Projects 2009

Field Session Projects 2009

Will be posted in April.

Ascend Geo: Geophone Levitation Test
Civicore: Dashboard
CSM1: Real-time electricity monitoring
CSM2: Real-time HVAC control
CSM3: Smart Saver's Switch
CSM4: Wii Physical Science Lab
CSM5: Scribbler Robots
Data Verity #1: ESP System Graphical Data Enhancements
Data Verity 2: ESP Database Control Center
DTS: Visual Touch Screen Scheduling for eMESA Live™
DTS: iPhone ® App extension for eMESA Live™
Fowler Software: Intranet Connector
Los Alamos: Mountable Transparent I/O Tracing Facility
Newmont Mining Corporation: Statistical analysis
Sun Microsystems 1: Text-based Installer for OpenSolaris Live CD
Sun Microsystems 2: OpenSolaris Live USB Image
Sun Microsystems 3: Automated Clean Up of OpenSolaris Boot Environments
Teaching Tools Research Group: Course Management Software

Ascend Geo: FIR Filter

Client:

Michael Ewing, mewing@ascendgeo.com

Background

This project focuses on the development and optimization of a Finite Impulse Response Filter for the conversion of analog seismic data. Linear techniques are not adequate for the frequency range represented by seismic data and there is an absolute requirement of no uncharacterized phase shifting. Students are to design a library for handling windowing of the data, applying a custom filter, and performing analysis of the data quality. The students should investigate several implementations of a FIR filter and work with Ascend Geo employees to minimize adverse data effects while maintaining an optimized, and multi-threaded capable algorithm. The final code should be .NET compatible (preference toward C++/CLI).

Project Requirements:

Research and comparison of benefits and costs for various FIR implementations.
Generation and validation testing (using sinusoids) of a .NET compatible FIR filter.
Testing, analysis, and customizing on real data (provided by Ascend Geo).
Students will need to be able to meet with employees on-site (Golden area) at various points in the project.

Extended Research:

As the amount of processing required to handle FIR filters in seismic data acquisition can be extensive, an area of extended research for this project includes investigating the capability and performance gains through multi-core (4 and 8 core) processing and using GPU data processing cards for parallel processing.

Desired Skills:

Students will need to be or become comfortable with frequency domain techniques.
Experience with MatLab may be beneficial for investigating filter performance.
Some experience in managed coding may be helpful.

Ascend Geo: Geophone Levitation Test

Client:

Michael Ewing, mewing@ascendgeo.com

Background

This project focuses on the development of a geophone signal simulator and levitation test analysis algorithm. The first segment of this project involves the creation of a software geophone response simulator that allows the user to specify various states of the geophone and an input signal to generate expected response data output. This simulator will allow for the input of a current impulse that forces the internal mechanism to raise and then drop – a levitation test allowing for characterization of the system response and coil parameters. The second segment involves analyzing the levitation test response to characterize the current status of the geophone (extracting system parameters and providing an overall status of the device’s ability to record data effectively).

Ascend Geo will provide documentation and support for aspects of the system; however, students will need to pursue minor additional research in the areas of geophysics and signal processing. The simulation may be done in the programming language of the student’s choice (including packages such as MatLab as the output of the data response is really the goal). The simulation should output a data response that can be analyzed separately. Ascend Geo will also be able to provide real data for this process. The algorithm for analyzing the data response should be coded in C++.

Project Requirements:

Characterization of input parameters and system response for a geophone.
Creation of a simulator to capture input parameters and generate data response.
Analysis of data response and comparison to known responses for the creation of a device state algorithm and approximation of device parameters.
Students will need to be able to meet with employees on-site (Golden area) at various points in the project.

Extended Research

Ascend Geo will be performing the physical impulse test in custom hardware. Although the primary goal of the project is the characterization of an algorithm to understand and interpret the status of the geophones, should the project progress well there is an opportunity to work directly with Ascend Geo software and firmware engineers to develop an assembly level implementation of the algorithm in a custom IO board.

Desired Skills

Students will need to be or become comfortable with the physics of spring systems.
Some experience with frequency domain technique may be helpful.

CiviCore: Dashboard

Client:

Charles "Chic" Naumer

Background

CiviCore is a software development company catering to nonprofit organizations, public sector agencies and foundations. An area of increasing importance is data analysis and visualization. The proposed project will entail building a web based data analysis and visualization dashboard system.

