Posted by stuen93 on January 14, 2011 at 9:14pm
I am going to be presenting on Drupal at a k12 technology conference in Wisconsin Dells at the end of Feb. I hope to drum up some more interest in Drupal for schools in Wisconsin. Anyone have any pointers for a presentation like this? I plan to talk about what Drupal is, what it can do, how easy it can be to use, and probably do some demonstrations.
Comments
Keep it simple and ResourceCommons.org
Erik -
It can't be understated - Keep it simple. And, as you mention, do lots of demonstrations. Show very simple interactions like how to post photos, links and assignments. In my experience with my local school system, teachers love Drupal. They don't know what makes it run, but they love the simple interface that allows them to post blogs, upload presentations, etc.
For education applications, watch the emergence of http://ResourceCommons.org and its API. It is going to be a great way for teachers to access education resources and for education site developers to tap into a wealth of standards-correlated content.
Break a leg!
I should have clarified a
I should have clarified a bit, I am actually presenting to other k12 IT staff, not teachers.
Still keep it simple and D7
First off I would focus on D7, it has some awesome features (like supporting other DBs, so you can tie existing systems into Drupal) and it looks slicker (makes a better first impression). And with all the improvements to usability and accessibility it is great for 408-compliant public schools.
Demos with Views and CCK allow you to show off the true power, the ability to show the same thing in two places from on DB entry. It may not sound like a lot, but in places where directories are hand coded and there are multiple iterations of a directory they tend to be inconsistent and inaccurate.
Other random thoughts:
* You can tie in LDAP or other authentication mechanisms, so you don't have to keep track of separate accounts
* It can run on just about any major server configuration. So if a school runs Windows Server they don't have to learn how to run a LAMP stack, they can use a WAMP or MAMP stack. (but they should use LAMP because it is more stable).
* Drupal can tie into other ed software like Moodle
* Not hard to maintain, some system require constant baby-ing, if you do a good clean install Drupal will run like a charm for a long time.
* Scalable
Depends on what your audience is looking for
If possible, try and get a sense if people are looking for a public-facing web presence, a faculty/staff intranet, a space to support student learning, a curriculum mapping tool, etc, etc.
The use case can drive the demo, or you can do multiple mini-demos to drive your use case.
I also like to have a couple demo sites pre-configured (or one codebase with multiple db dumps that you can switch between using backup/migrate).
Keep it simple, but also keep it focused. The challenge with presenting on Drupal is that it is incredibly flexible; this leads some people to assume that because it does many things well that it can't be focused on an individual task effectively. By having your demo target specific tasks, you can address that head on as you show the strength of the platform.
A good way to start a session is to demo how Drupal helped simplify/solve one problem element that you used to encounter.
FunnyMonkey
Specific examples
That makes sense, I was planning on staying pretty broad but I can see the benefits of showing specific examples or showing a good demo of what some of the main modules add to Drupal.
thanks!
Content model approach
A few weeks ago a colleague and I did a presentation to higher ed. IT folks comparing CMSs (WordPress, Omeka, Drupal) from the standpoint of content models. For Drupal, this focused on the tight relationships built with CCK (now Fields, I guess), as opposed to hacked together relationships with tags/categories in Wordpress. That resonated well with audience, and I think it'd work well with Bill's thoughts about focusing on use cases. To me, the choice to use Drupal over something else tends to come down to whether the use cases call for the complex relationships that Drupal excels at. For that audience at least, the content model angle gave the big picture view of the choice to use Drupal.
HTH
Any notes online?
Hello, Patrick,
I'd love to see any notes from this -
/ begin snark
But I'm curious - if you were comparing CMS's why did you talk about Wordpress?
/ end snark
All kidding aside, if any of this is online/written up, I'd love to see it.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
talk notes
Bill,
/ begin shared snark
Stop, my tongue is still a pulp from my gnawing on it through the session! :)
/ end shared snark
There are links on the page for the presentation, but the stuff to look at is in Rafael Alvarado's notes. He's the one that really covered the types of content models we were looking at: Dendritic Hypertext, Axial Hypertext, Networked Hypertext ( for WP, Omeka, Drupal ) . Much of the presentation was talking about what those models look like in the different CMS.
For Drupal, his link to the Lived Theology Project and the Lived Theology Content Model might be the best accessible examples.
Patrick
presentation slides
Hi,
I gave a talk on using Drupal in the classroom at ScienceOnline 2011. I set up a Drupal site for my online classes last fall and I love it. I've used Blackboard for about 4 years and I really appreciate the flexibility that I get from Drupal.
The slides from my talk are here: http://www.slideshare.net/digitalbio/drupal-talk
Sandra