A webapp for collaborative document viewing designed for students to study together effectively.
Cloud paper provides an online platform for collaborative learning.
Simulate a Study Group Session
- Real time synchronized PDF page turning
- Chat box for discussion
- Drag slides around for organization
Added functionality
- Drag and drop PDF files to upload
- Able to zoom in and out pdf with scroll
We used Node.JS with Koa2 and Handlebars. PDFs are rendered client side using Mozilla's PDF.js. Communication between server and clients is done using socket.io.
We initially had trouble with the drag and drop functionality, but managed to overcome it. Settling on a UI that would be optimal was also a challenge, but we were able to settle on a design with feedback from other participants. Half of the team members had minimal experience in javascript and almost everyone in the team picked up NodeJS within this hackathon.
We used this hackathon as an opportunity to implement things we have not tried before. (Koa, socket.io, PDF.js) We are proud to have finished the app within the 24 hours allocated and we strongly believe that our app can be helpful for students' learning, this solution can extend to allow companies to utilize this proof of concept at work. (i.e synchronized presentation slides.)
This was a great learning experience in software engineering for all of us. We learnt that good planning from the start and well allocation and delegation of work load will help us finish the app on time.
- "Room" System
- Annotation of lecture slides
- Whiteboard for diagram drawing
- Video Support to view lectures together
- Voice Communication Support
For Unix-based Operating systems, do ssh <ip-address> -l <username>. Enter the password thereafter.
Once you're done,
do screen -r cloudpaper (If it doesn't work, find the name of the screen by doing screen -ls.)
Once all is good, you should be able to see the node's console. Ctrl + C followed by the following commands:
lsof -i :3000
and finally,
kill -9 <PID>
This allows us to properly kill the node that was previous active.
Last but not least,
git pull
followed by a yarn start.
