Content Filters can ‘clean up’ web content by excluding a great quantity of unwanted material (see also this post about limitations of content filtering.) Dansguardian’s website states:

DansGuardian is an award winning Open Source web content filter which currently runs on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Mac OS X, HP-UX, and Solaris. It filters the actual content of pages based on many methods including phrase matching, PICS filtering and URL filtering. It does not purely filter based on a banned list of sites like lesser totally commercial filters.

DansGuardian is designed to be completely flexible and allows you to tailor the filtering to your exact needs. It can be as draconian or as unobstructive as you want. The default settings are geared towards what a primary school might want but DansGuardian puts you in control of what you want to block.

DansGuardian is a true web content filter. [more at the Dansguardian site here]

This howto assumes the computer in question runs Ubuntu Linux. (If you can find a content filter so good for free on Microsoft Windows I’d be surprised, but please let me know.) This howto has been tested on Edubuntu (Ubuntu) 8.04 only. It is designed, I hope, to be very easy for Linux beginners to follow.

About the software that needs to be installed: Requesting Dansguardian for installation will also install ClamAV Anti-virus software because incoming web content will be checked for viruses by default, (but this feature of Dansguardian could be disabled if wanted.) The FireHOL package will also need to be installed, this makes configuration of the built-in Linux IPTables firewall easier. Tinyproxy will be used as the http proxy (think asking a friend to fetch something from a shop for you instead of going yourself.) Dansguardian will analyse requested pages for banned content and hand them to your friend tinyproxy to give to you (if no banned content is found), otherwise it will show you an ‘access denied’ page.

Please note: All steps of this howto were taken from this Ubuntu Forums howto by their member Tonhou who based it on this original one. I add nothing new. If you need content filtering for a network see Tonhou’s instructions and the surrounding discussion. This howto sets up a fully functioning content filter. It does not deal with fine-tuning the filters or blocking people who know how from setting their own proxy rules within Firefox, thereby bypassing Dansguardian. Again see Tonhou’s howto if your situation may require this. (Tip: blocking firefox users from direct proxy access now looks to need a combination of Tonhou’s instructions and a script called moz-byteshift.pl, mentioned by Ubuntu Forums member Pwest on page 7 of Tonhou’s howto. I haven’t tried it yet, though.)

Let’s go!

When using these instructions writing that looks like this can be copied and pasted into files or the terminal. Yes, you have to use the terminal. No, its not scary.

Step 1: Install software.

• Open Synaptic from the menu tabs (System, Administration, Synaptic Package Manager)
• Click ‘Reload’ to advise your system of new changes. Then click the ‘Mark all Upgrades’ button to upgrade any installed software that needs it. If there is any click ‘Apply’ to install it.
• Once you’re up to date click ‘Search’ in Synaptic and type in ‘dansguardian’
• right click on the entry that appears and choose ‘Mark for Installation’. You will be shown that ‘clamav’ will be installed too.
• Search for ‘firehol’ and mark it for installation. Same for ‘tinyproxy’
• Click ‘Apply’ and exit Synaptic once everything’s installed.

Step 2: Edit the Dansguardian configuration file. This has to be done as an administrator (via the ‘sudo’ command) rather than a regular user as the filter system can’t be changed by regular users.

• Open a terminal from the menu tabs (Applications, Accessories, Terminal.)
• In the terminal write:

sudo gedit /etc/dansguardian/dansguardian.conf

• Press ‘enter’. You will be asked for your user-password.
• The ‘gedit’ text editor window opens. Now prepare Dansguardian for work by ‘commenting out’ the line that says it’s not ready. To do this change the line that reads ‘UNCONFIGURED’ to read:

#UNCONFIGURED

• OPTIONAL: If you don’t want virus scanning change the line ‘virusscan=on’ to read: virusscan=off
• Check that the following three lines look exactly like this (or change them to look like this):

filterport = 8080
proxyip = 127.0.0.1
proxyport = 3128

• Save the file and close the gedit application.

Step 3: After changing the configuration file reconfigure Dansguardian

• In your terminal write (and then press ‘enter’):

sudo dpkg-reconfigure dansguardian

• NOTE: This will return errors about a proxy, but the proxy has not been set up yet, so don´t worry. Ignore them.

