Posted by bob_irving on January 9, 2009 at 2:14pm
I just read this post from Vicki Davis about using iGoogle as a digital locker for students, and I'm wondering if we could do the same thing in Drupal. Actually, I'm sure we can, just not sure how to do it.
http://www.edutopia.org/personal-learning-networks-technology
Or would it just be simpler for the students to do this with iGoogle or Pageflakes?
Comments
PLN Options
iGoogle, Google Reader, Netvibes, etc. are good options because they are so easy to use. I prefer Google Reader, myself. But for a classroom environment they present changes because:
1. They are disconnected from each other, which misses synergies that can be created when PLN's intersect
2. Because they're disconnected, it's harder for the teacher to monitor what's happening on them
While it wouldn't be quite as elegant, I think you could build a pretty exciting network of Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) on Drupal for each class, and then a network of networks of PLNs when you consider multiple classes running simultaneously and kids having more than one individual PLN (for each class using this technique). Pause...is the room spinning, or is it just me?
This is not exhaustive, but the configuration would include:
1. FeedAPI so students can create feeds for their research sources
2. Panels, and specifically Panel Nodes, so that students could effectively create their own iGoogle-equivalents
3. CCK and Views obviously so that you can provide a range of ways to present feed items in those Panel pages
4. I would also use Prepopulate so that students could have a button on their browsers which would make it easy to start from an RSS address and automatically open a "Create New Feed/Source" form and populate title and RSS address into the form.
This is a crude start, but hopefully a usefulone.
Erik Britt-Webb
drupal@ebrittwebb.com