Web Based Interface

Funny, I assumed the word "moodle" in the previous post was a typo, although I couldn't make out what was intended. i had no idea it was a specific thing.

Warning: another novel in response to a simple question (one not even directed at me) follows.

i can't speak for anyone using moodle, but where I teach, we use "Blackboard", which I guess is in some ways kind of sort of similar. I don't know what kind of real integration opportunities Blackboard offers in terms of whether application builders can access some sort of API to transfer information directly. But if nothing else, Blackboard contains a Dropbox-like facility where teachers and students can upload arbitrary files using Blackboard's own web GUI. I'm pretty sure it has the concept of a single "assignment" where I enter the instructions and upload supporting material, then each user uploads his own file in response, and Blackboard tracks which files came from which users, probably lets me enter a grade and/or comments, but I doubt there is a way for me to annotate the files they uploaded. So I will presumably have to download their files one by one in order to annotate and grade them.

I've never used Blackboard for this and suspect it will be awkward. Clicking a file in the Blackboard web GUI would presumably open it directly in MuseScore with at most one browser-induced extra click (do you want to save this or open it), but I would need to save the results of my annotation on my computer. I would probably have to manually create a folder on my disk for that assignment, manually enter filenames for each file to help me identify which came from which student, and then manually upload them one by one to Blackboard, manually associating each file on my computer with the corresponding user account in Blackboard.

Apparently there is a word in French that I often see translated as "boring" to describe this, but that's not strong enough a word in English. Every time I just used "manually" above is something that could be automated through integration. As I said, Blackboard may or may not allow it, and since it is as far as I know not open source, there would probably little enthusiasm in the MuseScore world to adding such an integration even if it were possible. But moodle - now, that could be interesting. I don't think my school specifically forbids us from using other services if they work for us, and I'm already considering using both musescore.com and Google Docs for some specific purposes too.

So the way I could imagine integration working is, students upload their completed assignments to moodle, I click one, it comes up directly in MuseScore, I annotate it, I hit the "Save Online" button and it goes to musescore.com but with enough information attached to allow musescore.com to then reassociate my annotated versions with the original back on moodle. Seems that would require that the file on moodle also contained the relevant information about where it came from, so presumably when the student uploaded it, it would have somehow been annotated (in metadata) automatically by musescore.com. And somehow, it would have to be possible for the student to say when uploading which assignment in moodle this was in response to, so I guess they would probably want to start by clicking on an empty score I'd have uploaded to moodle that was itself tagged with the assignment name so their upload could also get automatically pushed back to the correct assignment. And I'm thinking there would need to be an actual control panel in musescore.com that would allow me to start the whole process off by either creating a moodle assignment, or associate an uploaded score with an assignment I created in moodle.

As for what kind of assignments, the two most typical I have in mind would be original compositions or transcriptions of improvised solos from recordings. We do just a couple of these per term, so I hope to be able to handle the awkwardness. I do also have lots of assignments that are fill-in-the-blanks types of things where I have instructions and empty measures in which student is expect to write, or notated examples that students need to analyze by adding solfege syllables or Roman numerals or whatever. But I didn't create these as MuseScore files, and t this point I still rather prefer the way I have been creating them (Google Docs documents with inline ABC, with a script I wrote to turn the ABC into notation via abcm2ps). So these will probably remain old-fashioned pencil and paper assignments for the foreseeable future.

Thank you !

Your answer Ad 1) made my day !!!!!

I had missed this thing about portableapps. This is great !

I tried and can now run musescore !! Thank you very much !!!!!

Regarding Ad2) yes, of course. I have been considering buying a window tablet to run Musescore. My point was that there are so many really cheap, old surfing tablets with operating systems other than windows....

Thanks and best regards !