[nb. While ivy was used daily both by myself and other teachers, I should stress that, in terms of the general public, ivy is beta software.]
From about 2003 until 2008, I was a music teacher. I also happened to be a software developer so when I got frustrated with the problems of Blackboard & Firstclass I wrote my own software. First in PHP and then in Rails. If I recall correctly, I made the switch because I was frustrated with how unorganized the PHP code was and I had recently heard about Ruby on Rails. Muuuuuch better.
Originally I wrote ivy to help with the logistics of teaching. It helped with attendance and note-taking. Then I added the ability to plan and schedule and incorporated the ability to track activities. This subtle change actually turned ivy into a curriculum development tool. I could scan backwards in time within a specific class as well as through the years, to help figure out what might work best for my current group of students.
At this point, activities are represented simply as names although adding further descriptions as well as what materials each activity require would be good.
The basic idea is to log which activity or activities were used during class and to also take notes on the success of each class/activity. Of course, this should be done as soon as possible so you don't forget - if possible, I'd do it during class, otherwise, I'd do it between classes.
So, development stopped a while ago. That being the case, you need to revert to older versions of things to get everything working. While the newest version of, say, mysql, might work, I'd suggest first getting everything running and then, once you're all cooking, upgrade. Here is what I had to setup to get things working:
mysql: mysql Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.5.15, for osx10.6 (i386) using readline 5.1
ruby: ruby 1.8.7 (2010-01-10 patchlevel 249) [universal-darwin10.0]
rails: 1.2.3
ivy: get it here
Without typing out a lesson on how to use Rails, basically, you get mysql setup and running. Then you edit the config/database.yml file in the ivy distribution to match your usernames & passwords. Then you run "rake db:migrate" within the top directory of the distribution. When that all works, you can run script/server and go to http://0.0.0.0:3000. That the gist. There's a README in the distribution which will help. Also, feel free to contact me.
One of the benefits with activity-based education is that you're putting what works before what you think the students need. You cannot, of course, teach someone something that they do not care to learn about. Not easily, at least. Those activities that are more successful will be selected for, those less gradually eliminated or changed. Kind of like evolution.
I believe that, in general, the smaller and simpler things are the better. Certainly from an energy-use standpoint. If the user has to upload all sorts of cute little gifs and other graphics and whatnot, it simply takes more energy. Sure, it might not be a lot, per person. But it adds up. And why use more energy if it's not really necessary? Soooo, all things & functionalities being equal, I'm actually trying to reduce the amounts of bytes sent across the internet with my design.