Math Support Center Sign-In Sign-Out Form
The paper forms used by the Math Support Center to track student use of the facility are now implemented as an electronic sign in. An ancient laptop is now installed as a dedicated station for students to sign in/out and leave comments. The system was implemented to simplify data collection for an intensive assessment of MSC and is now available as a complete replacement for the paper forms. The department wiki has further details in the topic MSC.MscSignInSignOut.
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FYI:
- The laptop is intended as a dedicated station for sign-in and sign-out.
- Firefox is configured with the sign-in page as its home page.
- The network connection is minimal -- only the sign-up server is accessible.
Troubleshooting:
- If someone quits Firefox, just relaunch it from the desktop icon.
- If the laptop seriously misbehaves
- Press the Power button to the upper left of the keyboard until it powers off
- Wait a few moments
- Press the power button to turn it back on.
Geek details:
- Yes, it's really booting from a floppy.
- Yes, its OS and configuration are all on the 64Meg USB Pen Drive.
- Yes, its limited network access is configured elsewhere.
- Yes, it's accessing a different machine.
- Yes, it's running Linux. DSL Linux -- Google:DSL+Linux
- Yes, it's good ol' Firefox running on a laptop with:
- 300 Mhz Pentium MX processor
- 64Meg RAM
- Yes, it's likely I will strip superfluous stuff from the desktop.
The Logging system is web-based using an open-source CGI for maximum flexibility in choice of both client and server. Currently (Fall 2010) the client laptop is on a dedicated network connected through a NAT firewall to the ITO network. A machine in the ITO hosts the cgi and collects the data.
Feel free to drop me a note if you're interested in more details.
Cheers,
-Dick
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DickFurnas - 27 Mar 2008