Drupal+in+Education

Drupal

Drupal/Wordpress/Content Management sytems Can be simple and complex at the same time We're building some intranet type spaces right now We're using Drupal Ed as well as Wordpress right now Don at The School is doing their front-end website in drupal—you can go that far with it Intricacies- can go with different things

Why did we show up here? Because it's complicated, making templates for different teachers, trying to customize for LS/MS/US, and then for different departments… Could we use drupal or moodle. What's your entry-level drug? I want more flexibility than our CMS has right now. It has one template with three things you have to have. Finalsite—mut have caldnar, bul board, or resource thing.

Drupal is an open source cms. If you ever set up a CMS before, it's not a tricky install. WordPress is ready to roll after installing. Drupal- there's more configuring to do. You can't make it as individual as a wordpress site- pick their own theme, make it there own… The thing that's bringing me to drupal is the LDAP- bringing the number of logins down, DRUPAL has this beautiful LDAP model. Wordpress has more hacking around in that way….

The other cool thing about Drpal is that word press is a blogging platform. It's meant to

Druapal- Forums Blogging Stories Different content types Academic dean wanted a place to publish summer PD reports- categorized by division and department—structured tagging. People could control-click and submit. Configure a custom content type. Drupal has tons of flexibility. ISDE list—the tech director at schools in California. When you set up PD reports for teachers w/tags, you limited these tags, but do bogs use the same tags. No, it's separate. Structured tags.

CollegiateCreate.org. – a wordpress site.

There are different tools that will work for different things… Moodle will work for most of our faculty—meant for a traditional teacher. Other teachers would get into a blog server. How are you letting people choose? LS is going to use WordPress this year and see how that works. If someone can publish to a wordpress blog, they could publish to a drupal blog. Debate about commenting—a fourth grade teacher doesn't want people to comment—she just wants to post content. WhippleHill site- very cumbersome. Some people are using .mac accounts… We're using Whipplehill advanced academics. In US, faculty post major assignments, keeps kids from having conflicts, but it's an administrative system, it's not a learning system in any way, shape, or form. We're trying to create an internet forum where pople can post and publish. Department blogs- every department posts once a month.

CMS academy, drupal, Jeff and Jen have a whole set of podcasts. How do you learn? The drupal.org site. You install it, you do it. Connect with others—it's a bit of a learning curve.

Alex is trying to create niches where people can create. Let people see how it works and go from there.

The Tube – Columbia- its own tagged streaming video site. A module within

Dropal.org/project/modules Browse by name- you can see what's available. Can run podcasting. Lullaby podcast- cool one to listen to.

Have the kids had questions? Just a three-minute tutorial. Ask faculty advisors to watch the content on the sites. If they don't, I'm taking it down. Alex wants the project to be successful.

Elgg

It seems like there doesn't seem to be one product to offer the tools we're looking for. Differentiate between traditional and progressive teachers? Actively discouraging people from using Dreamweaver!

Debate: Do we care if users get exposure to HTML etc? CMS systems don't require tech knowledge! Drupal has a "show HTML" button.

Have students do one page- so students get the basics.

If you really want to change, you need to give it time and slow down. I don't see it happening. Is education so broken that it can't adapt and we'll have to start from scratch? Dealing with your current faculty population, it has to be EASY.

Drupaled.org—distribution of drupal for schools!

Summer PD reports- alex emailed directions, and people figured it out. Text, images,

Wiki- uriculum map. They all had access at school and at home. In first read-through, they discovered they only taught plants in first grade, but they teach organisms many times. Three different web systems: Front end for admissions Collegiate connect- Sudent Info System- comments, grades, attendance Collegiate Create- academic technology

Authentication- LDAP- seamless. All hosted on one server – LINUX is amazing! Virtual server- VMware. Increased the PHP memory, most of the time it's pretty good. Linked up to a file server—uploads go there. Get a bluehost account- open up the firewall. Collegiate has a back-end network person, and Alex does the front-end and works with the faculty.

I've been most impressed with drupal, though it's a learning curve.

There's a NYC drupal group

Have teachers asked for other features? Not yet. Science dept wiki

Sound- creativecommons – share alike 2.0 license Search for creativecommons licensed work

Here is one example of a drupal site used as a school intranet- http://panthernet.brooklynfriends.org/intra/