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
Comments
Excellent and congrats!
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
Gus Austin
Well done,
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
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
Sam Rose
Hollymead Capital Partners
P2P Foundation
Social Media Classroom
an e-University
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
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
FunnyMonkey
Congrats!
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
Sam Rose
Hollymead Capital Partners
P2P Foundation
Social Media Classroom
Congrats!
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
Kyle Mathews
Gotta have it!
Great news, Bill. Thanks so much for your continuing contributions to this community.
I just ordered the eBook. I look forward to digesting and benefiting from it very soon!
Erik Britt-Webb
drupal@ebrittwebb.com
Congratulations
Hi Bill,
Congratulations on the book!
I will definitely buy it and have the whole team here at my university read it!
Best regards,
Nick
+1 :P "Plaguing the world
+1 :P
"Plaguing the world with Drupal; One Plone, Moodle, Wordpress, Joomla user at a time since 2005." ~ btopro
http://elearning.psu.edu/
http://elearning.psu.edu/projects/
http://elearning.psu.edu/drupalineducation/
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
The books looks great, I'll
The books looks great, I'll buy it as soon as I'm done with "pro Drupal development". So,say...in five years, is that OK ;) ?
It's out!
Hello, all,
The book is now out: http://www.packtpub.com/drupal-for-education-and-e-learning
There's also a post on d.o about it: http://drupal.org/node/340820
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Click. Connect. Learn.
FunnyMonkey
Awesome Book
Bill,
What is your opinion on using Apture or Kaltura for Media management rather than the individual module based approach that was advocated in the book (getid, etc.). I was wondering if it wouldn't be at the same time more viral (from a sharing perspective and integration to other media sources) and manageable, all elements contained in a single module, one module to update, etc.
Cheers,
Sandeep
As with any external
As with any external service, your experience will be as good as the external service, and as long-lived as the external service.
Anyone remember VideoEgg? If people had been using it for serving video, they'd be pretty sad around now, as it shifted it's focus and no longer serves media outside of an advertising context.
Both Apture and Kaltura offer interesting functionality, but I prefer stability over flash. Toward that end, I'm more excited about the development on the Media module, which is in active development than I am about any external service.
As a final caveat regarding using an external service, only use one that allows you to retain control of your data. It's one of the things I like about CDN2, a service we are actively evaluating that looks great.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Click. Connect. Learn.
Using Drupal in Education
FunnyMonkey
Finally got around to the review
Book Review incase anyone's interested in reading praise in more detail :)
https://elearning.psu.edu/projects/node/128
Great work Bill! Hope to see you in DC.
"Plaguing the world with Drupal; One Plone, Moodle, Wordpress, Joomla user at a time since 2005." ~ btopro
http://elearning.psu.edu/
http://elearning.psu.edu/projects/
http://elearning.psu.edu/drupalineducation/
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
Further review
Hi everyone,
A further review of Bill's 'Drupal for Education and E-Learning'
If anyone can advise on up-to-the-minute status of Drupal - Moodle linkages I'd be very grateful and will revise the review accordingly.
http://hodges-model.blogspot.com/2009/04/book-review-drupal-for-educatio...
Best regards and great job Bill.
Peter Jones
http://hodges-model.blogspot.com/
Hodges' Health Career - Care Domains - Model
h2cm: help2Cmore - help-2-listen - help-2-care
http://twitter.com/h2cm
http://hodges-model.blogspot.com/
Hodges' Health Career - Care Domains - Model
http://www.p-jones.demon.co.uk
h2cm: help2Cmore - help-2-listen - help-2-care
http://twitter.com/h2cm
one term report
With the help of Bill's book I used Drupal to provide a course resource site for my students in St. Lawrence College's Integrated Marketing program. I pretty much followed his suggestions for organizing and presenting content.
Without exception the students responded to the site very positively. I suggested to them that they were responsible for the site's content and gave them licence to publish as they wished. It may have helped that a portion of their final mark reflected participation on the site.
It may be useful for people to learn from my experience in terms of what I'd do differently next term:
Overall, I was very, very happy with the results. Next term I have several other profs here who've volunteered to help me improve what is being offered and to make use of Drupal for their courses.
Semester to semester
Very cool; putting this stuff into practice and lessons learned are great take-aways for all. How are you planning to manager semester to semester enrollment in the course or is this a one-time / one-site-each-time kinda gig?
"Plaguing the world with Drupal; One Plone, Moodle, Wordpress, Joomla user at a time since 2005." ~ btopro
http://elearning.psu.edu/
http://elearning.psu.edu/projects/
http://elearning.psu.edu/drupalineducation/
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
haven't worked that out completely yet
Next term we're adding a few other courses and profs to the mix. We share the same students so a one-time registration is the ticket. Combine that with organic groups based on the course ID and the year and we'd be able to present each course separately from the other and from term to term. We could even theme each group's portion of the site differently.
As our students work in teams for many of their projects, we still need a means of enabling team-based content that won't turn the list of groups to select into a list longer than my arm.
I'm rebuilding the site and reconfiguring many of its features over the next month or so (gotta get that gradebook working again). This work will also give me the opportunity to restructure the navigation system so the distinction from year to year and course to course can maintained and easily seen.
Alternatively, it's dead simple, once you have a profile for the site, to reiterate a version as needed. Multiple installs is another approach worth considering.
I dunno, what do you folks think?
we do separate sites...
For what you're talking about I'd probably stick with what your doing. We're one-site per course and we do rolling enrollments semester to semester so we just boot everyone out and get everyone new in. This way addresses don't ever change and since we don't have much need to have students or teachers go into previous semesters it works. If you NEED people to go there (outside of special cases) then your groups setup sounds the way to go. Either that or a hybrid w/ one site per course but each course is a series of groups to handle each semester. This way you could replicate whole courses and move them around but still get the flexibility of the groups for per semester things.
"Plaguing the world with Drupal; One Plone, Moodle, Wordpress, Joomla user at a time since 2005." ~ btopro
http://elearning.psu.edu/
http://elearning.psu.edu/projects/
http://elearning.psu.edu/drupalineducation/
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/