RE: New educational app

["David C. Moore" <dmoore@mbhs.edu>]

Ian,

Thanks for checking it out.  AUC, as you mentioned, is basically intended
to be a one-stop information center for the student and staff of a school.
It's directed towards K-12 at the moment, but is very close to working at
the college level also.  It's GPL.  It's main premise is being web-based.
The interface itself is very customizable, and it's designed so that even
teachers and students without much computer experience can use it, and
even administer it.  Nearly all of the administration functions for
teachers and administrators are web-based, so that teachers can maintain
an up to date "virtual classroom" without any special knowledge.   One
feature that I am particularly proud of is that teachers can upload a MS
Word 97/98 file into their classroom, and said file can be viewed by
students without having to download the word file.  (This ability is based
on the freely available mswordview program to convert word to html).
Since many teachers already use word to create their handouts in class,
this allows them to put this information online with hardly any extra
effort.  I would encourage anyone who hasn't to check it out.  The demo,
documentation, and download is available at:

http://library.advanced.org/27155/

As Ian mentioned, the current version is 0.5 because it doesn't have all
the features that I plan to add.  The features that are in it now have
been fairly extensively tested (however there are a few bugs as you
might expect).

I'm working on version 0.5.2 right now, and have already completed support
for dynamic modules.  This means that a school could design their own
components to add to AUC without having to recompile.  For example, if
they need a special database and front-end for a certain class or
activity, that can be compiled as a shared library, and utilized in AUC
without recompilation, and with only knowledge of C and the simple API
used by AUC.

Anyway, I hope a lot of you can give me some feedback on AUC.  I'm
interested in improving it.  I'll be heading off to Pasadena, CA on
Saturday for college, so I may be busy in the next few weeks, but I can
promise an answer to any email you send me.  Thanks a lot!

Regards,

David Moore

On Fri, 10 Sep 1999, Ian Thomas wrote:

> This looks very interesting.  Has any one on this list tried out the
> AUC package. I noted that it is version 0.5 so I would expect some
> significant holes. I would be interested in how useful it is. At first
> glance it looks like it is moving toward the personalized one stop
> information center for teachers, students and administrators.
> 
> I.Thomas
> Teacher of Information Technology
> Alberni District Secondary School
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:	Doug Loss [SMTP:dloss@csrlink.net]
> > Sent:	Friday, August 27, 1999 2:39 PM
> > To:	seul-edu@seul.org
> > Subject:	New educational app
> > 
> > I just saw this at Freshmeat:
> > 
> > <http://library.advanced.org/27155/>
> > 
> > Its description is:
> > 
> > Welcome to the home site of AUC
> > (Authenticated User Community,
> > pronounced "oak"), the
> > student-designed intranet engine that
> > is revolutionizing the role of the
> > Internet in education. 
> > 
> > I looked at the site briefly, and it looks as though this engine might be
> > very useful.  The OpenClassroom people should look into it.  For right
> > now,
> > I'd like the teachers on the list to look at it and give us your first
> > impressions of it.  We'll probably end up inviting the development team to
> > join our discussions here.
> > 
> > Doug Loss            Always acknowledge a fault.  This will throw
> > dloss@csrlink.net    those in authority off their guard and give
> > (570) 326-3987       you the opportunity to commit more.
> >                         Mark Twain
> 

------------------------------------------------------
  David Moore       California Institute of Technology
 <dcm@acm.org>             http://www.mbhs.edu/~dmoore
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