Proposal for Second Annual "Computing Habitat" Competition
Entry Name
Collaborative Text Editor ("CTE")
Team Members
- Kevin Barnes (217) 766-9023 kbarnes3@uiuc.edu
- Brett Clouser (217) 430-2771 clouser2@uiuc.edu
- Alex Disney (708) 609-6875 adisney2@uiuc.edu
- Matt Geske (847) 436-1183 mgeske2@uiuc.du
- Andres J. Tack (847) 302-0450 atack2@uiuc.edu
Project Description
- Collaborative Text Editor, where every participant's cursor is visible in real-time
- Intended as an instructional tool for code-intensive classes
- Creation of a "work room" environment where students and T.A.'s can find each other
Project Goal
- Chiefly: a text editor that allows several people to write the same document
- Real-time updating of other users' changes
- Extension: an editor that supports a learning environment.
- a "work room" feel, where documents are grouped by class or assignment
- TA's could view these documents in progress and interact with the students
- professors in a lecture could "push" a source file to small groups of students
- The project would, of course, be platform-independent.
Who Benefits
This project is primarily designed to facilitate instruction. Students and their instructors (T.A.'s particularly) would be granted a new outlet with which to interact with each other. A T.A. in office hours could watch students write their code and more quickly assess students' mistakes. Currently, the mechanism that supports this is e-mail; the use of a collaborative editor would allow instant gratification, and likely a faster work environment.
Existing Siebel Infrastructure Used
The Siebel Center has a hugely flexible network, including servers that could facilitate such intensive interaction. CTE would make use of these resources to host an environment where students, T.A.'s, and professors could reliably interact and seek each other out. The service provided by the Siebel infrastructure would be the "work rooms" where students and T.A.'s could publish their documents. The connection directly between a document publisher and a subscriber would be made independent of the CS network.
