Blended Learning Intranets for K-12 Schools

Description

I just gave this presentation at Design for Drupal in Boston - it was scheduled for an hour and the conversations lasted an extra 90 minutes - so if there are people who want to use Drupal in K-12 schools, this will be hot Hot HOT!!!

Drupal is the ideal blended learning intranet platform, supporting classroom web pages that change as the work changes, content types that match project work, and organic groups for social learning. This session will explore the organizational, technical and instructional design strategies for a 7th grade Civil War project in a school without 1-to-1 computing.

Agenda

1. Organizational Architecture: how physical and virtual spaces affect how we work and learn together
2. Priority for Schools: Move from Bureaucracy to Learning Organizatlon
3. Exploring Drupal Intranet Designs for Public Schools
4. Case Study: Springs School District

About Me

In 2005, when my school dropped the technology director position from its budget, I formed a web design company with high school students trained as Tech Scouts (http://hvscouts.com). We chose Drupal as our chief development platform. When they left for college I moved to an adult staff and we became Game Face Web Design (http://gamefacewebdesign.com).

This fall, a principal from my last school gig (now a Superintendent) asked me to provide professional development to his teachers. I used my Drupal chops to develop a Blended Learning intranet, connecting Open Atrium as a planning site and a fungible Drupal Sandbox as a learning site.

I believe that the empowered, collaborative, values-driven culture of open source makes a great model for secondary schools to follow, and the flexibility of Drupal supports blended learning communities in unique and powerful ways. The Empowered Teacher (http://empowered-teacher.com) is founded on this claim, dedicated towards helping schools use Drupal Intranet sites for planning and teaching to support blended learning.