How about teaching Drupal/OS in the classroom?

I've tried teaching Drupal to students and my first pass at was unsuccessful. I'd say the problem is that I should have done a few more demonstrations up front of what was possible and then had students work towards these sites. Some problems I found:

1. Students had different laptops and different anti-virus programs which invariably got in the way of the installation of WampServer, leading to frustrations early on as some students were ready to go and some were experiencing weird problems.

2. Going through the installation of Drupal is boring and I think should be delayed until later in the course. Ideally I'd start with a computer lab with WampServer (or MAMP) and one installation of Drupal pre-installed on all of the computers.

3. There are no high school level Drupal textbooks around. Students need something they can follow at home, look up reference material etc... Maybe we can build a community OS textbook for high school students? I may end up teaching Drupal in my next job, we'll see if I can swing it.

Dave

Hello, all,

This is a great thread, and I'm actually working on a blog post that ties together some of the ideas here with some of my goals for connecting educators with their local DUG's. I actually see an unnecessary disconnect between using Drupal and using Drupal in Education. The use cases and technical approaches to building sites in Drupal are very similar both in and out of an educational context.

RE no high school level textbooks around: given that two of the respondents in this thread have written book about Drupal, I don't know if that's necessarily the case :) With that said, one of the things I'm planning on doing is a series of blog posts that lays out this foundational Drupal curriculum as open content. This actually ties in with one of the uses of our Knight work: creating a distributed platform for authoring and distributing open content. I don't see any reason why Drupal-related content shouldn't be in the mix. Which is all a long way of saying: yes, let's write that curriculum. I even think that the drupaled.org domain could be used a central space for that collaboration.

RE: approaches to working in the classroom: we'd need to focus on what we want people to take away, and why. Given the many things Drupal can be used for, focusing the learning on a specific, clearly defined, relevant project would be great. Tying it into a specific, well established club (ie, yearbook, newspaper, etc) would be another way of creating a specific connection. Also, tying the Drupal-specific curriculum into an existing project (for example, a vlog/blog/audioblog in connection with planning and rehearsal for a drama performance) would be another way to make it relevant. Grounding the Drupal-based content in pre-existing projects implicitly answers the "what" and the "why" --

There are countless other approaches here, but these are a couple that struck me as very achievable.

It's also worth noting that all of these approaches assume a motivated, interested stakeholder within the school.

Cheers,

Bill

FunnyMonkey
Click. Connect. Learn.
Using Drupal in Education

Last semester, I helped teach a course called Advanced Web Design at the university where I work here in West Virginia. The students were asked to set up a website each and were given a choice of different options - coding a website from scratch and different CMS systems. After my presentation and demonstration of a live Drupal 6 site, they chose Drupal.

So, I asked each student to submit a plan - a statement of concept and functionality really - for his or her own website. I then set up a plain, out of the box Drupal 6 site for each student using a mutisite setup and worked with them to create their websites. In essence, I did the initial setup and then let them focus on site creation.

Each day I would give a demo of a different module or something like taxonomy, and then let them work on their sites, assisting when needed. In the end, the student sites were pretty amazing, and I think they all really got a lot out of the class. One of them has already set up several Drupal sites on his own - one for the Athletic department - and wants to attend Drupalcon Paris.

I felt really rewarded and pleased to have been able to connect young minds with such a dynamic and versatile web framework as Drupal.

My apologies for the Access Denied with http://scis.wju.edu/ralph/drupal_site_setup. There was apparently something screwy in my node_access table. Now it's fixed and you should be able to see the page.

I totally support your suggestion "Drupaled.org could be used as a community space to build and maintain this [training/curriculum] resource."

Re:
First: are there people within this group with the time/desire to work on building this resource within drupaled.org ? This would need to be a group effort.

Speaking for myself, yes.

Second: (and this is a broader discussion) is this a good use of drupaled.org ?

I believe it is.

Ralph

As an adjunct professor of ed at the university level and certified teacher who has spent some time in 7-12 classroom I think that this is a really timely discussion. I think learning Drupal would be a great way to engage students in something practical and tangible as opposed to the all too prevalent theoretical work many of them are doing now. To add1sun's point, aligning to the myriad of curriculum requirements throughout the states would be one of the most daunting challenges, but I believe by aligning to something like ISTE's - National Educational Technology Standards (NETS - http://www.iste.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=NETS) would be a great starting point.

