There are plenty of "portal" and LMS and such web software around. What is

Thanks for keeping this discussion alive, Sebastian. the need for a new one? "You can lead a child to quality educational resources, but you can't make them care" -- *me* :) So, the credit-meter gets them to *care*. And not only *care*, but actually *ask* for more work ... math, science, geography, language, whatever ... they want internet access and it is suddenly in their interest to make an effort, regardless of material. I think that is the goal of any teacher, i.e. having students give a hoot about the material. Also, I think "caring" is a prerequisite to real learning and retention. In my experience this form of "caring", i.e. caring about earning credits, is enough. They don't have to love math, but after they are compelled to "care" in this way, they still come-away with the information and the skills. I think the following condensed overview is useful, and also *this new overview graphic <http://www.asymptopia.org/media/project_images/AutoTeachInfoGraphic.png>*:

This project is about teaching kids, first and foremost. It became web-based so I could create and assign lessons from my office. The credit-meter is what I was forced to resort to in order to get their attention. Soon I recognized the system's potential for any subject, and so made it possible for others to contribute. But how to get others to contribute? Money! I would have paid for this. Other parents probably would, too, but there would be trust issues on both sides, parents and developers. And it could be messy ... unless you let parent break-down and distribute their subscription fees to the developers of their choice. Trust issues solved, clear for take-off, next stop synergy!

In other words, how to handle "internet credit" and access control and

portal provider, etc? Well, the good news is that these have all been solved and the solutions are up-and-running. Portal provider ... I've got it running on a cloud server in San Jose, California. Subscription payments are handled through PayPal. Here is the new user procedure: 1. Goto autoteach.net/subscribe and purchase a subscription. You can also buy the router pieces from me, and a pre-loaded SD card, or you can download the SD image from Github and buy the R-Pi & other pieces (antenna, power supply, case, SD) elsewhere. If you buy from me I will just send a box of parts, else if I assemble it would require FCC certification etc. So I'll send an instructions page along with. Anyway, the PayPal process redirects you back to autoteach.net, which auto-instantiates your parent account and sends you an email with your AccountID (=username, password). 2. You can immediately login and play around, but that's not required. 3. Assemble your R-Pi and boot-up the first time. 4. Navigate to 192.168.66.1 and you will see a Setup screen. 5. Enter the AccountID from the email and push "Setup". 6. Your R-Pi will pull your account info from autoteach.net, including all accounts you have setup there and your router configuration (default if you haven't logged into autoteach.net yet.) At this point, if you have never yet logged-in to autoteach.net, then you've just sync'd with your lone parent account. The Username and Password for both your parent account online, as well as your parent account on the router, are all just = AccountID. AutoTeach.net is whitelisted by default, on the router, and the firewall is open by default as well. You can configure everything on the router-side, but my colleague convinced me to spend 180 days implementing this web-sync capability, so now the recommended procedure is to do everything at autoteach.net and push the "sync" button on the router. It is much easier like this, indeed. By default you can create one more parent account and 2 kid accounts. Then, you the parent can login to autoteach.net from anywhere over-the-net and create assignments and assign to whichever kid(s) you want. Your kids connect via the AutoTeach R-Pi router (at home) and visit autoteach.net (because it's whitelisted) ... they each have their own 2 accounts, one on the router, one on the autoteach.net site. When they login to autoteach.net they see their list of assignments and perform whatever they want, as per the way you have configured for them (i.e. repeatable, do this first, etc). Once complete, then they login to 192.168.66.1 (AutoTeach R-Pi router at home) and push "Transfer Credit" ... which transfers the credits they've earned from the online site to their account on the router. Then they push "Connect" on their account interface at the router, and this causes the router to open-up the firewall to their list of WiFi devices (XBox, laptop, phone, etc) ... and they have full access for all devices until credits run dry .. then back to the "credit-feeder" website (i.e. autoteach.net) to take another assignment and earn more credits. Really I assure you that it's more complicated in writing than actually doing it. I am gearing-up to make a couple short videos demonstrating all of the above. This is turning into a short book ... so I'll AutoSilence myself ... in a moment ... :) ... but lastly, let me just add that my *Kickstarter <https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2035655858/autoteach>* campaign is launched and there are 18 routers left. It's being sold at cost, possibly less than cost (!) .. in an effort to seed the parent community. Also important to mention are the benefits of being web-based: No setup, no dependencies, platform-independent, always current, use from anywhere, parents can compel kids from work/office/beach, centralization and strength-in-numbers (ie. developers) I also think the platform can serve as a "glue" between parent-users and plugin-developers, without which the two communities just drift separately. Finally (I PROMISE): As a developer your open source application can be made available outside of AutoTeach. There's no lock-in or anything like that. It's just an additional revenue stream for you. I hope that I HAVE NOT answered all your questions, such that you and others will continue to keep this conversation alive!! If you've made it reading this far then thank you! Hope to hear from more people on edu-sig. Don't be shy ... Charles Cossé Asymptopia Software <http://www.asymptopia.org>