New Book: Drupal for Education and E-Learning

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groups: Drupal in Education · Portland (Oregon)

billfitzgerald - Mon, 2008-09-15 23:21

Hello, all,

At the risk of indulging in shameless promotion, I wanted to announce that I wrote a book on using Drupal in Education -- I have an announcement on d.o about it, but I also wanted to post here to get the word out.

The book is titled Drupal for Education and E-learning, and it's due out from Packt Publishing in late October. The book targets Drupal 6, and it's geared toward non-developers and site admins.

For people new to Drupal, the book includes details on:

Drupal terminology;
User creation;
Role based access control;
Installing modules and themes;
Backing up and upgrading your site;

For more experienced Drupallers, the book covers:

Using CCK to extend content types -- instructions cover sharing media, images, links, text, and files;
An overview of Views 2, including adding new views, using the new access control mechanisms of Views 2, configuring multiple displays from a single view, and cloning and modifying existing views;
An overview of Organic Groups, including instructions on how to use groups to support informal and formal learning;
Extending user profiles to support connections between users.

The book also covers theming basics, and how to use the menu and block system to create sites that are easy and intuitive to navigate.

I had some help getting this done -- fellow primates Marc Poris and Jeff Graham gave me some great feedback throughout the writing proess, and also wrote the code snippets in the book. Also, Peter Wolanin and Michael Peacock, two of the technical editors, gave me some great feedback that helped during the revision process.

For those so inclined, you can also Digg this story.

Cheers,

Bill

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Excellent and congrats!

gusaus - Tue, 2008-09-16 01:25

I recently had the chance to spend time with a bunch of people in my local e-learning/education space and was pretty amazed how little they knew about Drupal let alone the benefits of open source. If any of you live near or would like to come to Los Angeles, possibly we could create a Drupal for Eduction event as a way to promote the book and Drupal. Based on the success of DrupalCampLA, I think industry specific events would be very well received.

Congrats again - there are a lot of great books coming out!

Gus Austin
PepperAlley Productions

Well done,

koyauni - Tue, 2008-09-16 13:03

Our University in North Iraq has decided to use Drupal and I am trying to make this happen. I there is a lot to learn and I am sure this book will become very handy. Do you know id any one can help developing a site as such and help promoting educating in Iraq.

Our web site is

www.KoyaUniversity.org

koyauni I think lots of

samrose - Tue, 2008-09-16 15:50

koyauni

I think lots of people here in Groups.Drupal.Org will be interested in helping you.

Can you talk some more about specifics:

What are you trying to do, and what do you hope to do with Drupal in your University? Please don't hold back, because there is a lot that you can already do with Drupal in relation to education right now.

One of the things that I am not sure about is translation, specifically that Drupal interface is translated to your local languages, but if that is necassary, it is not an impossible task. (languages already translated are here http://drupal.org/project/Translations )

Sam Rose
Social Synergy
Open Source Ecology
P2P Foundation

an e-University

koyauni - Tue, 2008-09-16 23:03

Thank you samrose, as you it is hard to get hold on quality education so we are trying to create a web site which allow interaction between Lecturer in the west and those working in the university, where they can put lectures, video, and allow student to use them. I need to make these for registered users only.

We already have an Education account with Google Apps but I found it hard to integrated for our users. This should allow users to have an email with Google mail but out extension as soon they register with the site.

E-library and e-Books is very important in war zone, where student can not find new up-to-date books. I have already made use of Biblio Module but it does not have attach facility so you can attach e-book to the records.

One thing which is abstract to me is the role of Taxonomy. In an Education site it is important to add academic articles and being able to add the original Author/s . Let say Admin add the article on Big Bang theory, he needs to add the date for the article and original Author of this article, so it is list able by the name of that Author. But a Page content type does not allow for this. Someone said the page content type can be edited by View and more fields can be added, but I have not found any document on that.

Simply, since you do not find that much education tool and material in Iraq, we want to enable the web site to function as a link between in side Iraq and outside word.

This groups is definitely a resource

billfitzgerald - Tue, 2008-09-16 23:31

Hello, koyauni,

I would definitely use this group as a place to ask questions as you build out your site, or sites, that you will use to develop a web presence. An important question to answer is whether or not a single site can deliver all the functionality you will need within the various departments of a university.

Definitely post questions -- the groups has over 540 members, and there are a lot of people who can help you as you get more into Drupal.

Welcome to the community, and I look forward to hearing/learning more!

Cheers,

Bill

FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers

Congrats!

samrose - Tue, 2008-09-16 15:44

Book looks great! Look forward to getting my hands on it. Especially your ideas about making connections between users in relation to education. Something I have been mulling over with different folks over time.

Sam Rose
Social Synergy
Open Source Ecology
P2P Foundation

Congrats!

kyle_mathews - Tue, 2008-09-16 18:15

The book looks great BIll. Congratulations on getting in published to you and the others involved. I'm sure it'll be a great help to Drupal on its march to dominating the world of educational technology.

Kyle Mathews