Linux goes to school with NethServer

Did you ever seen this SMILE Project, from Standford?

Good idea, I will second Moodle though. Can someone that tried both suggest which are strengths and weaknesses confronting the two?

:wave: Greetings to School tribe in the great tribe Nethserver . .

I 've been a little absent involved with a community project in my city, where we combine technology, planting, harvesting , culture and free knowledge on urban spaces , and where the proposed community intranet is present. :pig2: :herb: :japanese_ogre: :corn: :notes: :video_game:

At year’s end we corresponded to change the leadership of projects for which it was not prudent to migrate the server platform.

This year :date: the change of server platform is a point that - along with the other free software projects that converge on the intranet - we will present scenarios about the inconvenience unexpectedly prove the continuing Zentyal based servers, because the changes from version 3.5

[quote=“robb, post:20, topic:2132”]
Please add what I missed… (probably a lot)
[/quote]Hey Robb , I would like the Millennium Falcon could settle our intranet lol , but … anything

Our toys are:

  1. Jokte! CMS Content Management System derived from Joomla! 2.5 . It is a Latin American initiative for continuous releases and against planned obsolescence . Coming Jokte! it gives young people a fun and easy way to program applications based on PHP from the Joomla Platform 11.4. It is used as an information portal for school , activities, lectures and overall presentation of the intranet resources
  2. Chamilo LMS Our virtual campus. Currently we continue with the version 1.9 .*

[quote=“robb, post:1, topic:2587”]
…, 30th and 31st of Jan there will be fosdem in Brussels. I am talking to a lot of people now to meet there.
One of them will be Yannick Warnier. He is the main dev of Chamilo.
[/quote] We saw an interesting material posted by Yannick about enabling MOOCs with Chamilo . We are interested in this method for the education of the communities surrounding schools
3. Kiwix is an offline reader for web content. It’s software intended to make Wikipedia available without using the internet.
4. Calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books
5. Zoneminder an integrated set of applications which provide a complete surveillance solution allowing capture, analysis, recording and monitoring of any CCTV or security cameras attached to a Linux based machine
6. Fdroidserver F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software)
applications for the Android platform. This repository FOSS Android is for students who have received from the Venezuelan State, a tablet Canaima, can then have various software applications in the school server without :sunglasses: any dependence with GooglePlay
7. Icecast server for streaming multimedia. Radio School. How can I forget? :smirk:

Schooltool Something similar is being developed by staff Fundabit , May be in Odoo
We really like Openstreetmap for the near future . Also we consider Sogo soon.

Hey @Jim Interesting proyect. Thanks for share! :+1:

Soon I will present the structure of the Zentyal server hoping the tribe can give me some help with suggestions for migrating to Nethserver 7. :pray: ( In the name of God Neth ) :pray:

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Today, I was looking to backup my photo galery because I will change of hosting provider.

Making the backup, I see in the app catalog two software in relation with school, two web hosted apps, so I think it’s relatively easy to add to the Nethserver apps:
1- Claroline is an Open Source eLearning and eWorking platform allowing teachers to build effective online courses and to manage learning and collaborative activities on the web. Translated into 35 languages, Claroline has a large worldwide users and developers community.

2- Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a Free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites

What do you think to add these two software to Netserver be “school friendly”:smile_cat:

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Emiliano, nobody is holding back anyone to have multiple choices for a category of applications served by NethServer. I can imagine that both Chamilo AND Moodle can be made available as a module.

Although on another platform, I have been busy installing Chamilo. Base install works like a charm, but I have diffuculty to get the LDAP/Samba authentication to work. (if anyone has ideas about this, please say so… I am currently a bit stuck on this)

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Oh, that’s for sure and I also agree. But I was proposing to focus on one of the two platforms at first try, just to avoid the situation in which the two platform will get incomplete support because we leaved the developer’s attention on where they want.

[quote=“robb, post:25, topic:2132”]I can imagine that both Chamilo AND Moodle can be made available as a module.
[/quote]
Sure thing :smile:
In my opinion, both must be supported as modules by NethServer, though I would much more like to focus on one, verify it is completely supported, then switch to the other one. If we don’t focus on one before the other, we risk to “half support” both, and user experience will lower.

