MY Server

Desktop server

for school teachersYasuhisa Matsumura

Nagoya University of Foreign Studies

What is a desktop server?

It’s a common personal computer working as a WEB server.

WEB communication

Homepage:

one-way communication Mail / Bulletin board / Blog:

two-way communication

multiplex one-to-one communication Server-side data processing:

two-way communication

　 one-to-many communication

Server responds automatically.

MY Server – online testing server -

MY Servercollects, evaluates answers and replies automatically.

E-teaching

Teacher - Student - communication

via learning materials

Distinct Feature of MY Serverlight-weight server

It works simply on Windows 2000/XP and does not need any SQL server programs such as MS SQL / Oracle / MySQL.

MY Server can make every PC a server.

MY Server can make everyone / every student a server administrator (or e-teaching instructor).

Use of MY ServerNo.1

Educational tool to teach students server-side data processing

Both the data-sharing server of a school and

each student’s localhost machine

can have the same “MY Server” program.

Check for data-consistency on the own PC

Students can make questionnaires / testing sheets and check for data consistency / access control on their own PCs.

They send their data to the common server after checking data.

This enables “MY Server” to be a educational tool for server-side data processing / e-teaching.

Use of MY ServerNo.2

A very light-weight server It works very well even on a notebook

PC as a “Mobile Server” 　

Limitation of MY Server

“MY Server” is actually not a learning management system (LMS) software for a whole school / university.

MY Server is an educational, administrative software for one teacher who manages several courses.

It is highly recommended to use MY Server together with such a school/university-level LMS as Blackboard / WebCT / Moodle etc.

Part IIHow to use MY Server

Data directories of MY Server

Instructor’s directories

The teacher (instructor) needs only to administer over the following 3 directories.

1. users

2. courses

3. data_summary

“users” directory

The user list named “user_list.csv” exists here.

1. Create/Edit the file “user_list.csv”.

2. Put the file onto the “Users” directory.

3. Double-click “update_user_list.exe”.

(=saturn icon)

In “users” directory

“courses” directory

Instructor’s managing courses are created here.

1. Write exam paper using “FrontPage” / “DreamWeaver” / “GoLive” etc.

2. Put the exam paper into the course directory under “courses”.

3. Double-click “access_control.exe”

(=saturn icon)

“courses” directory

“data_summary” directory

Students’ answers are collected and summarized in the form of Excel sheet and stored in the “data_summary” directory.

The data collection is NOT automatic, but the instructor has to first enter the

course and click one of the buttons to “create Excel data”.

Instructor creates Excel data.

1. Enter the course

2. Click “Admin”-button and

3. Create Excel Data

Enter the course

Click “admin” button

　

Instructor creates Excel data.

Part IIIPublic MY Server

Upload

1. The Teacher of the class writes exam paper / questionnaires on his/her own

MY Server just like text-processing.

2. Checks the files for data-consistency & access control and views the process of the exam evaluation on his/her own MY Server.

3. And then finally uploads them to the public common MY Server of the institution.

download

The teacher sometimes checks the students’ learning process.

He/She downloads the result Excel files from the public MY Server to his/her own MY Server.

Remote Desktop

Windows XP (or Windows 2000 Server) has a remote access program: “Remote Desktop”

Public MY Server

Type the address of the public

MY Server of the institution

Windows authentication

Only the teachers who are logged in the server can proceed.

View the desktop of thepublic MY Server machine

If the desktop takes up the entire screen, then make it smaller so that you can see both desktops at the same time.

Copy & Pastefrom one desktop to the other

Excel data (or whatever else) can be copied and pasted from one desktop to the other.