User Manual

Introduction

Everytime a student (or a teacher who's not logged in to a teacher computer) logs in, the application starts minimized in the destkop panel notification area. It's easy to identify it by its icon . Clicking on it will show or hide the application.

The application looks like the image at left, in which we can see three different areas:

• Upper left: Classmate icons area.
• Upper right: List of files shared by the selected classmate.
• Lower tab: Personal icon, shared folders and files in the selected folder.

Colleagues icons area

Whenever classmates or a teacher logs in, their icons will appear in this area. The user's login name will appear under each icon, and moving the mouse over the icon will display a small text box with the user's full name (if that data was provided when the user account was created).
Left clicking on the classmate icon will display the files he or she is sharing in the right-hand pane.
Right clicking on the classmate icon will display the menu you can see on the right; this menu will allow the user to:

• Send a file to her classmate: A dialog will appear that allows the user to choose a file from disk that will be sent once selected. The receiver will see a dialog that will allow him to accept or reject the file -- except if the file is sent by the teacher. If the file is accepted it will be copied to his home folder on his computer.
• Send a message to her classmate: a small dialog with a textbox will appear to write the message to be sent.
• Aceppt/Reject her messages: To authorize or block every message coming from a particular classmate. Messages coming from the teacher cannot be blocked.

Lower tab

• User photo (or icon):  can be changed in three ways: dragging an image file from the file explorer over the current photo[1]; using the copy menu in the file explorer and right clicking on the current photo, then selecting paste in the popup menu; or using the application to change the login photo for gdm or kdm (gdmphotosetup for gnome users or throught the control panel, appearance section for KDE users).
• Shared files categories: ControlAula allows the user to group shared files by categories. A student could organize his or her file something like: common, maths, chemistry, etc.; or like: common, first, second, third, etc. Only the files in the selected category are shared. The application always shares the files in the common category. The user can create new categories by typing the new name and pressing Enter in the textbox under "Add a category". 
• Shared files: the shared files under this category are shown. There are two ways to share a new file: dragging and dropping it from the file explorer onto this frame[1] or using the copy and paste menus, just as with the user photo. Right clicking on a selected file will raise a pop-up menu to delete the file, copy it to the user home folder, or copy it to the user Desktop. Files with a size smaller than 200 Kbytes will be shared via http, others will use the bittorrent protocol for sharing.

Shared files by selected classmate area

Application manuals

• Index
• Teachers documentation
• Sysadmin documentation
• Installation and Quick Start

Last modification on 16th November, 2007.