Badge Morph Tutorial
by: Frank Robles
gte441u@prism.gatech.edu
Welcome to the BadgeMorph tutorial. A Badge is an interface that allows you to communicate with other people using chat, voice, and other collaborative functionality within the Squeak environment. The Collaborative Software Lab at Georgia Tech has been working on making BadgeMorphs more functional for an educational environment allowing TA s to help students remotely and for students to collaborate on Squeak projects. Right now BadgeMorphs are fairly difficult to use(Badge morphs are actually 2 different morphs, with the word badge not even present) and new software is being developed in order to make them more user friendly.
There are 3 major parts in getting BadgeMorphs to work. The first is the BadgeMorph connector and server. These were just recently developed and allow people to log onto a server which lets other users view their IP address . The second part of a BadgeMorph is the EToyListenerMorph, this morph allows users to receive messages from other computers over the network. The third part is the actual "badge". The name of the BadgeMorph is EToyConnectorMorph, using this will be covered later in the tutorial.
After finding the original incarnation of BadgeMorphs to be too user unfriendly we have developed a BadgeMorph Connector. The Connect will allow you to connect to a BadgeMorph Server in order to get other user's IP addresses.
You will need to file-in the BadgeMorph-Connector changefile found here Missing File (/squeak/uploads/BadgeMorph-Connector-new.st)
To run the BadgeMorphConnector simply enter this into a workspace:
BadgeMorphConnector openAsMorph.
This will bring up the main interface. An EtoyListenerMorph will also be opened in the corner of Squeak, you can just leave this alone as the connector will control it as needed. You can then enter your username and the group you would like to access. You then hit the login button and you will be logged into the server and a list of other people logged onto the server will be loaded into your client. The EtoyListenerMorph will also be activated.
If you do not wish to log onto the server and just wish to get someone’s IP address you may go to the website designated as
http://triton.cc.gatech.edu:8000/groupname/
This will bring up a webpage with a list of who is logged onto the server and their IP addresses.
Here is an example of what you should see when you log in:
Missing File (/squeak/uploads/newlook.JPG)
Once you have the IP of the person you want to communicate you are going to want to move on to the next part.
In order to communicate with this person you will need to open an EtoySenderMorph, under the "New Morph" option when you left click on the squeak environment. Once it is opened it will prompt you for the name of the person you want the badge to represent. Now you have this pink square with an email addres, an ip address, various circles, and a question mark on it. The IP address is going to be the IP of the person you want to communicate using the badgemorph. You may also want to change the email address although it has no effect on communications Once you have that entered you now have a few choices.
The C button is for text chat. This is the basic text message and can be used to send code amongst other things. A chat window will come up with a space for you to type and receive text messages.
The ? is to check the status of the person, this is handy for checking whether the person can receive messages or not. You can also tell another user that you are online.
The A is for audio chat this allows live voice communication through squeak. When you click the A a small interface will show up on the bottom of your badge. To send a chat message left click and hold the talk bottom, release the button when you are done. This should send the voice message.
The S is for Nebraska. Nebraska allows you to remotely interact with someone else’s squeak environment. There is an extra step involved in getting Nebraska to work.
In order to allow Nebraska sessions on your computer you will need to drag open the orange Navigator tab on the bottom of squeak and hit the Share button. This will allow other people to connect to your computer via the Badge morph's S button.
For more information about Nebraska Nebraska.
The large question mark at the top of the Badge morph is the Morph sender, this allows you to send morphs to other users. Just drag the morph over the question mark until a box highlights it and release the mouse button. This will send the morph to the other user. The morphs actually show up in the ListenerMorph and can be dragged out of it and placed in the environment.
When you receive a communication from a user you don't have a badge for you will be prompted to give a username and a badge will be opened representing them.
Well this is the end of the tutorial everything is fairly easy to use once you know how to actually get it running.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Please be welcome to use Badges and give us feedback on what you would like to see implemented in the new interface. The server is being tested so please feel free to pound on it. There are currently 3 groups on the existing server Example, cs2340gen, and cs2340TA.
