[K12OSN] Re: Anyone provide ftp access to students? (Shawn Powers)

[Matt Oquist]

Here's a crazy idea.  I've been working lately on an electronic
portfolio module for Moodle, and along the way I ran smack-dab into
the need for a robust and featurful file-management system in Moodle.
There wasn't one, and they knew they needed one, they just hadn't
gotten to it yet, and they weren't going to have time for quite
a while.  So I wrote one.

My "repository" Moodle module (still under
http://moodle.org/download/modules/portfolio.zip) adds a "File keeper"
block to your site, through which all Moodle users can store files in
a typical filesystem-like tree with quite flexible ACL support for
selective publication (read-access) and sharing (read-write access).
(There is also versioning, and all deletions go into the "trash".)

This is *not* FTP, but what it does allow kids to do is store their
things in Moodle, and then access those files from wherever they are.

OTOH, one of the major additional developments we're planning to add
to this module is either an FTP server or WebDAV support, so that
users can drag 'n drop files UP into Moodle -- and *that* really would
be addressing the FTP question more directly.

The module isn't production ready at this point because some features
are incomplete -- for example, there is no interface for the
administrator to "empty the trash".

But it's close-to-ready for some serious testing, and I think it might
meet the same needs as FTP for some folks, so if you're interested the
discussion of the portfolio project is at
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=38736 and I'd love to hear
your thoughts.

Also, you can try out the File keeper block on our demo site:
http://portfolio.spdc.org/portfolio/  (Just create an account and do
what you can to break the File keeper.  :)   )

I'm wide-open to any ideas about how we can make this a stronger
alternative to FTP itself, even though that wasn't the original
motivation for the work.

--matt

--
http://majen.net/

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/k12osn/attachments/20060303/39b7ec57/attachment.sig>