I have a variety of thoughts on this but am interested in hearing the community perspective. Our school is thinking about using Iweb for student portfolios. Although Iweb is easy to use and the sites the students could create look great out of the box I don't this solution is the right choice. I am looking for ideas on why Drupal would be a better choice. For example, being able to analyze student reflections using Views could be very valuable for system wide learning. Also, Drupal can more easily be used to create portfolio's that not only are showcase portfolio's but also work in progress portfolio's.
I am already using Drupal as a portfolio system in my Language Arts classroom. I am aware of the latest distributions and configuration of modules needed for any system like this. So, not looking for recipes, but feedback and ideas on why Drupal could be used for this process instead of Iweb.
So, please let me know your thoughts.
Comments
Say you choose iWeb but want
Say you choose iWeb but want a feature that it does not have? Any solution? In drupal you can create a custom module. Also integration: Maybe every user has his own site (views arguments or organic groups like harvard uses) and you can create latest portofolio items in the whole college in the homepage. Comments, reviews etc.
Views 3 or Apache Solr Views & Nutch
hi
Views 3 allows you to connect to alternative data sources than internal to Drupal
it might be possible to create views into other LMS like Moodle or the ones you discuss (which I do not know)
also, Apache Solr Views could display a Solr index generated with Nutch of an external application
thanks
-N
What does Iweb do well?
To turn the question around, what does Iweb do well?
Are there specific strengths of features Iweb has that are not present in Drupal? If so, what are they?
We've been doing portfolio work with Drupal for a while, and have found it to be pretty useful. We put together a screencast recently that shows some of what we're doing. In the screencast, the focus is on open content, but the functionality is pretty comparable to what we have used for portfolios.
We'll be releasing this out as an install profile; we're having some internal conversations about whether we want to release a D6 version, or target D7 with our initial release.
FunnyMonkey
Open Content
Hi and thanks for your response. I have followed your work in the Drupal community and your thinking related to Drupal in education. I haven't used Iweb all that much but what teachers seem to be drawn to is the same reason consumers seem to be drawn to Apple products, ease of use and the ability to create appealing looking sites quite quickly. Your screencast and post on open content helps me to articulate my thinking in talking with others in my organization about why I believe Drupal is a much better solution for system wide student portofolio's. I have been using Drupal for the last 3 years as a portfolio tool, among utilizing other functionality. I have continued to lego build with modules rather than utilize distirbution, just like the freedom and fun that comes with it. As I develop a better understanding of entity api, feeds, features, etc... I am excited to continue to create and refine this process for my students. Another reason I enjoy being part of the Drupal community, the freedom to create and build off of the ideas of the community.
So, one very convincing argument for using Drupal is the idea of open content.
Scott
BoF at Chicago DrupalCon
If you (and/or anyone else) will be at DrupalCon, we should get a BoF together around this.
I have a form post up about this, but if there are people interested in talking portfolios/open content, we should meet up f2f and compare notes.
http://chicago2011.drupal.org/forum/drupal-based-sites-portfolios-and-op...
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
We have used both
So.... we use Drupal for all of our district websites with the exception of some of our teachers who wanted to use iWeb because of it's "cuteness" factor. I think the term I have heard teachers use to describe iWeb is cutesy. One HUGE problem we have had with iWeb is the way it saves its files. When you create a site in iWeb it saves all of its files in a domain file, which is actually just a folder with a bunch of custom iWeb files in it. Then when you want to publish your site so it can be on the web iWeb actually converts everything to html files. The problem with this is if the domain file is ever lost or corrupt you can not edit your site anymore. iWeb can not edit html files at all, only it's own custom files. We have a had a number of problems this year with teachers iWeb files becoming corrput, we think through our file syncing, and we had to restore their site from an older backup.
Great points and help with
Great points and help with more rationale for using Drupal.