Posted by garyh on April 6, 2011 at 8:49am
What do people think about trying to secure 2-3 hour talks in various computer related courses in Universities/Institutes of Technology introducing drupal, growing awareness of the cms before people head off into the commercial world.
It's obviously going to take some people a lot of time and effort to do this, but i'd certainly be willing to give some time to this at colleges I could get to within a relatively short commute.
It may be too late to do it this academic year with exams only a month away, but perhaps something could be put in place for the academic year 11/12 which will be getting underway in September?
Gary
Comments
Structure
I really like the idea of getting Drupal to students, the earlier people are introduced to something like this the better.
It may be an idea also to structure our talks to students so "initially" different university's are getting a similar overall picture of Drupal and how it works.
My son is studying at UL and is starting his placement leaning Drupal and other media related subjects with Indytech this year. I'm hoping he might spread the word when he returns to UL.
Nice idea Gary, count me in for this.
Mick
The easy way to do this is
The easy way to do this is through the various Computer Science and Internet societies in the various colleges. They're usually only to glad to have a outsider come in and teach them stuff.
Getting things integrated into the formal curriculum in some way is hard (read impossible) without an awful lot of hard slog and serious buy in from existing lecturers.
Dermot
I'd totally agree with Dermot
I'd totally agree with Dermot about getting Drupal into a curriculum. It's a nightmare getting anything into a new course without a serious amount of work or you actually being the lecturer - and even then it can be a nightmare getting anything new onto your course.
The easiest way would be to get in with the computer societies or even the business societies if the focus is on the potential of open source software in the enterprise.
Feargal
My experience with smaller
My experience with smaller colleges would be it may be quite possible to get someone to hand over an hour session as they have "outside" talks from time to time anyhow. Also smaller colleges are less likely to have any decent numbers in their computer societies. I was in one of the larger IoTs in 2000 (WIT) and they could only pull 5-6 to meetings.
Perhaps in the case of NUI Universities / DIT it may be harder to get into regular classrooms but their societies will probably be a lot better attended. I'd certainly be confident of getting an hour on a programming/web course of some sort in at least 3-4 smaller colleges myself.
The challenge is that we're likely to have 1-2 hour max, there will have to be some sort of discussion about what's feasible to cover in this time without covering too much and also have the likely questions regarding how drupal differs from joomla/wordpress covered well. I've used both for small sites in college, but couldn't do a fair critique of the differences.
@manonmir
That being said
Great idea Gary!
Given what has been said about the practicalities do people have any contacts in the computer (and business) societies around the universities? I know UCC has one. Not sure about CIT. I will look into it and report back.
Maybe to clarify.. I was
Maybe to clarify.. I was thinking that this would be more of an "expert outside talk" from a guest speaker. I'm not sure if these are common place but in the 3 courses I've done they've featured a few times a year.
@manonmir
I taught an "expert outside
I taught an "expert outside talk" to a class of New Media students at NUI Galway. I'm guessing that I'll probably get to do that again in the fall.
I actually ran into one of the students yesterday. He's still using Drupal and is actually using SPARQL Views to create a federated social network. I was blown away :)
I've been in touch with my
I've been in touch with my old course.
They are very interested in these talks for two of their courses in September/October next year and there will be no problem gaining access during regular class time.
@manonmir