Project Objectives

Build a web based data analysis and visualization dashboard system. The design of this system will entail:

Defining methods of interacting and specifying the data layer. The data layer could be static xml files or calls to a datasource.
The development of a database to support the application.
The use of javascript to interact with the graphing and reporting components.

Skills Required:

HTML / CSS
Javascript (particularly AJAX)
Relational databases (MS SQL, MySQL)
ColdFusion 8

Benefit to CSM Students:

This project will give students experience with:

Professional website design
Interface development
Data visualization tools
Data mining techniques
Javascript/AJAX
ColdFusion 8
Relational databases
XML data structures

CSM1 Real-time electricity monitoring wireless sensor network

Client: Alan Marchiori (CS Ph.D. Student) and Qi Han (CS Faculty)

Background

Electricity demand is expected to increase 40 percent in the next two decades. To support this increase in demand we will either need to build more power plants or use our energy in more efficient ways. One way to do this is to monitor energy use in real-time and use this information to make better decisions about our energy usage. For example, if we are currently using a lot of energy (many lights on, TV, oven, etc) our thermostat could automatically raise a few degrees to keep the air conditioner from running until we are using less energy. Our vision is to collect data on energy usage and control certain key appliances' energy usage using a wireless sensor network.

Project Goals

The goal for this project is to create a prototype wireless sensor network capable of monitoring the energy consumption of household appliances in real-time. This information is then sent to a base-station utilizing a wireless mesh network. The base station will store the data in a database. A dynamic web interface will be created to analyze data from the database.

Develop energy sensor
Interface energy sensor to wireless sensor node
Implement data collection mote software (TinyOS)
Implement base-station software (C/C++/Python/etc)
Implement web interface (any)

Skills Required

Some electrical engineering background (CS/EE double major or EE minor)
Knowledge of TinyOS or willing to learn (it is much like C)
Good programming skills (C/C++/Python/etc)
Some understanding of web/database development

Your participation in this project will for certain yield significant weight on your resume, especially if you are seeking a graduate school. Students who successfully complete this project will be recruited and funded for further research activities throughout the summer after field session as well as during the following academic year. If done well this work will be submitted to a leading WSN conference.

CSM2: Real-time HVAC control using a wireless sensor network

Client: Alan Marchiori (CS Ph.D. Student) and Qi Han (CS Faculty)

Background

Have you ever noticed that some rooms are always too hot or too cold? This is because traditional HVAC systems have a few (or just one) thermostat that controls when heating or cooling is applied. This coarse level of control results in uncomfortable rooms and more importantly wastes energy. The advent of wireless senor networks (WSN) makes fine grained environmental control practice. Our approach is to individually control the temperature in each and every room. Several factors could be considered such as: if the room is occupied, the frequency of use, the outside temperature, etc. For example, a guest bedroom is unoccupied most of the time, so in the winter the temperature could be kept lower than the rest of the house. This approach can also direct heating energy just to the room(s) that need it. For example, a room with many windows could have a higher heat loss than other rooms. With this approach we can direct just the right amount of heat to each room in response to dynamic conditions maintaining a comfortable temperature without wasting energy.

Project Goals

The goal for this project is to create a HVAC control system using a WSN. Wireless sensor networks have been studied for several years now, so our focus is not on the WSN but on the application of this technology for fine-grained environmental control.To achieve this goal we need several components:

Temperature sensors - send periodic updates to the back-end system using the WSN
HVAC interface - responds to control signals over the WSN and is able to turn on/off the HVAC system
Duct dampers - WSN nodes that control mechanical dampers in the duct system to direct air flow
Back-end control system - coordinates actions between the various wireless nodes and logs system performance

Skills Required

Some mechanical skills; able to construct servo controlled dampers (MechE double major/minor a plus but not required)
Some knowledge of electronics and basic circuits (EE double major/minor a plus but not required)
Knowledge of TinyOS or willing to learn (it is much like C)
Good programming skills (C/C++/Python/etc)

CSM3: Smart Saver's Switch

Client: Alan Marchiori (CS Ph.D. Student) and Qi Han (CS Faculty)

Background

Xcel Energy currently offers a program called "Saver's Switch". It's simple; on hot summer days the Saver's Switch will turn each participant's air conditioner off for 15 to 20 minute intervals. This reduces peak energy demand, therefore mitigating the need to construct additional power plants and transmission lines. The benefits of the Saver's Switch are clear, however, by using a wireless sensor network we can coordinate multiple households in a local neighborhood to make smarter switching choices. We plan to deploy a wireless sensor network (WSN) in a neighborhood to collect temperature data from each home. This data will be processed and when it is necessary to reduce peak energy demand indoor temperature will be considered from each home before disabling the air conditioner (using the WSN). The goal is to reduce peak energy usage to a preset level while maintaining a comfortable temperature in each home.

