doesn't have
the spotlight capability teacher can select a student to have write privs on
teacher-shared desktop, all others can watch - the teachers at GETC went
just bonkers over this!). I think iTalc now can push a common screen read
only to all students. That is the electronic board killer app.

If I were setting up a total Linux classroom setup, I would use teachertool.
If the teachers _had_ to use windows, I would really look at iTalc more
closely. If any students were using windows, the iTalc would get the nod as
teachertool has no windows client support.

If all students use Linux and the teacher is stuck using windows, I would
set teachers up with a vmware-player that does a thin client environment
just like the kids and then give them teachertool. Now their teacher desktop
is not accessible at all but they can share out their Linux client desktop.
That's a very good solution in my mind. I did not get to put this into
practice at APS before my contract ended.

>
>
> [0] http://italc.sourceforge.net/
> [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EdubuntuAndItalcHardy
>
> -Brian
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
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