Hi. I found this group after following the link at drupal.org to Bill Fitzgerald's “Drupal for Education and E-Learning” book and listening to the lullabot podcast interview with him. I am here seeking some advice about a website project that my wife is very keen on implementing.
I'm not sure where to post this, so forgive me if it's misplaced (i.e. feel free to direct to a better place). Thanks in advance for any thought you can give to my situation. So my wife is a former special education teacher. She slowly started an education professional development consulting business about 3 years ago (The business's website is http://quillpd.com/). First, I'll briefly describe what she wants in her words, then a little of my background, and lastly some questions.
(1)A description of the website my wife wants:
I am planning on hiring someone to create a professional networking website for special education teachers in Michigan. The purpose of the site is to allow teachers to share information (lesson plans), search for information based on keywords, suggest research projects and upload data from them, recommend resources such as teaching materials, blogs, or other websites, post comments for discussion, and participate in learning modules. The site would require teachers to create a profile and would provide a designated email address for private email exchanges among members. Teachers would pay a membership fee and then tuition for modules they enrolled in so the site has to have payment capabilities. The final, and perhaps most important, component of this site is that it be extremely user friendly. Many teachers who are uncomfortable with technology will not sign up for something unless they know that it is easy to use. The interface must be extremely simple and intuitive. Tutorials need to be built into every segment and be easily accessed by users as they interact with the site.
(2) My background:
I started using drupal at version 4.6. I've built 4 sites with it: 2 of which basically just display information and allow individuals to maintain site content (one of which is my wife's quillpd.com site), 1 has about 20 users (friends/family) for sharing music (it's the only site with sort of a community that I've built), and 1 blog. I've extended the functionality quite a bit with user contributed modules, but I've never done any customized code (module authoring) myself except for a few code tweaks for site theming. I have a pretty broad knowledge with computer technology and web design all over the map and have done a little web programming (currently I'd like to move toward web software development as a career and am pursuing that...I'm also working my way through John Van Dyke's Pro Drupal Development in hopes of doing some workflow/actions automation for my wife's current site).
(3) Advice sought:
So concerning her proposed project, she wants to hire someone to make it a reality. I'd like drupal to be used for the project because of my trust/experience in/with the community and the software. And I myself would be more of an asset for support and learning how it was built if we use drupal. Given all this, (A) is drupal the best solution? B) Are there other software options that might also be required/useful? C) Are there any existing online service providers (e.g. google, voicethread, whatever I don't know of, or even Funny Monkey Commons) that would offer a framework for setting something up that would partially or fully meet her needs (and that we could leverage) without building a whole new site? D) If we do hire someone to develop this site, how long might something of this scope take, how much would it likely cost for a good product, and what are some recommended ways to find qualified and trustworthy candidates?
I apologize for the length here. Thanks much to anyone who has the time to read and respond to any of my questions!
Comments
Why don't you check out
Why don't you check out http://pedagogle.com? It's a website I've created which allows users to share resources, although it doesn't yet contain any of the membership stuff, etc... but it might give you an idea of what is possible, reasonably quickly with Drupal. I built this site with the main functionality in about 2 weeks by myself and have very slowly made some changes over the past 2 months or so. I haven't actually done anything in about 3 weeks actually.
Much of what you are suggesting is done easily through contributed modules. In fact as I read your site requirements, I think of modules I know will handle 95% of what you want. The remaining 5% will probably what you want to hire the developer to handle. :)
Contact me if you are interested in discussing this further.
Currently building something similar
We're actually in the process of building out something very similar --
As dwees points out, most (if not all) of the functionality you are looking for exists already. If I was in your situation, I'd get the desired look and feel of the user profile pages and the resource browsing pages hammered out via mockups.
In short: sharing lessons is easy; making it look easy is hard :)
RE the FunnyMonkey Commons: it could be used as a starting point, but some of the functionality within the Commons would need to be hidden/removed. Currently, it's focused on supporting formal and informal groups (ie, classes, clubs, etc) alongside user blogs.
RE Voicethread: we helped the folks from Voicethread put together a Drupal plugin for the Embedded Media Field; we'll likely be porting this to D6 shortly as we'll need it pretty soon.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Click. Connect. Learn.
Using Drupal in Education
FunnyMonkey
Yeah a really good point
Yeah a really good point about the mock-ups. One of the big problems developers face, and which clients pay for as a result, is the "feature creep" or "changing the design midstream" problem.
Create a plan, design the theme for it carefully, create UI mock-ups, all of this in advance of speaking to a professional about building your site, and it will go much better for you. You'll also spend less money because the developers will be able to produce the website faster and without making changes after they are "done".
Dave
Follow up
bill, dwees: Thanks for the advice. We've fleshed out her requirements more thoroughly and she's drawn up some mock-ups (actually still finishing the mock-ups as I type).
Since posting this message I stumbled upon this helpful information http://drupal.org/node/22964. And this page http://drupal.org/drupal-services has numerous companies listed. So in terms of hiring someone and evaluating potential contractors, any tips? Should I simply post a job request at http://drupal.org/paid-services in accordance with all the published guidance I found? Should I contact some of the companies or certain individuals directly via email? Anyway, if you have any tips beside what I've found I'd be grateful for anything that will assist us in securing the right person(s) for the job (and in so doing, what we can reasonably expect to pay).
drupal or moodle?
We've refined her requirements (they've evolved and become more clear as she's dug into what she really wants) and posted a job request in various locations (including this group). Based on the job request requirements my question now based on some feedback I've received is home-grown, drupal, or moodle? I've ruled out the home-grown and am still leaning toward drupal. I've read a lot of discussions where moodle and drupal come up. I found statements by Bill to the effect that they both are powerful tools and the new system's core needs will likely determine which should be your choice or your primary platform if utilizing both of them. And that sounds reasonable to me.
Anyway, the summary of her 4 primary requirements are below. My thoughts are 1-3 would be best targeted with drupal? While 4 might be best would moodle? Or would moodle handle 1-3 well enough to justify its use? Or could drupal meet her requirement 4 adequately and without heavy development? Having never used moodle I wonder if it is as much of a web application and content framework (not just content management system) that drupal is? Thanks for any advice!
(1) Share: Share uploaded and website created information (e.g. unit plans, assessment tools, research projects), recommend resources such as teaching materials and other websites, and quickly search and browse for relevant information and files on the site provided by other members. This is what she calls "Community File Cabinet" and "Teacher Recommended Resources" in her requirements.
(2) Discussion Board (The out of the box forums seem adequate)
(3) Unit Plan Builder: Application for special education teachers to build specific unit plans and assessment tools that correlate to each of their students ability vs mandated grade level content expectations. Unit plans could be be managed online, could be printed, and could be shared. I'm thinking this could be done with CCK and Views with jquery to improve the UI. Not sure if that's the best approach or if custom code would be necessary.
(4) Online Courses: Offer fee required courses (not necessarily curriculum rich web based training), but a means to define courses that allow assigning readings (books and links) and written assignments, collecting them by due dates, performing assessments, assigning grades, engaging in discussion (typical forum and possibly realtime), and listing course achievements on user's website profile.