Project Goals

The goal of this project is to develop a prototype testbed for the Smart Saver's Switch. This will allow us to conduct controlled experiments and evaluate various control algorithms and compare the results to the original "Saver's Switch".

Tasks:

Develop environmental test enclosure
Implement & calibrate WSN temperature sensors
Implement WSN controlled air cooler
Implement original "Saver's Switch" algorithm where no temperature data is considered and collect results
Implement several improved algorithms for intelligent control and collect results

Skills Required

Some mechanical skills; able to construct environmental enclosure.
Some knowledge of electronics and basic circuits (EE double major/minor a plus but not required)
Knowledge of TinyOS or willing to learn (it is much like C)
Good programming skills (C/C++/Python/etc)

CSM4: Wii Physical Science Lab

Client:

John Jackson

Background

The Nintendo Wii has made gaming even more popular with its interactive abilities. Many programs have tried to take advantage of this fact by using the Wii controller to interact with computers for educational purposes. Usually, this has been in the form of computer programming and game making. However, the accelerometer in the Wii controller is sensitive enough that it should be able to be used for a multitude of physical science and physics projects.

Project:

Your task is to write a self contained program that uses the Wii’s accelerometer to track movements and accelerations. The user interface should be simple, general, and very visual. Multiple data/graph print outs should be available including (but not limited to):

acceleration –vs- time
directional accelerations
frequency analysis
noise analysis

Be creative with how you want to use the controller and what information you can gather from it!

CSM5: Scribbler Robots

Client:

John Jackson

Background

The Colorado School of Mines (CSM) has received funding to develop a sequence of educational experiences designed to attract and retain female students in computer science. One of these experiences will be retrofitting a robot with a wireless sensor and creating an applet for interacting with it. Students during Field Session 2008 were able to integrate a Sun SPOT wireless sensor with a Parallax Scribbler robot.

Project

The project goals for this session are:

Extend the position handling capabilities of the Scribbler robot
Add other data collection instruments, such as a "feel" pad, temperature, etc.

Data Verity 1: ESP System Graphical Data Enhancements

Contact: David Flammer (pflammer@mines.edu)

Background:

Rich internet applications (RIAs) and Software as a Service (SaaS) are rapidly becoming a dominant force in software development, and knowledge of how to develop RIAs is becoming increasingly important. Data Verity is a retail consulting firm that provides its clients with different types of services via the internet. Our ESP system provides clients with versatile tools to enhance their business practices. These tools include data mining, reporting, file management, and case management tools.

We are looking to improve our ability to graphically represent data on our system using tools such as Flash, Java Applets and/or other tools. Our goal is to have versatile, interactive, and customizable graphical representations of data.

Project Objectives:

Implement interactive graphs into our reporting system. The following will fall under the scope of the project:

Implementation of dynamic graphs using Flash (see www.amcharts.com), Javascript, or Java Applets.
Creation of printable static versions of graphs using Java, PHP or other server side technologies.
Design and implementation of a “Front End Graph Creator” similar to the chart designer in Microsoft Excel. This will most likely be done in Javascript using ExtJS (see www.extjs.com).
Design and implementation of a “Dashboard” using Javascript for users to customize graphs (most likely also using ExtJS).

Skills Required:

Javascript (particularly AJAX and ExtJS)
Flash (most likely we would use a “packaged” solution in flash however)
Java or PHP (most likely Java will be a better solution)

Benefit to CSM Students: This project will give students experience with:

Design of real-life Rich Internet Applications
Professional web site design
Flash, Java, and advanced Javascript

Data Verity 2: ESP Database Control Center

Contact: David Flammer (pflammer@mines.edu)

Background:

Rich internet applications (RIAs) and Software as a Service (SaaS) are rapidly becoming dominant forces in software development, and knowledge of how to develop RIAs is becoming increasingly important. Data Verity is a retail consulting firm that provides its clients with different types of services via the internet. An integral part of our systems, and any system, is the database.

