MY Server Desktop server for school teachers Yasuhisa Matsumura Nagoya University of Foreign Studies

What is a desktop server?  It’s a common personal computer  working as a WEB server.

WEB communication  Homepage: one-way communication  Mail / Bulletin board / Blog: two-way communication multiplex one-to-one communication  Server-side data processing: two-way communication one-to-many communication Server responds automatically.

MY Server – online testing server -

MY Server collects, evaluates answers and replies automatically.

E-teaching  Teacher - Student - communication via learning materials

Distinct Feature of MY Server light-weight server  It works simply on Windows 2000/XP and does not need any SQL server programs such as MS SQL / Oracle / MySQL.  MY Server can make every PC a server.  MY Server can make everyone / every student a server administrator (or e-teaching instructor).

Use of MY Server No.1  Educational tool to teach students server-side data processing Both the data-sharing server of a school and each student’s localhost machine can have the same “MY Server” program.

Check for data-consistency on the own PC  Students can make questionnaires / testing sheets and check for data consistency / access control on their own PCs.  They send their data to the common server after checking data.  This enables “MY Server” to be a educational tool for server-side data processing / e-teaching.

Use of MY Server No.2  A very light-weight server  It works very well even on a notebook PC as a “Mobile Server”

Limitation of MY Server  “MY Server” is actually not a learning management system (LMS) software for a whole school / university.  MY Server is an educational, administrative software for one teacher who manages several courses.  It is highly recommended to use MY Server together with such a school/university-level LMS as Blackboard / WebCT / Moodle etc.

Part II How to use MY Server  Data directories of MY Server

Instructor’s directories  The teacher (instructor) needs only to administer over the following 3 directories. 1. users 2. courses 3. data_summary

“users” directory  The user list named “user_list.csv” exists here. 1. Create/Edit the file “user_list.csv”. 2. Put the file onto the “Users” directory. 3. Double-click “update_user_list.exe”. (=saturn icon)

In “users” directory

“courses” directory  Instructor’s managing courses are created here. 1. Write exam paper using “FrontPage” / “DreamWeaver” / “GoLive” etc. 2. Put the exam paper into the course directory under “courses”. 3. Double-click “access_control.exe” (=saturn icon)

“courses” directory 

“data_summary” directory  Students’ answers are collected and summarized in the form of Excel sheet and stored in the “data_summary” directory.  The data collection is NOT automatic,  but the instructor has to first enter the course and click one of the buttons to “create Excel data”.

Instructor creates Excel data. 1. Enter the course 2. Click “Admin”-button and 3. Create Excel Data

Enter the course

Click “admin” button 

Instructor creates Excel data. 

Part III Public MY Server 

Upload 1. The Teacher of the class writes exam paper / questionnaires on his/her own MY Server just like text-processing. 2. Checks the files for data-consistency & access control and views the process of the exam evaluation on his/her own MY Server. 3. And then finally uploads them to the public common MY Server of the institution.

download  The teacher sometimes checks the students’ learning process.  He/She downloads the result Excel files from the public MY Server to his/her own MY Server.

Remote Desktop  Windows XP (or Windows 2000 Server) has a remote access program: “Remote Desktop”

Public MY Server  Type the address of the public MY Server of the institution

Windows authentication  Only the teachers who are logged in the server can proceed.

View the desktop of the public MY Server machine  If the desktop takes up the entire screen, then make it smaller so that you can see both desktops at the same time.

Copy & Paste from one desktop to the other  Excel data (or whatever else) can be copied and pasted from one desktop to the other.