5 ms·

Show HN: Edrys – an open-source remote teaching platform

69 points by edrys 5y ago

ChicagoBoy11 5y ago
When the pandemic started I mentioned to a colleague that I was sure something like this would be built fairly soon. Turns out I was wrong, I think, but mostly because I overestimated our desire to really look for "the right" tool to do something like remote learning on the fly rather than just tough it out. The thing which this addresses in a nice way is the concept of adding modules to your virtual space, which I think was/is the killer feature that so many of these platforms were missing, and which added so much friction to online learning. This takes the idea of "virtual classroom" seriously, and puts the teacher in control of A LOT while simultaneously providing for a more customizable and super simple way to deal with students (instantly creating new lobbies, dragging them around, etc.) I love this... and hate how it's two years too late for me :-( In all seriousness, though, awesome project! Def. keeping up with it!!!
- edrys 5y ago
  I think you've perfectly summarized my experience teaching during the pandemic and our goal here. Something I'm very excited about is the collaborative potential, developers can make modules without worrying about any infrastructure and ship as portable black boxes, while teachers can simply add the modules with no technical knowledge. For me this would have helped tremendously, especially when trying to share tools with other teachers without having it become a full-time job maintaining and bug fixing basic infrastructure. Hopefully this can help push us away from the proprietary one-size-fits-all tools that have become unavoidable over the last couple of years. Thanks heaps for the encouragement, it goes a long way :)
  - movedx 5y ago
    I'm very interested in using this for an online platform I'm currently building. I need to better understand its capabilities. What's the best way to contact you?
    - edrys 5y ago
      Please feel free to reach out by [email](https://github.com/edrys-org/edrys#-support--contact https://github.com/edrys-org/edrys#-support--contact) or on our [Gitter](https://gitter.im/edrys-org/community https://gitter.im/edrys-org/community).
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
What's the system requirents like ? I could not find on a cursory look
- edrys 5y ago
  That will depend on how many teachers/students you plan on hosting at once. Since there is no database needed, the requirements are actually relatively low. You could easily host dozens of concurrent students/teachers on a free Heroku tier.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    oh, i meant would it work on a say 1vcpu, 1gb ram vps server? how many concurrent users will that serve? if i have a class of 50 students for example, how much would that take. i am not interested in using free credits or like. have you scaled this to a school level users? 100? 500? 1000 concurrent users
    - edrys 5y ago
      For 50 students all online concurrently, I'd say 1vcpu and 4GB memory is a safe bet. Probably more if you are using Edrys for remote labs, which use more resources and send more information at a higher rate. We've tested this architecture with ~200 students, which worked fine with a server hosted on an old Thinkpad laptop (4GB of memory IIRC). To scale Edrys horizontally, you just host multiple separate instances that are used for different classes, since there is no shared database and all auth/auth is stateless.
kkfx 5y ago
Do not take it as a sterile polemics but as a consideration to push reasoning: why keep developing web apps? The classic reason is "eh, they do not need endpoints deploy". Witch in turn means endpoints (desktops) are just default install of some OS, often not up-to-date, often in abandoned and "derived" (degraded) semi-unknown states and only some servers have to be kept up in shape. That's in turn help cloud developments, with VPS etc and that's in turn result in: - a hyper-big attack surface - operation unable to know the infra they handle - devs unable to develop complete systems anymore Piling crap on crap and augmented malfunctioning and issues. VDI is the most common apotheosis nowadays. We need to talk remotely? Ok, the BEST solution so far is a damn physical desktop phone, possibly one not full of crap, with a good mic+speaker, noise cancellation etc. Of course that means we need a room on the remote side, a room per head, to avoid talking one on another and YES, we need that to properly work from remote. No matter if it's learning or working: smart working is just a way to hope offloading costs to the workers instead of developing a real remote working/remote learning setup. Anyway, we do prefer soft-phones? Ok, no issues. That a dual monitor desktop is mandatory, one to have the participants of the conference and the other to work on. The very first thing needed to remote teaching or working is actually working from remote, locally, not on some web app central-point-of-failure. That's might be problematic for some, but that's is. We can't do anything better. Trying means just allowing bad behaviors. Back more on topic: what's needed for the student? - A note taking solution, a real one, not crappy WYSIWYG office suite, something that integrate anything in notes, calendars, file attachments, mails etc. my personal combo is Emacs/org-mode/org-agenda/notmuch/org-roam, unfortunately I can't suggest anything else since all from Zim to TiddlyWiki passing through Jopling and LogSeq are simply too limited and limiting for real work... - collaboration with local work shared with peers of any cohort, that might include single documents real-time sharing / screen sharing but also classic cooperation like modern dCVS - communication (voice, video is normally not needed for the student), witch range from classic SIP/RTP to Jami What's need the teacher? That's more complex: for frontal lessons the need is seeing the entire class, witch is dramatically hard from remote. It can approximately be done with a classic cinema like setup with an entire wall to see students stitched enough but large enough to see them individually without doing anything special. For the rest just screen sharing suffice, to share a "blackbird alike" UI. That's is IMO, witch means that dedicated rooms are needed, witch means having homes apt to WFH/remote learning AND hw investments, software is just a piece of the puzzle and can't substitute the physical parts.

