[Ubuntu-Classroom] Just For Learning: a Lernid-like web application

[Marten de Vries]

Hello everyone,

The dutch Ubuntu Classroom equivalent (Ubuntu NL Mwanzo) developed a
Lernid-like web application for their online classes. Its main advantage
is that students don't have to install anything to use it. They just
enter a nick name, and are inside the lesson interface.

The application is compatible with IRC (which also makes it compatible
with Lernid) through an IRC bot. The dutch Mwanzo team is now using the
web application for their online classes, and I hereby want to present
it to the international community too.

In short, it supports:
- Separated class and chat messages
- Auto-opening links (inside web application 'tabs') that the instructor
uses, like Lernid does.
- A separate place for asking, answering and dropping questions.
- A fully translatable interface, Dutch and English translations are
already available. It uses the browser locale, the IRC bot locale is
specified in the server configuration file.
- Log generation (both with and without chat messages, depending on the
server configuration)
- IRC, a bot posts everything said in the web application to IRC and
vice versa. It's possible to completely control the web application via
IRC that way (so e.g. an instructor can use IRC, and the students Just
For Learning if the instructor prefers.)
- An instructor interface
- Instructor rights based on membership of a (at server level
configurable) launchpad team. The IRC rights (+m and +v) are set based
on the nicknames saved in Launchpad that way also.
- and more...

The application is completely written in Python using the tornado
framework, which should make it pretty good scalable.

The project URL is https://launchpad.net/justforlearning . It's trunk
branch includes a README file that explains how to set up your own
testing instance if you'd like to test JFL. You can also contact me (see
down here), then I'll be glad to temporarily host it for you while testing.

I'm subscribed to this list now if you have any questions, and will also
be in #ubuntu-classroom-backstage sometimes (my nick is commandoline).

Regards,
-- 
Marten de Vries