In theory if you could build a curriculum that would cover the essentials of Drupal and could be aligned to the National Standards it would likely make it considerably easier to align to the state specific standards. It's a good starting point at least. The beauty of introducing Drupal into the curriculum is that it would afford the opportunity for a lot of Project Based learning - a theory pioneered by Seymour Papert - and a model for classroom activity that shifts away from the classroom practices of short, isolated, teacher-centered lessons and instead emphasizes learning activities that are long-term, interdisciplinary, student-centered, and integrated with real world issues and practices. I think it would be a big win for teachers and students alike.

One of the biggest challenges that you would face is finding teachers who were proficient enough with Drupal to be able to not only advocate for the use of it as a learning tool, but also teach the course(s) in a way that would be effective and translate into authentic learning for all of the student's involved. Teacher's could be the lynch-pin in this entire equation as you really would need certified teachers to bring this into the classroom (at least in most of the states that I am familiar with).

That challenge, however, could provide additional opportunities to create either an enhanced or sub-curricula for training teachers to use Drupal. Definitely, something worth considering.

I gave this some additional thought and wanted to add another idea or two to the discussion. What I think would be outstanding resource to provide educators with would be multi-fold.

First, I think it would be great to arm them with enough info on Drupal to be a strong advocate in pitching their ideas. Something like a position paper that would help them define the pedagogical impact that using something like Drupal as an essential part of the curriculum. Sell the project as a whole and the myriad of opportunities both to the students and the school community as a whole. That would get the discussion started.

Second, I think we would have to provide a Drupal in Education package that would be easy for them to set-up either on a localhost or on a designated server in the school district. The simpler the process the better. From my experience in work with Ed Tech folks, they can be pretty protective of their domain, especially if the idea isn't their own. They also seem to shudder any time they hear the word change - I am not trying to paint all of them with a broad stroke (as I am one too) but that has been my experience.

Third, I think we would need a well defined curriculum aligned to national standards and complete with detail and learning objectives. Standards are not going away in education and if activities don't align to standards, they simply aren't given a lot of consideration. Creating a curriculum and aligning it can be pretty easy if you can get the right folks in the room to get it done.

Fourth, as I mentioned previously, we would need a method or manner to skill-up the teachers who are interested because my guess is that many of them haven't worked with Drupal before and would have a pretty sharp learning curve. If my experience with introducing Moodle is any guide, there is a lot of work required at the front end but it yields plenty of dividends at the back. I have been amazed at what some of the teachers that I trained have been able to do.

Fifth, a support structure would be key, not too different than what we do today with all of the other forums and resources, but it has to be easy to use and extremely accessible. Teachers are pretty resilient but if they continuously run into problems and can't get good answers quickly, they will give up pretty easily. We need to lower the barriers and ensure that they can and will be successful.

Finally, it may be useful to get all of these ideas formalized, develop "something" and then introduce in pilot form. Another unique aspect of the educational system is the fact that it is not open to a lot of open experimentation, especially when students are involved with it. By slow-rolling it to receptive teachers in progressive school systems I think you would get a lot of useful feedback that could in turn be used to improve the overall package/program.

I'd love to be involved with this effort in any way that I can as it combines my two passions education and Drupal.

HS / younger kids need to be connected to with things they can relate to. Not being horribly removed from HS (time wise) and remebering back to then as well as what I've seen w/ students now in general....

1. Make Drupal seem like something that they not only could use but may already interact with without knowing it. Example: The Flickr Clone that Lullabot training has made people build before. Not saying you should have the kids build it, but build a simple service like that or a you-tube clone to show them they can also make something cool and socially active like that.

2. Integrate the project w/ other social services. Twitter / facebook / youtube all have modules and pulling things together as mash-ups in interesting ways can be a good way to connect. A lot of students aren't going to go "OH WOW I can build Views from this!" They'll say "cool I can pull together twitter and youtube feeds!".

3. Lastly and I've seen this time and time again. Draw a logical connection between programming in general and the financial benefit / job security it can often bring. Market's down / off right now and kids / parents are going to want to be pushing their children into more "secure" higher education tracks. Less humanities (not that they aren't useful, i'm talking perceptions here) and more business / technology. Make the business case for Drupal for them in terms of free-lance, corporate and education sectors that it's taking off in right now.

Hope everything works out, teaching other's is something I'm personally interested in so it's cool to hear about others being successful in this!

"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/

I am currently teaching a class at the University of Kentucky that is 80% Drupal. It's called Content Management Systems and is taught out of Journalism.

I am using Drupal 7 and creating materials on the go; we don't have a textbook.

I would love to hear from other people who are teaching Drupal in colleges.

Kosta