What do you want most from the Education Meetup at DrupalCon 2008 in Boston?

There is an Education-specific meetup on Monday night, 5-9 PM, March 3rd at DrupalCon -- I'm helping to organize it, and I'd like to get some feedback about what people would be interested in doing --

The plan for this meetup is fairly casual, and largely social -- ie, no projectors/presentations. However, one of the things we definitely want to accomplish with this meetup is to start getting an idea about events that would be of interest to the educational community for this, and future, meetups.

In short, this is the start of something beautiful.

So, leave suggestions/ask questions in the comments, and I'm looking forward to seeing you in Boston!

Cheers,

Bill

FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers

Another thought is that we can use the responses here as a way to see if it makes sense to have any BoF's, or additional meetups during DrupalCon based on interest --

If we collect up our ideas about what we want to take away, we can then do what we can to connect people with resources at the DrupalCon.

Cheers,

Bill

FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers

I would like to pool resources as well.

I am working with a small group of teachers in the Madison, WI area that have been collaborating on a number of projects and have had the need to use some Web collaboration and publishing tools. I have been playing around with Drupal for a little while (very little) and ran across your version of Drupal for Education. I found that to be a good starting point for my site. I would like to be a member of your group to discuss ideas for these types of tools and websites. I am currently working at the Academic ADL Co-LAb in Madison, WI and the Co-Lab has written some grants to build on these Web 2.0 Open Source tools.

Below is the URL to the site I built and a general overview of the site functionality. There are many tools that I have yet to activate (for example, groups and courses) that I see might come in handy down the road. I really wanted a site that was simple to use and that would be useful in allowing teachers to communicate and display and discuss their classroom activities so I kept the tool set very simple, Forums (integrated SMF) Blogs, Pages, and Image Galleries. Teachers should be able to share a great deal of work and information using these tools.

Because we are working with elementary classrooms and have to work out security and safety policy issues students and parents are not participating members (can't add content) of this site. We hope to allow students to participate soon. We do however intend for parents and students to view the site seeing all of the work being done by the participating classrooms. Teachers posting student work will motivate them to produce publishable quality work knowing other students in the community will see their work.
Site URLS

I have a vanilla version of the site that I intent to make available for other groups to modify and use is at

http://elearninghere.com

The Heron Network site that I built is at

http://heronnetwork.org

I have written some documentation for the participants on how to use the site. I am in the process of writing documentation for those that will install, set-up and administer the site. Both sites need some customizing to the look and feel, but that is not my strong point. I will be getting a graphic designer with some Drupal skills to help with making these sites look better soon.
Overview

Ø This is a beta version, designed for busy teachers. Over time, and with your feedback, we can improve graphic design, introductory content, number of functions, ease of use, and documentation of use.

Ø We intend to create a classroom model of this current site, designed as a secure content management system for classrooms. Imagine your students being able to blog, post photos, create content maps, and engage in classroom discussions.

Ø We strongly urge you get parent and/or district permission before using student names (especially last names), writings (unless anonymous), and photos of children.
Goals

Ø We have attempted to build a website that is useful for students, parents, community partners, and the general public—but our primary purpose is to build a site easily usable by busy teachers. Our overall purpose is to help you communicate and collaborate with other teachers by sharing classroom news, images, and projects.

Ø This site is designed to allow for multiple roles. The roles have different levels of permissions allowing for easy management and creation of website content. For the moment, only teachers can create classroom pages, write blogs, create and post to image galleries, post events, and post and respond to messages on the forums. Others may simply read what you post. The admin user currently has the highest "Administrative" role for changing the organization and front content of the site.

Ø We hope this website will improve instruction (motivating students), ease some communications with parents, and strengthen the teacher's community. We also believe a site is needed to begin archiving historical documents such as, research articles, and information about past projects.

Ø Besides supporting inquiry, we hope this website will allow classrooms to share content about their local neighborhoods and other locations they visit. Sharing this content will begin to build a strong sense of place for participants.

Features: Communication, Collaboration, & Archiving Tools

The classroom homepages, blogs and image galleries are useful in updating other teachers about current classroom news and activities.
Classroom Pages

Each teacher has a homepage where they can post information about their classroom, projects, teaching philosophy, and/or school. This page can be edited by the teacher. The homepage also has links to the classroom Blog and Image Galleries.
Blogs

Each teacher has a blog. Blogs are used to give updates on projects and other classroom activities.
Image Galleries

Each teacher has one or more image galleries, with photos, drawings, maps or other images from projects and other classroom activities. Each gallery holds up to 25 images.
Forums

The forums allow for two-way communication. In the forum teachers can post information about their projects and reply to other classroom posts. This communication can be extended to include other discussions. For the moment, all forums are open to the public, but we expect to be able to create sections viewable only by other participating teachers.
Events Calendar

The events calendar can be used to post the network events. Teachers can add events to the calendar. Only authenticated users (teachers) can view calendar events.
Document Archives

At "Archives," we'll attempt to post a searchable database of articles from published work. Other items may be archived in the forums, blogs, and image galleries. The hope is to keep a running history of selected community activities, including highlights from individual classrooms over the years.

Not sure how many other university folks will be at the meetup, but our biggest focus is integration between Drupal and Student Information Systems. We are going through a painful transition to PeopleSoft, and we'd like to share our framework and see what others are doing in that arena.