Choosing an LMS is something that should be done by the team of teachers that needs to work with the LMS, not by the administrator of the server.
I have some experience with both platforms. Moodle has a (much) larger userbase and documentation is better. This will make that possible problems can be solved easier with the help of the Moodle community.
Look and feel of Chamilo is more modern, more intuitive. This makes it as a platform for the teachers and students a lot easier to use.
The bigger part of the Chamilo community is Spanish speaking, but the developers also speak English quite well aswell as French. I feel the Chamilo community is quite inactive. Something I try to change :smile: I am a moderator on the Chamilo forums.

I think a good choice of an LMS is first to make a list of requirements you need that the applications must be able to do. Then compare both LMS’s and see which of the two is best for your situation. (this works like this for any application)
Finally install and testdrive if the application actually works as you expect.

I’d love to see an educational repository where all educational applications are available for NethServer. One-click installs for all of them with LDAP/Samba authentication. (even better with kerberos for SSO)

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On NS ???

I started to document apache authentication, see the LDAP part it might help you:

http://wiki.nethserver.org/doku.php?id=developer:authentication_through_apache#ldap_authentication

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And I completely agree. What I find out hard to make you understand is that I don’t see the problem as “sysadmin” or “teacher”, I see the problem as packager for NethServer. My goal is to port Moodle/Chamilo inside NethServer, so I have to start somewhere (so I will choose at first one of the two/three platforms available) and until I have finished my work, sysadmins and teachers have the option to install its chosen platform by hand.

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It might be a way to start leurning to package for NS… Maybe start a new topic in the developer section where you announce the development of a Moodle package… create a github repo and start working on it…
Explain your steps and what your findings are. I am sure more experienced devs will help you when you get stuck.

(again… keep the discussion going… say what you have done, ask for help!)

I like this way and really want a school package on NethServer, also a small one?

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought togehter

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So? May we start with a new module for NS7? Moodle or chamilo? We may follow this template

It would be great to have both implemented. For both there are very valid reasons to choose them.

  • Moodle: largest userbase, very well documented.
  • Chamilo: VERY userfriendly. Modern and smooth interface. Large userbase, especially in Spanish speaking South America.

If both packages are available through NethForge, the user can choose which of the two is used.
I am busy getting Samba authentication with Chamilo, but have a hard time getting that to work. Any help on this is greatly appreciated.

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Would you mind to open a new issue on github? It’s quite easy, please explain the goals in details as best you can.
We may think to a V1 as minimal viable product

Forgive me my n00bness but when I go to the nethserver github repo, I don’t see an option to add/create an issue. How do I create an issue?

Here https://github.com/NethServer/dev/issues
But signup is mandatory

Nethserver for school isn’t a bad idea: your description says, it’s for small organisations so it could fit. I could try to promote it in our school but there is a big problem: The school’s website and our files are situtated in the educational part of the governement’s servers ans in MS Office 365…(If you want to do a research -->myschool.lu Warning, it’s written in french.) But I could ask if we could take Nethserver as a VPN-Backup server= Copy of the files in a VPN, like universities.
Nethserver is recommended in our school, because our “IT-specialists” (They don’t even know how to secure a router) aren’t familiar with Linux so they could learn using it in a more easy way.

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thanks for the link. I will try and do a feature request for Chamilo (and later on Moodle)
An easier application to integrate with Samba/LDAP is Xerte online Toolkits. That will get a feature request too… :smile:
Anyone who wants to help, please chip in.

Great article by BgLUG folks, it’s in Italian but it can quickly be translated into English by Google /cc @syntaxerrormmm

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We definitely want it :smile: and I’d like move forward. Which are the goals? We may start from install Moodle/Chamilo on NethServer. Do we have already a howto?

We can:

  • open a new issue on github for 7 version
  • create a bounty with the aim of develop a new module
  • Users interested can fund the bounty
  • Developers (or would-be devs) like @syntaxerrormmm @enricobacis stephdl @dz00te @ctek @islipfd19 @Nas or others can create the module which closes the issue, claiming the bounty.
  • Finally we can put this new module on the NethForge, installable directly from webinterface