Hi all, I'm new here..just thought I'd get some opinions on what Drupal can offer to a k-12 school district (10k students). We are currently evaluating CMSs and we're down to Joomla or Drupal. I've done my own experimenting and searching online but I thought I could get some insight from users who already are using Drupal.
We will be hiring someone to initially create our theme and design our site (bc of time). We have a great deal of knowledge in web design and programming from myself and my coworker, so customizing in the future and integrating with other systems is crucial.
We will be using Drupal for our Main District site, school sites and a page for our staff's profile. Their staff profile will contain external links to link out to Moodle or a Google Site - whatever teacher tool they choose to use. teachers will not be doing much editing, only their profile. It is not their teacher site.
Users will be admins and a webmaster at each school.
Systems we'd like to integrate (content and perhaps user authentication)
-Moodle
-Google Apps - especially Calendar
We will also be building a parent portal which will be a separate site from Drupal but we want to try and integrate them and make it seamless.
I guess a few questions:
-How is Drupal's calendar? Any good calendar modules?
-How are Drupal's modules and extensions compared to Joomla?
-Is there a "Profile page" for users?
-Is there a Newsletter module?
Thanks for any input you guys can give!
Comments
Choosing Drupal
I'm not familiar with Joomla but here's what I do know
"How is Drupal's calendar? Any good calendar modules?"
Calendar Module
"How are Drupal's modules and extensions compared to Joomla?"
Check out Drupal Modules.com http://drupalmodules.com/ Very easy to find new modules there. As for how they compare to Joomla can you list specific Joomla modules you are interested in? It will be easier to see if there is a Drupal equivalent.
"-Is there a "Profile page" for users?"
Yes, it's part of core but not necessarily Drupal's strongest feature. I think this got better in Drupal 7.
"Is there a Newsletter module?"
http://drupal.org/project/simplenews
Google
There are modules for Google integration but I don't know what those are. Search around in the forums, someone is bound to have asked for this before.
Moodle
Moodle Integration Module
Hope that helps.
http://www.webbfx.net/
Thanks!
Thanks for the reply! One more question, like I said 1 webmaster will be in charge of their school's web site. So each school will have their own little mini web site. How good are the capabilities of giving users permissions to a section of the site? And how is the editor?
thanks again.
life's a beach
Organic Groups
I'm currently working on an LMS with Drupal and we use the Organic Groups module for this as well as a few other small modules to help give group admins the ability to perform administrative tasks.
UPDATE: The modules I use for administration of groups are U Create and U Create OG Integration. You can also look at some of the distros based on your needs. As it doesn't sound like you are going to be putting an LMS in the actual site, just links, you could look at OpenAtrium and just focus on the grouping content. If you do go with a stock Drupal install and customize it, you might want to look at PressFlow as it's a performance optimized version of Drupal.
--James
OG
Organic Groups does sound exactly like what you need. As wastrilith2k also says, Pressflow is a good Drupal distribution that's super fast.
Other things that might be useful
Workflow
If you decide you need a document workflow (don't publish pages until they've been through an approval chain) there's Workbench module
Rules
Rules Module
The rules module allows site administrators to define conditionally executed actions based on occurring events (known as reactive or ECA rules).
http://www.webbfx.net/
LMS functionality
If you are interested in LMS functionality, you might want to check out the PSU's Arts and Architecture ELMS project.
https://elms.psu.edu/
Alpha 5 will be out in the next few weeks, I think.
Eric
Eric Aitala - ema13@psu.edu - f1m@f1m.com - @aitala
www.essp.psu.edu - www.f1m.com
Drupal over Joomla
If you look at the sizes of the Drupal and Joomla communities, you will find that the Drupal communites are MUCH larger and more active. This translates to more modules being developed and more help available at this Drupal website.
Every time I need some specific function in the website, and I contemplate having to build it myself, I find out that "There's a module for that!".
Joomla is a little easier to use, but Drupal is more powerful, or that has been my experience. It is a trade off to some extent.
I would be interested to hear why you haven't narrowed down your search to Wordpress or Drupal. Wordpress is used a lot - just as a website not a blog and is easier to use. When I have a client who is totally adverse to anything high tech, I use Wordpress instead of Drupal
thanks for all of the quick
thanks for all of the quick replies!
Wordpress was in our top 3 and I think Wordpress (along with Buddypress) is very intriguing to me but considering Joomla and Drupal are more "CMS" ready it will save us some time on recreating a blogging system to become a CMS and we can use that time to extend the possibilities with this parent portal we're working on along with integration between systems.
I use wordpress myself and it is much easier to use but honestly I'm not terribly worried about it being THAT easy because it will be admins and webmasters working with it. Teachers will have maybe a profile but they won't be editing or administering anything in the CMS.
life's a beach
Drupal isn't difficult.
