[Edu-sig] Bootable Python CDs?

[Jaime E. Villate]

On Thu, 2006-04-27 at 10:47 -0500, Ian Bicking wrote:
> Anyway, a network syncing seems pretty reasonable.  That could be as 
> simple as zipping up the work and uploading it to a class site, and
> then 
> downloading it later (from any machine); you could put the code to do 
> this on the CD. 

Moodle lets you do that easily. My students zip their source code
for each class and submit it in our Moodle server (the source code is
actually Maxima, but Python would work in the same way). Moodle
is also used to publish the work-plan for each class, send
e-mail announcements to all students, discussion forums, wikis, etc.

The Moodle server is synchronized to our University database via LDAP,
so I do not have to worry about giving permissions to my students:
those enrolled in the course can automatically upload files.

Moodle does not use SVN version control, but you can easily add that
with a module (we've done that).

I have also written a Moodle module that will take the source code file
submitted by each student, run it in the server (in our case the source
code is Scheme), and compare the result with the program submitted by
the teacher. That way we can automatically grade student's programs
in a weekly basis.

You can see a few more details and links in:
 http://fisica.fe.up.pt/pub/villate/workshop-up/eic2107.pdf

Cheers,
Jaime
University of Porto, Portugal