Step 4: Edit the ‘FireHOL’ configuration file

• In your terminal write (and then press ‘enter’):

sudo gedit /etc/firehol/firehol.conf

• Add all of the following (duplicated lines already in the file can be overwritten) below the line “# Accept all client traffic on any interface”:

iptables -t filter -I OUTPUT -d 127.0.0.1 -p tcp --dport 3128 -m owner ! --uid-owner dansguardian -j DROP

transparent_squid 8080 "root root"

interface any world
policy drop
protection strong
client all accept
server cups accept

• Note: If you are not copying and pasting text (why not?) please note the long line above starting ‘iptables’ and ending ‘DROP’ is all one line and should not be broken by pressing the ‘enter’ key at any point while writing it until after the word ‘DROP’.
• Save the file and close the gedit application.

Step 5: Edit another ‘FireHOL’ file to allow restarting the firewall

• In your terminal write (and then press ‘enter’):

sudo gedit /etc/default/firehol

• Change the file to read: START_FIREHOL=YES
• Save the file and close the gedit application.

Step 6: Edit the ‘Tinyproxy’ configuration file

• In your terminal write (and then press ‘enter’):

sudo gedit /etc/tinyproxy/tinyproxy.conf

• Change the four lines that begin with the words ´User´, ´Group´, ´Port´ and ´ViaProxyName´ to read as below, if they do not already:

User root
Group root
Port 3128
ViaProxyName "tinyproxy"

• Save the file and close the gedit application.

Step 7: Restart each program

• Using your terminal enter the following three commands, pressing ‘enter’ after each one:

sudo /etc/init.d/tinyproxy restart
sudo /etc/init.d/firehol restart
sudo /etc/init.d/dansguardian restart

You now have content filter protection for your family at no cash expense!

Here’s what a google search for ‘porn’ got me:

I wanted links to ‘safe search‘ sites that were visually easy to remember for the six year olds and up who use a networked computer room. The computers run XP Pro.

Step 1: Make bright, easy to remember icons. Or use mine. Please note that the two icons here are just PNG images; if you want to use them then save them to your computer, open them in GIMP or another image manipulation program and save them as .ico files. The ‘B’ is going to open up the browser at the BBCs CBBC Find page. The ‘Y’ is going to open the browser at the Yahoo Kids search page. Both these sites are for children and results they give are from sites that are vetted before being allowed in. Both sites have disclaimers about the content of search results:

Here’s the BBCs:

CBBC Search includes carefully selected sites outside the BBC. They are checked regularly, but please note the BBC is not responsible for their content. If you see anything that upsets you, please contact us.

Yahoo Kids also hand pick sites and REJECT unsuitable ones:

We carefully check every site that goes into Yahoo! Kids But as most of you know, the Internet is constantly changing. If you find something here that somehow morphed into a REJECT site, please let us know

Step 2: After logging in as Administrator, place the icons in the top level of “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users”. Here they will not be seen directly but can be linked to easily.

Step3: Open a browser and type your target site (i.e: “http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/find/”) into the URL bar. Once on the site click and drag the icon at immediate left of the browser URL bar to the desktop.

This makes a shortcut to the site, but it’s not yet using your chosen icon, nor is accessible to all users. Repeat this process for other sites you want launchers for.

Step 3: Cut and paste the new shortcut files into “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop”

Step 4: Right click on a shortcut and select ‘Properties’. Here’s a screenshot of an example desktop showing the ‘All Users’ folder containing the icons and the ‘All Users/Desktop’ folder containing the new shortcuts. The ‘Properties’ window of the Yahoo shortcut is open too:

Step 5: In the ‘General’ tab of the ‘Properties’ window you can change the title of the shortcut to ‘Search Yahoo’ or whatever you like. In the ‘Web Document’ tab press the ‘Change Icon’ button. Navigate to the ‘All Users’ folder and select the desired icon.

Now you can log out and any user of the computer can use the shortcuts when they log in. They can’t delete them as the ‘All Users/Desktop’ folder is by default ‘read only’ for regular users.

During step 3 there is also the possibility of doing some extra organising. If the desktops of users are cluttered with unwanted shortcuts (from installed but infrequently used programs, for instance) you could delete unnecessary ones while in the All Users ‘Desktop’ folder. When pasting your icons into other computers’ ‘All Users’ folders you could also paste in your modified ‘All Users/Desktop’ folder too. This will overwrite the cluttered older version with the new, pared down one. This process will not affect any shortcuts already created by normal users. Of course you should check first with others to make sure you don’t delete useful shortcuts in the process.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Here’s the link to part 1 at YouTube if you want to see it at source. The poster’s ideas are worth reading. I found out about the videos here. That site has links to further information about the Swedish style of education such as in this article at George Lucas’ (yes, Star Wars!) Edutopia educational foundation’s website.