69 points by edrys 5y ago

When the pandemic started I mentioned to a colleague that I was sure something like this would be built fairly soon. Turns out I was wrong, I think, but mostly because I overestimated our desire to really look for "the right" tool to do something like remote learning on the fly rather than just tough it out. The thing which this addresses in a nice way is the concept of adding modules to your virtual space, which I think was/is the killer feature that so many of these platforms were missing, and which added so much friction to online learning. This takes the idea of "virtual classroom" seriously, and puts the teacher in control of A LOT while simultaneously providing for a more customizable and super simple way to deal with students (instantly creating new lobbies, dragging them around, etc.) I love this... and hate how it's two years too late for me :-( In all seriousness, though, awesome project! Def. keeping up with it!!!

edrys 5y ago
I think you've perfectly summarized my experience teaching during the pandemic and our goal here. Something I'm very excited about is the collaborative potential, developers can make modules without worrying about any infrastructure and ship as portable black boxes, while teachers can simply add the modules with no technical knowledge. For me this would have helped tremendously, especially when trying to share tools with other teachers without having it become a full-time job maintaining and bug fixing basic infrastructure. Hopefully this can help push us away from the proprietary one-size-fits-all tools that have become unavoidable over the last couple of years. Thanks heaps for the encouragement, it goes a long way :)
- movedx 5y ago
  I'm very interested in using this for an online platform I'm currently building. I need to better understand its capabilities. What's the best way to contact you?
  - edrys 5y ago
    Please feel free to reach out by [email](https://github.com/edrys-org/edrys#-support--contact https://github.com/edrys-org/edrys#-support--contact) or on our [Gitter](https://gitter.im/edrys-org/community https://gitter.im/edrys-org/community).

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

What's the system requirents like ? I could not find on a cursory look

edrys 5y ago
That will depend on how many teachers/students you plan on hosting at once. Since there is no database needed, the requirements are actually relatively low. You could easily host dozens of concurrent students/teachers on a free Heroku tier.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  oh, i meant would it work on a say 1vcpu, 1gb ram vps server? how many concurrent users will that serve? if i have a class of 50 students for example, how much would that take. i am not interested in using free credits or like. have you scaled this to a school level users? 100? 500? 1000 concurrent users
  - edrys 5y ago
    For 50 students all online concurrently, I'd say 1vcpu and 4GB memory is a safe bet. Probably more if you are using Edrys for remote labs, which use more resources and send more information at a higher rate. We've tested this architecture with ~200 students, which worked fine with a server hosted on an old Thinkpad laptop (4GB of memory IIRC). To scale Edrys horizontally, you just host multiple separate instances that are used for different classes, since there is no shared database and all auth/auth is stateless.

kkfx 5y ago

Do not take it as a sterile polemics but as a consideration to push reasoning: why keep developing web apps? The classic reason is "eh, they do not need endpoints deploy". Witch in turn means endpoints (desktops) are just default install of some OS, often not up-to-date, often in abandoned and "derived" (degraded) semi-unknown states and only some servers have to be kept up in shape. That's in turn help cloud developments, with VPS etc and that's in turn result in: - a hyper-big attack surface - operation unable to know the infra they handle - devs unable to develop complete systems anymore Piling crap on crap and augmented malfunctioning and issues. VDI is the most common apotheosis nowadays. We need to talk remotely? Ok, the BEST solution so far is a damn physical desktop phone, possibly one not full of crap, with a good mic+speaker, noise cancellation etc. Of course that means we need a room on the remote side, a room per head, to avoid talking one on another and YES, we need that to properly work from remote. No matter if it's learning or working: smart working is just a way to hope offloading costs to the workers instead of developing a real remote working/remote learning setup. Anyway, we do prefer soft-phones? Ok, no issues. That a dual monitor desktop is mandatory, one to have the participants of the conference and the other to work on. The very first thing needed to remote teaching or working is actually working from remote, locally, not on some web app central-point-of-failure. That's might be problematic for some, but that's is. We can't do anything better. Trying means just allowing bad behaviors. Back more on topic: what's needed for the student? - A note taking solution, a real one, not crappy WYSIWYG office suite, something that integrate anything in notes, calendars, file attachments, mails etc. my personal combo is Emacs/org-mode/org-agenda/notmuch/org-roam, unfortunately I can't suggest anything else since all from Zim to TiddlyWiki passing through Jopling and LogSeq are simply too limited and limiting for real work... - collaboration with local work shared with peers of any cohort, that might include single documents real-time sharing / screen sharing but also classic cooperation like modern dCVS - communication (voice, video is normally not needed for the student), witch range from classic SIP/RTP to Jami What's need the teacher? That's more complex: for frontal lessons the need is seeing the entire class, witch is dramatically hard from remote. It can approximately be done with a classic cinema like setup with an entire wall to see students stitched enough but large enough to see them individually without doing anything special. For the rest just screen sharing suffice, to share a "blackbird alike" UI. That's is IMO, witch means that dedicated rooms are needed, witch means having homes apt to WFH/remote learning AND hw investments, software is just a piece of the puzzle and can't substitute the physical parts.