Drupal isn't difficult. Originally, I looked at Joomla but didn't like it. I tried WordPress but after weeks of hacking at it to get it to do what I wanted, I heard again and again it wouldn't.
I tried Drupal and it's been great. There's so many great, free modules, and the community support is second to none.
Here's the K-5 site I built and maintain. The next revision will have Organic Groups.
http://www.encinoelementary.net/
We run a bunch of sites in K-12 on Drupal
We host several Oregon districts on Drupal. It's worked very well for them - generally the district, middle and high school sites on Drupal; elementary sites on Google Sites. It's a model the districts here have been very happy with.
Calendar - since you use Google Calendar already, I'd recommend just embedding the GCal in the site rather than using a separate module.
Modules - you'll see more varied, more actively-developed, and more free modules in the Drupal world.
Profile - Definitely. It's in core and significantly improved in Drupal 7.
Newsletter - depends on your needs. Simplenews is definitely a good option, but you might do just as well with some views and something like the Print module (http://drupal.org/project/print).
Editor - you asked "is the editor good?" Which one? As with much of the Drupal world, there isn't just one solution - there are dozens. The WYSIWYG module supports a bunch of different editors. I prefer CKeditor, but there are a lot of other good ones you can plug in depending on your preference.
-Greg
Awesome..thanks so much guys.
Awesome..thanks so much guys. I actually just got out of a meeting and we chose Drupal! Now looking to hire someone local for the theming/plugin/customization stuff. I see there is a link for "jobs" so I'll look there.
I'm sure I will be around a lot!
life's a beach
We've done a lot of this at Schoolyard
I designed the Drupal platform for Schoolyard that we've used for a whole bunch of k-12 and k-8 schools that includes Organic Groups for classroom and mixed public/private content along with Google Calendar integration, lots of other integrations with LDAP, Facebook, Twitter and all that. We've not done a multi-school setup but we're more than happy to share about what we've used and post back on modules with notes, fixes, etc. as much as we can.
If you check on the session I gave at D4D Boston this year here: http://boston2011.design4drupal.org/sessions/taking-goliath-schoolyard-d...
I go into some of the modules and things we've used, and I'm happy to share more. It's turned out to be a great platform and we've only once had to create a module ourselves after working on about 25 schools so far in the past year and a half.
Jason
Jason Pamental
[ @jpamental ]
multisite?
I've seen the term "Multisite" thrown around..what exactly does that mean? Is it a module or different type of drupal? (sorry newbie!)
life's a beach
Multisite is running multiple
Multisite is running multiple web sites with possibly different URLs from the same install of Drupal.
They can all share the same core Drupal code and contributed modules, plus use modules specific to that site…
Eric
Eric Aitala - ema13@psu.edu - f1m@f1m.com - @aitala
www.essp.psu.edu - www.f1m.com
Is it a module you install or
Is it a module you install or totally different drupal download? I'm wondering if that's what we would use for our different school sites?
life's a beach
No, multisite is part of core
No, multisite is part of core Drupal. You just have to set things up properly… I've never used it personally.
Eric
Eric Aitala - ema13@psu.edu - f1m@f1m.com - @aitala
www.essp.psu.edu - www.f1m.com
It's actually part of Drupal 'out of the box'
If you create folders inside '/sites/' that correspond to different URL's that the site will answer for you can put a different 'settings.php' file in each folder and run multiple websites from a single installation of Drupal. With a good server you can literally serve dozens of sites that way with one set of core files and shared modules (and shared themes if you want) - running multiple school sites that way would be perfect!
If you look in the /sites folder there's a 'read me' that explains it a bit more, and there is a fair bit online about it as well.
Cheers,
Jason
Jason Pamental
[ @jpamental ]
Multisite has some downsides and tricks
Using multisite can work if you have a series of sites that will all be using the same codebase. However, if the codebases of your various sites could potentially diverge at some point, administering a multisite setup becomes more complex. As just one example, you can run into module weight issues based on how and where you store your modules (sites/default/modules vs sites/all/modules vs sites/sitename/modules vs profiles/profilename/modules).
Additionally, mutisite can be problematic during upgrade time, as it requires that all your sites be upgraded at the same time, regardless of the programmatic needs of the various schools using the sites. And, if there is an issue with the upgrade path, the codebase is broken for every site you run. While this is admittedly a fringe case, it's a painful one.
So, as the respondents in this thread have indicated, Drupal is definitely a good fit for districts and schools, but multisite should be looked at very closely before committing to that path.
An alternative that I'd recommend is having your codebase managed via git, and your base build via drush make so you have a standard platform to start from for each site. Then, you can point to the different sites via apache config.