Well over 6000 schools already use the service, but there’s many more schools than that in the world so I’m still going to write about it. Clicking the ‘More Info’ button for the schools section leads to a sign-up enticer page.

Sign up! It’s worth it. The free site has lots of good features, including a choice of French or English soundtrack. Boowa and Kwala, the mascots for the up to six year olds’ section are very cute and engaging for children. The activities are fun, lighthearted, and promote good values like friendship and enjoying family life together. The school version has the added benefits of a full-screen window and not having adverts in a sidebar; children cannot easily click off the page and cannot click on links to other sites.

Once you are signed up you can click on the schoolbag to log in:

Click ‘Go’ after entering your data and a ‘thank you’ page appears:

Click ‘Go’ and the full-screen student window opens.

Actually, my one gripe with the service is going through the above three page, one email address and one password process on every computer before each lesson I use the service in. It does take a while. It would be great to have a direct, one stage process to log in; a username and password field on the Up To Ten front page, for example. Also if that field was part of the the regular website instead of the flash section then the browser could remember the username and password between sessions.

EDIT: see this post about the above paragraph. Automatic login IS a feature and now has started to work for me. I guess that if using multiple user-names on networked computers children should sit at the same computers each time unless you have roaming profiles set up.

Each teacher in the school will need to sign up for their own account. They must keep their password secret; a student finding it out and using it at home would mean they had gone against the terms of the service.

Here’s what you get. The full-screen window has a menu of fifty structured lessons for developing ICT skills. The great thing is that the first lessons do not assume any prior skills, so they are perfect for very young learners:

Each lesson contains four flash activities. The site suggests clicking the button at top right to explore the rest of the site after completing them.

Below is one example of a mouse control skills activity from lesson two in which children have to colour moving lizards. Lessons get progressively more advanced as children work their way towards lesson fifty.

Have fun!

There are four pages each with four results available within Boolify, and a link to ‘more results’ that opens Google in a new window with ‘safe search on’ for regular searches and ‘strict safe search on’ for image searches.

The idea is that graphical ways of thinking about boolean searches make them easier for children to understand. It is aimed at mainly elementary and middle school children. The website states:

Search results are presented through Google’s “Safe Search STRICT” technology, so we’re confident that the results your students receive are safe.

***EDIT: The above quote no longer appears on Boolify’s ‘About’ page as the content of the page has been changed to reflect the content of this post and to link here. My thanks to Dave Crusoe from Boolify.org for pointing this out.***

Boolify is a beta release and the work will be evaluated mid 2008 to see how well it it is going.

It is a good idea. What does ‘safe’ mean though?

Google’s ‘safe search’ is a fast and accurate (optional) filter system that stops so called ‘adult sites’ from appearing on search results. Google states:

Many users prefer not to have adult sites included in their search results (especially if their kids use the same computer). Google’s SafeSearch screens for sites that contain this type of information and eliminates them from search results. While no filter is 100% accurate, Google’s filter uses advanced technology to check keywords, phrases, and URLs.

Did you notice a discrepancy? Boolify says results are “safe” but Google says that “no filter is 100% accurate.” I trust Google on this one.

Boolify are correct in that they are using a strong filter that works well. However, a filter can be imagined as ice on water; it covers an area, looks firm, but is thicker in some places than others, and may still be dangerous. This is because the filter scans web pages for blacklisted keywords, phrases, and URLs. If it finds any of these the search result is withheld. The ice stays safe to walk on. It is possible though that content that could be described as ‘adult’ is not nicely labeled as such. For instance an ‘adult’ image in an otherwise ‘safe’ page might not be helpfully labeled to match a filter’s blacklists. The ice here becomes thin, as a ‘safe’ keyword in a ‘safe’ search may just possibly return unwanted results.

The percentage of unwanted information getting through may be small, but we should understand the tools we use every day. We should know where they excel and where they are weak.