We are looking to create a unique Database Control Center that will function via the internet to intuitively control and manipulate both structure and data in a remote database.

Project Objectives:

Implement a Database Control Center, which should include the following functionality:

Creation/deletion/modification of database and table structures
Real-time editing of data that will update on server (see http://www.extjs.com/deploy/dev/examples/grid/edit-grid.html for an example solution).
Search and replace
A graphical interface for creating, storing, and executing instructions/queries to be performed on the database.

Skills Required:

Javascript (particularly AJAX and ExtJS)
Understanding database concepts such as referential integrity (foreign keys)
SQL (it is the standard query language for most databases).

Benefit to CSM Students:

This project will give students experience with:

Professional database design and application
Database programming
Design of real-life Rich Internet Applications

DTS1: Visual Touch Screen Scheduling for eMESA Live™

Client: Dan Lynn (Dan.Lynn@dts-global.com)

Background

Since 1994, DTS has been providing software services within various asset-intensive industries, including major mining organizations, working tirelessly with customers to engineer streamlined, rich, and intuitive solutions to increase business efficiency. It is DTS’ aim to add real value for its customers by providing – chiefly through its flagship product, eMESA™ – a web-based, customizable, and tailored-to-order alternative user interface that works in harmony with each customers’ unique system architecture—and through a multitude of EAM / CMMS platforms.

eMESA™ integrates with a variety of underlying EAM / CMMS platforms, including Mincom, SAP, Oracle, JDE E1 & EBS, IBM Maximo, Ultramain and other Legacy Applications. All DTS software solutions – whether in development of customer specific software or development of DTS proprietary commercial solutions – are guided and managed by DTS’ SAS 70 procedures. eMESA™ is currently available in both ‘hosted’ and subscription-based Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery models.

DTS recognizes that the next generation of User Interfaces will be Touch Screen enabled and Multi-Touch Capable. This Capability would be useful in large mining and manufacturing operations in assigning People to Equipment, to Work and other applications. For demonstrations of Multi-Touch technology please see http://www.microsoft.com/surface or do a Google Search for “Multi Touch Display”.

More information about DTS is available at http://www.dts-global.com

Project Objectives

Create an eMESA Live Multi-Touch Scheduling Solution with a Touch Screen Display

Ability to interact intuitively with a Touch Screen Display assigning People to Equipment or Equipment to People
Ability to interact intuitively with a Touch Screen Display assigning People to Work Orders or Work Orders to People
Ability to Assign Equipment, Work Orders or People to Containers
Visually View Work Orders, Perform Time Assignments, Perform Time Entry and Perform Work Completion
Visually View and Interact with Resource Loads

Required:

Sense of User Interface Design
Knowledge of Web Services, XML
Willingness to learn Next-Generation “Bleeding Edge” SDKs

Benefit to CSM Students: This project will give students experience with:

Professional Touch-Screen Development
Exposure to Multi-Touch SDKs
Real-World problem solving
User Interface Design

DTS2: iPhone ® App extension for eMESA Live™

Client: Dan Lynn (Dan.Lynn@dts-global.com)

Background

DTS recognizes that an iPhone application that could use the iPhone’s unique capability of Wireless Connectivity, GPS and Camera functionality could benefit several eMESA customers and take Maintenance and Operations field functionality into the 21st century.

More information about DTS is available at http://www.dts-global.com

Project Objectives:

Create an iPhone® App that has the following features:

Ability to login and interact with www.emesalive.com via an iPhone Interface
Ability to take photos and associate with a variety of entities (Equipment, Parts, People, Locations, Work Orders, etc…)
Ability to view Key Performance Indicators, Dashboards and Cockpit Metrics from the iPhone
Ability to Create / Modify / Complete Work Orders along with Time Entry
Ability to Perform Parts Search and Check Inventory Availability
Ability to View List of My Assigned Work
Ability to View Work Order Job Card and View Associated Documents (Photos, Videos, Etc.)
Ability to Perform Work and Requisition Approvals
Ability to Log Meter Readings for Equipment.

Requirements:

User Interface Design Abilities
Apple iPhone SDK
Objective-C (Cocoa)
Knowledge of MVC Design Patterns and Practices
Knowledge of Web Services and XML

Benefit to CSM Students: This project will give students experience with:

Professional iPhone Development
Apple iPhone SDK
Real-World problem solving
User Interface Design
Systems integration techniques

Fowler Software

Proposed Work

This project requires the engineering of an intranet connector for various data sources. The connector will gather and process data, then present it to a UI component.

