[K12OSN] Fl_Teachers_Tool

[Eric Harrison]

Robert Arkiletian wrote:
> On 11/20/06, David Trask <dtrask at vcsvikings.org> wrote:
>> "Support list for open source software in schools." <k12osn at redhat.com>
>> writes:
>> >
>> >As for Edubuntu, they have "Student Control Panel" which has many of the
>> >features of Fl_TeacherTool.
> 
> Yes, this is why I have not ported fl_TeacherTool to Edubuntu. In
> addition, Edubuntu has strict requirements for apps being accepted.
> Namely, they prefer apps be coded in GTK+ not FLTK. GTK+ keeps the
> GNOME look and feel.
> 
>>
>>
>> And was adopted as a spec for Fiesty (due in April) with much more
>> functionality.  So....in essence working to adopt FL_Teachertool for
>> Ubuntu will be duplication of efforts already underway.
> 
> I have read some of the spec for SCP
> https://wiki.edubuntu.org/StudentControlPanelCompletion
> and as far as I can tell the extra features which it will have are
> 
> 1) enabling restrictions on users with pessulus
> 2) setting up a "group system" where only students who belong to a
> teacher will show up in the user list
> 3) Prettier GUI with icons beside processes
> 4) Plugin mechanism to make it easier to add other features
> 
> Are there any other extra features in SCP?
> 
> BTW I have been thinking about #2. This is required for schools with a
> powerful ltsp server running multiple classrooms. I don't think it's
> possible to do this properly without filtering by mac addresses.
> Imagine a student enrolled in 2 different IT classes in different
> blocks. If teacher Smith has the student in block A and teacher Jones
> has the student in block B then if the filtering system is simply
> based on groups, it will fail since he will show up in Smiths block B
> classlist. 


The simplest scenario I can think up off the top of my head is to allow
each teacher to have multiple filters. "Period 1", "Period 2", "Math
lab", etc.


Perhaps it would be better to think of this as an "attendance list". The
teacher creates an "attendance list" that contains all of the students
for the class/period/room/or whatever makes sense to them. When the
"attendance list" is selected, it pops open a window and the teacher
then deselect/select students to match who is actually present in the
class. When they select "Ok", we use that as the filter...

> So, for the next version of Fl_TT, I thought of having a
> simple flat file with room #'s associated with MAC addesses. If I can
> poll and associate a mac address to an ip I can filter the list by
> reading the flat file. (Doesn't nmap do this?)
> The advantage of this solution is that if the labs are being used with
> generic logins (comp1, comp2, etc) it will still work.
> 

"/sbin/arp -n" will give you the mapping of IP address-to-MAC addresses.


This would be useful to create a filter for a room or lab (i.e. "monitor
the Reading Lab")

-Eric