Posted by ebrittwebb on April 3, 2008 at 7:40am
Now that the new OG Panels functionality is in place and being impressively displayed by groups like Drupal Dojo, should we consider doing the same for the Drupal in Education group? Apparently they hosted a Drupal Dojo Group Barnraising event on March 30. You can watch the screencast to get the gist of what they covered.
Thinking about our group, I posted this Drupal in Ed - Group Redesign Specifications wiki page. Oddly enough, you can't post comments to it, so I've posted this discussion page for those who prefer to post comments here instead of editing the wiki page directly.
I hope people will chime in on how they want this group redesigned.
Comments
I think the tabs idea is
I think the tabs idea is pretty sweet, and it would allow us the ability to break out the most asked-for items into their own discrete containers. I see the case studies definitely finding a home in that structure, as well as discussions.
That could allow us to also provide wiki pages for commonly needed resources, howtos and that sort of thing.
I think there's a place for this i'm just not sure where....
What about some kind of table / block / page / whatever that would list most commonly used modules on d.o in education? Or some recommended modules / themes / projects to use for education. I've seen a lot of postings that are flavored like "I'm new to education what should I download to accomplish ______". Maybe it's a river of news about modules / projects related to education. I say this simply because I was pumping a new module recently on here and I know Amherst was too but, based on your current layout for things, these would fit in the college level river of news. But both of these projects would be perfectly usable to K-12 people too but we've segmented the discussion and now K-12 people might be missing those discussions / announcements about projects.
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
How Tos and Target Audiences
Brian,
Great suggestions for most commonly used/recommended modules, themes, projects (a.k.a Install Profiles?) and for "what should I download to accomplish ______". I think those are perfect examples of HOW TOs. We could create group tags and guidelines for how to use them.
Here are a few examples of functionality tags to start:
Regarding the segmentation between K12 and College/University and other environments, I thought we could provide similar tags and guidelines for target audiences, like this (you can use more than one of these tags if appropriate):
We could then create views that include any combination of these tags, depending on much or little we want to segment discussions, wiki pages, etc. Hopefully this isn't too complicated.
Erik Britt-Webb
drupal@ebrittwebb.com
That makes sesnse
Not complicated at all. I wasn't sure of the functionality of groups to allow people to customize their views and what not so I just wanted to be sure we were still going to have a default view that showed the river of all discussion initially. I threw some of my ideas from the previous post onto the wiki page so move them around as they make sense. Maybe we need to define in the wiki thing what tags will be or that pages will just be views that allow for filters and tagging. I'd throw installation profiles into the tagging list for functionality simply because DrupalEd is an installation profile, ELMS will be one down the pipe, and that amherst Monster menu thing sounds a lot like it could be rolled into an installation profile as well.
It will be critical for us to get these tags down tight and explained well to reduce complication. That's a personal issue I have with the documentation of drupal as a whole, it's very difficult for me (newbee to module submission for instance) to find just the content related to that issue.
Another feature that might be cool to add is some kind of education discussions in the community block / panel / page that aggregates blog posts in from community member's blog posts. I know that I have a site specific for education and drupal blogging, there seemed to be a ton of people from dcb08 that did too. A lot of times those thoughts are specific to projects we're all working on or just thoughts about drupal in general. These posts I've noticed in other circles are referenced quite often (look how often when lullabot people post a comment that there are references to their original ideas on the topic on their site / blog ;) ). This could also raise awareness in our own spheres locally that there is a bigger community dedicated to drupal and hopefully pull those people into the discussion as well.
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
Drupal Ed Aggregation
I like the idea of Drupal in Education related content aggregation. I think that's not possible or appropriate on the GDO site, but perhaps Bill would be interested in further buildout of the www.drupaled.org site to include this feature and better integrate with this group?!
Erik Britt-Webb
drupal@ebrittwebb.com
you really can't aggregate
you really can't aggregate info in from other sites on gdo :( ? That would make me very sad'ed
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
Job opportunities might be
Job opportunities might be another good tag to through in for classifying a post as one of the newer posts is about a drupal education position. Administrators I've also been told (cough cough) could find this useful in locating the right people for jobs ;)
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
Drupal Ed Jobs
There's already a JOBS content type, so all we need is a view that lists all job postings. Easy. I'm not sure we'd even need tags, unless we use them to designate geographic regions (NE, SE, NW, SW, Central) or Skills (App Dev, Themer, Admin, etc.).
Erik Britt-Webb
drupal@ebrittwebb.com
Probably don't need to get
Probably don't need to get granular with the skills aspect. Geographic location might be nice to have a free tag / auto complete field.
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
Feels like we're geting there :)
RE: "Hopefully this isn't too complicated."
I suggest we start simple -- too much segmentation leads to an (unnecessarily) complicated UI, with an added level of complexity around posting content. Too much complexity can be a barrier to participation.
