A rhetorical question: What will students need to know to be able to submit an assignment on a Web page with a specific format?
We could make up a form they fill out, with little work on their part, but why not have students create the tools they need? This goes along with my previous post about having student learn what they need to know rather than what an external authority - the instructor/text book tells them they should learn.
Let's start with what the submission needs to look like - we'll start at http://people.umw.edu/~ernie/handin.html
If I'm going to be working with that then we'll have to come up with the requirements for a program that will produce a Web page of that format.
We can start with the source - in good XHTML format, and then we'll have to determine how to prompt for a file name, open a file, read it, and write it to the file that's acting as the source for the Webpage.
There is also the issue of directories, files, and permissions. Some of that can be handled through the materials I used in the data driven Websites course I did.
The next entries will deal with the details in C++ and Java.
Posted by ernie at August 19, 2004 05:15 PM