Below is an example of such a situation (please note that I do not imply and criticism of Boolify or Google. They are both good services! The example is used to highlight the weakness of filters in general in order to aid understanding):

I enter the search term ‘xray’ in Boolify and select to search images. Four images are displayed, they are relevant and good. All four of the search result screens (each with four images) that display within Boolify return similar results. Great! I click ‘more results’ and the first screen of full Google search results open on a Google page in a new window. ‘Strict safe search’ is already set, just as within Boolify. Good. Results look similar again. I click ‘Next’ and all is well. I click ‘Next’ again and see two images that have fallen through the filter’s net.

One is what looks like a cola bottle firmly lodged somewhere the manufacturers probably never intended it should go, from a website I would not want a young child to stumble upon. The title of the image is ‘Interesting X-Ray’. Of course neither of those words would match keywords or phrases in a filter’s blacklists. The other is labeled ‘X-ray it looks very real,…’ and it turns out to be an image by an artist called Wim Delvoye from a series of artworks called ‘Sex-rays’ (not what I searched for, but the image was not labeled clearly). The link opens a forum where people are discussing how the image was made and if it is an actual xray or not. Not what I want a primary a primary age child to see in a lesson, anyway.

The moral of the story is don’t assume ‘safe’ has the same definition for you as it does to filtering software. Content filters cannot see and judge the appropriateness of images as you can… yet. So check search results beforehand if planning to search the web with older children. Younger children could learn search skills by searching for clip art within a word processing program. Or use Yahoo kids search or the BBC CBBC Find facility. These are both checked regularly and list only approved sites. However, best check first!

The Compaq has a 20GB hard drive and 256MB SD-RAM. Puppy doesn’t even need this much storage space or RAM. I have seen it work perfectly well on 96MB RAM on an old laptop. The special thing about Puppy is that it runs in RAM only, even in less than 96MB RAM, and it doesn’t need a hard drive at all.

Puppy is free to use and download. It comes as a small (50 – 90MB depending on version) ISO file that you burn onto a CD or a USB thumb drive or SD card (etc…). Pop the media in a computer and turn it on. As long as the BIOS is able to and is set to boot from media of this kind it will boot into a fully functioning operating system. It doesn’t affect any OS that’s already on the hard drive, so there’s no need to worry about data loss. Assuming you booted Puppy from a CD, once it is loaded into RAM you can take the CD out again. The CD drive can now be used as normal.

The desktop is very intuitive and most of all, friendly. It is very easy to connect to the internet via clicking an icon. I had previously assigned a static IP address for the new computer to use in my router, but it doesn’t need to be done that way. All the user guides and configuration dialogs I checked had friendly, easy to understand explanations that do not presume prior knowledge of Linux.

This Linux distribution would be good for making old computers not just usable, but GOOD again. It would also be ideal for parents who do not want to take the risk of their children clicking around and maybe messing up their computer, but who want them to have the opportunity to use it. Booting from a Puppy CD is a good solution. Having said that, Puppy is not just for children, it’s just friendly and easy so everyone will like it.

It comes loaded with many small but powerful applications: Abiword word processor can open and save as .doc format, so it’s useful for people used to Windows. There is a spreadsheet editor and a stripped down version of the great Inkscape vector Illustration program. The Seamonkey web browser surprised me by being able to display flash based websites without me needing to install Flash myself. The media player plays MP3 and WMA files likewise without requiring additional downloads. To show it’s not just for children consider that it comes with Gparted, the Gnome Partition Editor, which is a great utility that could really do damage to data on the hard drive if used incorrectly.

As you can see this is a full-featured Linux OS with everything most people will need all ready to use. It loads really fast too. It is a very good introduction to Linux as Windows users who are interested in trying Linux can keep on using Windows but boot into Puppy while they get used to it. There are quite a few Linux distributions that have ‘Live CDs’ that work this way, but Puppy excels in this area too:

When you shutdown after using Puppy for the first time you are offered the chance to write one file to the hard disk (or USB thumb drive, or even multi-session CD!) that will contain a Linux file system. The default size is 512MB but it could be more or less depending on your preference. You can even encrypt it if you want. This will contain the configuration files for your Puppy sessions, such as your internet connection details, the wallpaper your child likes, any files you downloaded or made etc. Next time you boot Puppy you will find it as you left it. It will boot faster too!