A simple structure to start will allow us to begin getting more organized, and we can then add additional layers as needed.
WRT the differences between K12 and higher ed, in my experience designing sites for both levels, these differences are less profound than one might think, and the modules/approaches used to deliver solutions are very similar. We should definitely encourage better tagging as a part of what we do, but these groups of users have a lot of overlapping needs -- particularly at the infrastructure/maintenance level, in addition to the module selection level.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers
FunnyMonkey
Module selection level is
Module selection level is the same but often times I think scale and scope are different between k12 and higher-ed; I still think it's a case by case as to what to use so I agree there shouldn't be a difference. I think we could simplify things to Educational Institutes and Corporate Institutes (or both)
I also don't see a use case for how nonprofit would be different from for profit educational outlets so I just don't see that term being used unless I'm just naive.
I can understand having these breakdowns when it comes to case studies. I could see being an administrator at a university and wanting to see how some other universities are using Drupal; same for k-12. Just by seeing how Amherst is doing things with their college it's kicked off some discussions internally about taking a similar approach because we can relate to their needs. Outside of case studies I don't see the worth. Not sure of the gdo flexibility but could this just be applied to case studies and have criteria (CCK) specific to case studies so that they are somewhat standardized / categorized?
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
Hello, all,
Hello, all,
Some great ideas here --
Here's my .02 --
Landing page
Mission across the top (and I'd love to get a nice-looking logo for the group -- anyone have any graphic design skills?)
Two column: one for discussions and polls/one for wiki types -- show teasers (or maybe just titles?)
Second Page
Case Studies -- filter on the group case study tag
Third Page
Educational Module Recommendations/Reviews -- This would filter on a new group tag, like "module reviews"
Fourth Page
implementation questions -- filter on a group tag, like "help" or "questions"
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers
FunnyMonkey
And
Whatever the structure ends up being, we need to write up the rationale behind it, so that people will know how to use it to support finding the info they need.
FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers
FunnyMonkey
Good suggestions...
Good suggestions, Bill. Do you want to work those into the existing Specifications page? Or were you the who just updated it?
I also just added a new section about Group Tags and Usage Guidelines.
Erik Britt-Webb
drupal@ebrittwebb.com
wiki on left + river of news in center
This is my favorite idea (if only it's what I'm implementing right now on a new site I'm building for BYU
Basically you'd have a wiki page on the left side that would welcome people to the Drupal in Education group and explain what our mission is. Then there'd be links to common resources such as the drupaled download link and then links to sub-pages containing info such as case studies and good modules to use in education.
This lay out makes for a very simple UI. I dislike the idea of trying to automatically show content by tagging just because most people are sloppy about how they tag. There's little enough content in the group that it'd be simple to manually organize.
Here's an example group page.
Kyle Mathews
Kyle Mathews
Added content types to use to the document
I added a whole section about content types, please refine it / clean it up where others agree or disagree with my assessment. I also tried to provide justification for fields on a per content type basis. The last line in each field statement is what type I think it should be. Hopefully this stirs up some discussion about how much people like or hate my ideas but I think it could allow us to pull things out into more well defined views of all our content if we had more fields specific to each type of content.
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
Can we get started?
The discussion on redesigning the Drupal for Education group seems to have died down. While there are lots of details still to be ironed out, perhaps the best way to do so is to actually get started on implementing what we have discussed so far?!
I'm happy to help with implementation, but I don't have permission.
Bill - You own the group. How do you want to proceed?
Erik Britt-Webb
drupal@ebrittwebb.com
Yeah, I've been slammed -- a
Yeah, I've been slammed -- a site launch (which will be really sweet, btw :) ) is imminent.
RE: "I don't have permission."
You do now! Make it purty :)
RE: "owning the group" -- I started it, I care about it, I have opinions about things, and I will show all of those things in ways that attempt to support and empower this community. But this is our space; a shared space -- it is what we make of it.
Thank you for stepping up.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers
FunnyMonkey
Graphic design for Logo
I volunteer my skills to design a logo. Any suggestions towards what you would like to include in it ...
*Text
*Colours
*Particular fonts
Regards,
Chandeep
London, UK
www.imagineCreativity.co.uk - Web Design, Development & Hosting | Graphic Design & Photography | IT Support & Training
Go for it!
If you want to post up some initial sketches/ideas, we could set up a poll -- but, personally, I love the idea of getting a logo for the group --
I mean, hey, the dojo folks have one :)
I say run with it!
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers
FunnyMonkey
+1
+1.
Run with it. We'll give you feedback after you share something with us.
BTW...Drupal Dojo has both a logo and a banner graphic.
Erik Britt-Webb
drupal@ebrittwebb.com