There is a great deal of flexibility in choice of technology that would meet requirements, based on the team’s ability and interest. The team will be expected to adapt to new technology as necessary. Requirements gathering and system architecture will be critical aspects of this project.

Components will be as follows:

A central data-gathering service that draws from multiple APIs and processes data using set business rules. The service will present its own API to other consumers.
A UI in the team’s choice of platforms. Examples are iPhone, BlackBerry, Vista Gadget, or web application.
A clear and well-designed API to access processed data.
Automated unit tests and a system test plan that will ensure software quality.
Documentation and training resources for the system that is built.

Desired Skills:

Some knowledge of a C-based object oriented language (C#, C/C++, Java, etc.). Primary development will be in C#.
Exposure to web technologies (HTTP, XML, SOAP, HTML, etc.). Existing APIs are mostly web services.
Ability to test and debug code.
Attention to detail and interpersonal skills.

Benefits to students:

Upon completion of this project, team members will have the following skills:

Managing and executing an end-to-end software development project.
Use of existing open and custom APIs for automation as well as design of a new API.
UI technology in the platform of choice. For instance, mobile device UIs are commonly written in Java or JavaScript.
Experience with testing and debugging real world, enterprise-ready code, including NUnit or other test automation tools and Subversion (svn) or other source control tools.
Project management and requirements gathering skills, methods and tools.

Los Alamos: Mountable Transparent I/O Tracing Facility

Client:

Meghan Wingate, John Bent, James Nunez, Gary Grider
{meghan, johnbent, jnunez, ggrider @ lanl.gov}

Background/Motivation

The need for increasing scale in scientific computation drives the need for rapidly increasing scale in storage capability for High Performance Computing (HPC). Additionally, the rapid acceptance of Data Intensive Super Computing (DISC) also drives the desire for high performance and highly parallel storage deployment. Individual disk storage devices are rapidly getting denser while their bandwidth and agility is not growing at the same pace, which makes the job of providing scalable storage solutions extremely difficult as time goes on.

Storage systems for HPC and DISC environments exceed 50,000 disk drives involved in one parallel job. The desire to be able to efficiently utilize the massive resources involved in these tasks is great. While disks are somewhat agile for performing random operations, they are far more efficient at more serial I/O workloads. HPC applications due to their massive parallelism in machines approaching one million processing cores offer a wide variety of I/O workloads for the disk storage to deal with, from simple serial efficient patterns to highly random. Additionally, DISC machines offer similar workload variety.

To assist I/O and storage researchers to better build storage systems to cope with these demanding workloads in an efficient manner, it is vital that the I/O workloads be understood. One of the most important tools for understanding I/O workloads is tracing. Accurate low overhead traces are needed as researchers do not always have access to run the applications or run them at scale. Tracing in a transparent to the application way in a large parallel machine is difficult. Many methods have been tried, from interposer libraries which capture I/O library calls, to kernel trace event mechanisms. Some approaches require application assistance while others don’t. In the parallel setting, there is no clear winner in approach for an I/O Tracing mechanism.

Proposed Work

We propose to build a mountable file system based I/O tracing utility. The benefits of such an approach are:

Requires no changes to applications, can be used by simply changing the path to the desired application file
Only traces I/O calls, thereby being quite possibly very low overhead
Would operate on Linux for any application including dusty decks
Could leverage open source file system projects

More details about the proposed work can be found here.

Skills Required:

Knowledge of C programming
Some kernel knowledge/programming

Newmont Mining Corporation: Technical and Scientific Systems statistical analysis

client:

Shawn Horton, Newmont Mining Corporation

Background:

Newmont’s internal mine planning and geologic modeling software is currently being re-designed to use a new interface and programming language. This project requires students to design and build a tool to read three proprietary file formats and display various statistical plots to the user.

Project Requirements:

Create a user interface using C# and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) that will allow users to pick file(s) for analysis and modify various parameters for statistical analysis.
Create a graphical representation of the above data using probability plots, histograms, P-P, and Q-Q charts.
Display linear and logarithmic charts for the above chart types where appropriate.
Print the resulting charts and statistical analysis to a printer.