One thing that will be a change for Windows users is accessing media such as USB thumb drives in Puppy Linux. When you insert the media nothing happens. You have to ‘mount’ the media first. Click the ‘drives’ icon at top left of the desktop. A dialog opens that shows all drives available. Click the icon for the required drive to mount it (or to unmount it later). A new icon will appear that you can click on to view the files on the drive.

The above screen-shot also shows some of the helpful sub-menus available to fine tune your Puppy system, should you need to.

If you are new to Tux Paint some explanation is necessary. it is a graphics program for children. It is free to download and use, and it’s Open Source. It can be extended in various ways and modified to fit needs exactly. It is eye-catching, fun, easy to use, and has stereo sound effects. It is quite simply the best graphics program for children that I have seen.

The Windows installer includes a program for configuring Tux Paint that can be accessed from the start menu programs list. On Linux you could search your distribution’s repositories for the ‘tuxpaint-config’ package. Or you can set options (see the manual) on the command line or in a menu editor. Depending on the age and needs of children using the program, there are many options to help tweak it to best advantage.

There are more screenshots and other information on the Tux Paint website. It describes Tux Paint as a “drawing program for children ages 3 to 12″ and while this is certainly generally true I have found that even some two year olds enjoy it a lot. I could also imagine children older than twelve using it well, given the right focus (say using it as a drawing pad to sketch ideas onto their own self-portrait photo* during a Pop Art project).

*Tux paint can be extended by adding user-chosen images as backgrounds, provided they are the right dimensions and format. It is also possible to use your own line drawings as colouring templates and to make your own brushes or ‘stamps’ (images for children to use like stickers on their drawings). This is outside the scope of this introduction, though, and I can’t think of anything Tux Paint is seriously lacking, although it’s nice to be given the option to add our own elements if we want/need to.

This image below was made by a ten year old who was just given time to play and to see what happened. One of the special brushes has become the starting point for a story idea as an acrostic poem:

The image below was made by a two year old. You can see decisions were being made about choosing and changing colours (showing understanding of the process of selecting colours) and finding out about what different brushes do.

For very young children I find the following options useful:

–fullscreen –nobuttondistinction –saveovernew –simpleshapes –startblank –noprint

These are options written as they are used on the command line. They are all options in the GUI configuration utility as well though. One by one:

‘Fullscreen’ is useful so children can’t click outside the window or drag it around by accident.

‘No button distinction’ makes the right and left mouse buttons behave the same way; good for encouraging confidence while developing the hand/eye coordination necessary for using a mouse.

‘Save over new’ makes clicking ‘save’ always save a new picture even if the same picture has been saved already. This is instead of asking the user if they want to overwrite the older version of the same picture or not.

‘Simple shapes’ disables the possibility of shapes made with the shape tools being rotated. It simplifies things.

‘Start blank’ makes Tux Paint start with a blank background instead of showing the last picture made last session.

‘No print’ disables printing. Its not just being mean; very young children can click buttons by accident or repeatedly. As long as you teach children to press ‘save’ selected pictures can be printed later.

All pictures saved in Tux Paint are housed in a folder (you can choose which or accept the default) and pictures are named by date and time as ‘yyyymmddhhmmss.png’ so you can identify who did what and when. It may be helpful to keep a record of who sat at which computer and when, to help with identification of images later.

You can press ‘Control’ and right-click the mouse inside the xterm window to select a larger font size. The window expands to compensate for the increased font size. The window doesn’t fit the screen very well any more if you choose ‘large’ font sizes or above. Also this change will be lost if you close and reopen the terminal.

The default Xandros OS is based on Debian. It comes with a handy program for ‘Debian’s alternatives system’ that uses symbolic linking to allow administrators to choose a particular program to be used as the default one if several other programs do the same job and carry the same generic name. It is called ‘update-alternatives’ and I learned how to use it to change the default terminal here. Now when I press the ‘Control, Alt and T’ key combination to launch a terminal Konsole opens instead of Xterm. Konsole is included in the default Xandros OS on the Eee. Here’s the command:

sudo update-alternatives --config x-terminal-emulator

Select Konsole from the displayed list of programs that carry the generic name ‘x-terminal-emulator’.

Konsole fits the screen much better. It is also easy to select colour schemes and larger font sizes. The chosen colour schemes and font changes are retained between sessions if you click ‘Save as Default’ in the settings tab. All round a good improvement.

