SCOUG-Programming Mailing List Archives

Date:	Sat, 22 Dec 2007 21:47:33 -0800
From:	"Gregory W. Smith" <gsmith@well.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
To:	SCOUG-Programming@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Programming: Projects: GanttProject, dotProject, or Something Else

Content Type: text/plain

Steve Levine tossed out a comment at the last meeting that I think might
be worthy of discussion as part of the Programming SIG. He mentioned the
open source Web/PHP program dotProject. My interest is in using dotProject
or a similar tool for a class that I am teaching next semester.
This semester I took a homework problem from the textbook and expanded it
into a mini-project. I then assigned the project small teams of students.
Unfortunately, the assignment went over like a lead balloon. I even told
the students to look in the textbook and posted a solution to the original
problem. Oh well, when you want students to work together, they cannot.
When you want them to turn in original work, on the other hand, you see
the same mistakes copied over, and over, and over.
I am now looking for better ways of introducing students to projects
without turning it into a data entry class for Microsoft Project. The
department is willing to get a copy of Microsoft Project if needed. I am
somewhat familiar with MS Project since we used it for a hydrogen generator
project where I am consulting. The project manager used MS Project to
prepare the Gantt charts and schedules. I worked my tasks from the project
manager's charts and schedules. In addition, in the past I have used
TurboProject to prepare my own Gantt charts and schedules. However,
TurboProject has not been updated in ages even though you can get new
copies from the publisher.
A quick search using Gantt on SourceForge turns up dotProject, phpCollab,
GanttProject, and GanttPV as a few representative project tracking programs.
In addition, Greg Wilson at the University of Toronto has prepared an open
courseware programming course that is project oriented. His Software
Carpentry course (http://swc.scipy.org) uses drProject. However, his
approach is a bit too specific to software projects.
Right now I am leaning towards GanttProject to prepare the schedules and
task assignments. I can do the work on my machine and pass out the project
files for the students to use on their own machines. Since GanttProject is
in Java, it should be realtivly easy for the students to set up their own
machines to review the task assignments and schedules.
Using dotProject would be another option. Setting up the system would be
a bit more work for me. However, the studens only need a web browser to get
to the task assignments and schedule. My main concern would be turning this
over to the University IT group to put on one of their machines. I might
also be able to do this on one of the department machines (as opposed to a
university IT box). However, then the machine administration would fall on
me since the department technician is not primarily a software tehcnician.
Another option for dotProject would have the department spring a few dollars
a month for a virtual Linux box. There are a few web hosting companies that
include dotProject setups as one of their pre-configured virtual hosts.
GantPV is a Python based option that I don't think is quite there yet for
what I want to do. It still needs some work and I don't know how well the
students would take to setting up and using Python.

And now for something completely different. Octave 3.0 was just released.
Builds of the installers are not yet ready for download. But they might be
ready by the time of the next SCOUG meeting.
--
Gregory W. Smith (WD9GAY) gsmith@well.com

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