Required Skills:

This project requires knowledge of C# and XAML. Students should be comfortable with C and C++ in order to use legacy code as a reference and guide. Students should also have a good understanding of probability and statistics for data analysis.

Additional Information:

Students will have access to senior developers who are familiar with C#, C, C++ and the use of WPF and the .NET environment. Additionally, there are resources available to help with statistical analysis problems.

Sun Microsystems

Background

OpenSolaris is a state-of-the-art, cutting-edge operating system that provides a rich, coherent platform for building and running applications. It is both a community and an open-source project licensed under CDDL. All install components in OpenSolaris have been designed to create an easy to use interface for both novice and advanced users. Even though the 3rd formal release of OpenSolaris will ship in June 2009, there is still much functionality to be implemented in the install technology area. Some of this functionality is requested by both Sun-internal users and the community on a weekly basis. Your work on these projects will have a significant impact on OpenSolaris.

Working Environment

Working on these OpenSolaris projects would provide an opportunity to experience software development at the Sun Microsystems campus in Broomfield, CO. The team would be working with local engineers as well as other engineers in locations across the US, as well as in Prague Czech Republic, and Beijing China.

All discussions on design and implementation would be done "in the open" on our project mailing list, with material to eventually go into the open development gate. There is opportunity for the work to further be presented at the Front Range OpenSolaris Users' Group meeting in Broomfield.

Project #1: Text-based Installer for OpenSolaris Live CD

The GUI installer is currently the only way users can install the OpenSolaris Live CD. This requirement is problematic for users who can not use the X11 windowing system on their machines. Most of those users are currently blocked from using OpenSolaris unless they go through some complicated workarounds. A text-based installer will provide an opportunity to this group of users to fully experience OpenSolaris. You will work with our user interface experts and install engineers to define, design and implement the interface and the supporting backend components for the text installer.

Students working on this project should have a good understanding of operating systems, plus good scripting and programming skills. Experience with user interface design would be beneficial.

Project #2: OpenSolaris Live USB Image

Currently, users are able to boot and try OpenSolaris on USB sticks. However, it is very difficult to get the Live USB image as distributed onto a USB stick. Users would have to first install Solaris somehow - download a special utility for writing the distributed USB image to their USB stick. This project is to create a Live USB image for OpenSolaris that can be easily copied to USB sticks using a file copying program readily available on other operating systems, such as “dd” on Linux and Mac OS X. Currently, there's no mechanism to enable user data to be saved on the USB image, this would also be a very useful feature to provide. This project will give you the opportunity to gain in-depth experience with Solaris. You will learn everything from how the system boots up to how the file system needs to be laid out for different data. You will also be able to define the user's experience after the USB stick is booted.

Students working on this project must have the following: strong operating system skills, good scripting and programming skills and strong debugging skills both at the application and the system level.

Project #3: Automated Clean Up of OpenSolaris Boot Environments

OpenSolaris introduced an extremely easy way for users to upgrade their system, while preserving the existing working environment should the upgraded system produce undesired results. After any upgrade, a user can choose to boot into the upgraded environment or any of the previously saved boot environments before upgrade. While this is an extremely useful feature, users have to manually manage these saved working environments. This project is to enhance the existing Snap Upgrade component to provide automatic clean up of these saved boot enviornments based on pre-defined criteria. Students will be responsible for coming up with the design and implementation of this feature. You will learn about the how snap upgrade works in OpenSolaris, as well as, acquire in-depth knowledge of ZFS and the Image Packaging System.

Students working on this project must have the following: strong operating system skills, good python and C programming skills and strong debugging skills both at the application and the system level.

Teaching Tools Research Group: Course Management Software

Background

A number of classes at a number of institutions use course management sys- tems to distribute assignments, make announcements, track grades, etc. For example, Mines uses Blackboard - a system many students and instructors will know.

Project Goals

Potential features for the proposed system include:

Grades - On the instructor side of things, be able to enter grades effectively, and on the student side, track their grades for assignments, providing statistics, and so forth.
Emails - Allow instructors to send out emails, make announcements, and so forth.
RSS Feeds - Rather than getting emails for course announcements, make an RSS feed available instead.
Assignments - Let instructors post assignments (including attach- ments) in a cohesive format, and provide a system for students so submit their homework.

Skills You'd Gain

Ruby on Rails - a wide-spread web-application framework. For more information: http://rubyonrails.org/