One great thing about the Eeepc running the default Linux configuration is that the computer boots up really fast. I can leave it turned off and its quick to turn on when I need it. I use the commandline for recording observations of students or logging information for assessment purposes. Opening a terminal window is a lot quicker than opening up Open Office and navigating to a particular student’s file. I have set things up so that I have a very fast and simple way of logging student’s progress.

By writing a student’s name at the command prompt and pressing the ‘Enter’ key I can write my entry for their file. When finished I press ‘Enter’ and then the ‘Control’ and ‘C’ combination. My method adds time/date-stamped information to students’ files.

I have added extra repositories following the wiki at eeeuser.com. I think the Tee program was not in the Asus repository, so if you want to do this on the Eee you will probably need to enable extra repositories first.

After the extra repositories are enabled you can install Tee. Tee is a program that basically takes what you type into a terminal and puts it into a file. The program Echo can do the same thing and should already be installed; for instance the following command will append the words ‘hello world’ to a pre-existing file called test.txt:

echo “hello world” >> test.txt

However we will use Tee because if invoked as part of a sequence of commands it will prompt us for input, which is necessary for this recording method to work. So we’ll install Tee:

sudo apt-get install tee

We need to make blank files for each of the pupils records to go into. I want them to be located at /home/user/somefolder/assessment/ (NOTE: if you are using the Eee and want your files to be inside the ‘My Documents’ folder you will need to tell the terminal to ignore the annoying space in the folder name by using a backslash: ‘home/user/My\ Documents/etc…).
Make the new ‘assessment’ directory inside pre-existing ‘somefolder’ directory:

mkdir /home/user/somefolder/assessment

Enter the new directory:

cd ~/somefolder/assessment

Make a blank file for each student called ‘studentname.txt’:

touch student-a.txt student-b.txt student-c.txt

Change back to your home directory:

cd

Now we have the files in place we need to write the commands sequences that will add information to them.

After each entry in a student’s file I want an empty line followed by the current date and time, and then my new entry on a new line. For this to happen we will use a sequence of three programs: Echo, Date and Tee.

We will create an alias ( the Alias program uses user-defined names as shorthand for programs or command sequences instead of the full versions, thus saving time and making things easy to remember) for each student so that by writing their name at the command prompt the command sequence will append the new information to their individual file.

I used the hidden file ‘.bash_aliases’ to list my aliases. If this file does not exist (but is referenced in a script inside your ‘.bashrc’ file) you can make it yourself, and remove the comment (#) marks relating to it in your ‘.bashrc’ file, using your choice of text editor. This will mean that when the terminal is opened in future it will load your aliases. Otherwise add your aliases wherever your system wants them, for example inside ‘.bashrc’.

Assuming you are in your home directory…To see what relevant files you have by listing files including hidden files that contain the string ‘bash’:

ls -a | grep bash

Use a text editor to add your aliases with the command sequence for each student. In the following case the student is called ‘student-a’.:

alias student-a=’echo ” ” >> /home/user/somefolder/assessment/student-a.txt && date >> /home/user/somefolder/assessment/student-a.txt && tee -a /home/user/somefolder/assessment/student-a.txt’

Copy and paste your version of the above for each student. For each instance of the name ‘student-a’ change it to ‘student-b’ etc. The code ‘alias name=’command” defines an alias. Echoing nothing gives a blank line. Date prints the current date and time. For echo and date ‘>>’ appends the information to the specified file. The symbols ‘&&’ mean to do the command at right if the command at left is successful. Using Tee with the ‘-a’ option appends what you enter at the commandline to the specified file instead of overwriting it or making a new file.

After you edit ‘.bash_aliases’ (or ‘.bashrc’) you should reload the file(s) in question so your aliases are available for you to try out right away. To reload ‘.bash_aliases’:

. .bash_aliases

Try it out. Type a student’s name and press “Enter’. Write something. Its a good idea to make the first entry for each student show their name so you don’t get confused when the files are printed off and have no mention of who you’re talking about! When you’ve finished press ‘Enter’ and then ‘Control and C’ together to exit the Tee program. Check to see that it worked:

cat ~/somefolder/assessment/the-student’s-name.txt

Its taken a little while to set up, but now you have a very quick way to enter information in your student’s files. I made a terminal window open automatically each time I turn on the computer by adding an entry to my ‘.icewm/startup’ file.