FunnyMonkey
thanks for the information.
thanks for the information. thinking about it, i'm not sure if there are any major advantages of using multisites. i supposed we may want to install some modules on one site and another on the other..actually now thinking about it, it may come up where the elementary schools want a certain calendar or something that fits their needs and secondary schools it makes more sense for another calendar. that would be the only thing we'd really do, we wouldn't stray very far between sites.
are you able to do sub domains for different schools? like http://bayside-elem.district555.org instead of district555.org/bayside-elem
life's a beach
You might be able to so that
You might be able to so that with the Domain Access module.
What you really want to look into for what you described above is using something like the Open Atrium distribution where instead of using multisite, you use Organic Groups and have Features which you can enable/disable for the varous Groups.. Each school could be a group...
Its a bit complicated to explain, but that approach is probably better than using multisite.
Even more complicated is Aegir…
Eric
Eric Aitala - ema13@psu.edu - f1m@f1m.com - @aitala
www.essp.psu.edu - www.f1m.com
I agree
One of the huge benefits of Organic Groups, and especially distributions like Open Atrium and Acquia Commons is that the content can be isolated by group. I use Open Atrium for project management with clients so calendars for one project don't mingle with others and am actually using Drupal Commons for an LMS right now and it's very nice to have the calendars separate as well as documents, blogs, etc. It would probably meet your needs out of the box and still provide a nice public sites. Open Atrium is meant more for internal sites.
Depending on your technical skills, you might want to just download WAMP (PC) or MAMP (Mac) to have a simple, basic web server and then download the suggested distributions and try them out.
James
--James
thanks!
thanks!
life's a beach
Drat
Right after I completed upgrading and rebuilding http://www.bostonpublicschools.org, I heard Jason's talk at D4D and was quite impressed. BPS has more than 130 individual schools, most with their own web site. I told my contact at BPS about Schoolyard.com and suggested that they stop building their own sites from scratch and check out Schoolyard. The district site will probably stay separate (and hopefully maintained by me), but the schools should standardize so that they can call on each other, and the district, for common support.
Nancy Dru
Thanks Nancy!
Hopefully we can do something to help - I sent you an email as well about it. We've only worked with independent schools thus far but the chance to affect positive change across such a big district would be amazing, and maybe a good start at a k-12 distribution itself.
Jason
Jason Pamental
[ @jpamental ]
YW
I don't think any of the schools has a full-time "webmaster" so, as a tax payer, I'd rather see who ever does that part time concentrate on their core job. Schoolyard is inexpensive enough that it will probably pay for itself in a short time. And the budget impact, even if they did all 130+ schools at once, would be less than 2%. I suspect that involving students (particularly older ones) in a real-life web project would help discourage them from becoming hackers and spammers, so society as a whole would be better off. I know the Drupal community would find new blood that way.
Nancy Dru
We're pretty far along here on a D7 profie
RE: "a good start at a k-12 distribution itself"
We're pretty far along on a D7 install profile for K12 schools. It's intended as a public-facing web site, and works as a clean install (like VoiceBox, but in D7).
Base features include calendars, announcements, media galleries, and use of OG for different sections out of the box. Our primary use will involve Terrain, so all sites built on this can leverage responsive design out of the box.
All of this code will be freely available for all to use. We'll be offering services around this product, but our goal is to create something that people can use with or without us.
FunnyMonkey
that's awesome!
Let me know if I can help in any way. Would love to contribute!
Jason Pamental
[ @jpamental ]
Should I grab VoiceBox or is there something else?
Do I grab VoiceBox for this install profile or where is it?
I think you'll find a lot of
I think you'll find a lot of tools you can use for building an LMS here in Drupal.
If you plan to build one something I'd recommend doing is reviewing the various platforms built on Drupal. ELMS (obviously ;)), eduglu, atrium, drupal commons and others are a really good way of seeing what's possible "out of the box" with drupal distros and then you can reverse engineer the ideas of these platform builders to meet your needs. As atailia said, Alpha 5 will be out shortly but always good to see what everyone is doing even just to get ideas. I think you'll find that Drupal (long term) provides a drastically more appealing platform to build off of then...anything else you'll find :).
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
@btopro what's alpha 5? So is
@btopro what's alpha 5? So is ELMS you're site you created or is it another branch off of drupal people can use? We use Moodle (I saw how much you love it in one of your posts ;) ) and don't plan on moving. I'm a firm believer in keeping the LMS and teaching tools separate from a district's website and school's websites - different purpose, audience. Anyways, I just followed you on twitter. Now that we have chosen a CMS I can start digging into it, I look forward to learning from ya!
life's a beach
ELMS is a drupal distribution
ELMS is a drupal distribution similar to open atrium, commons, and others. It's a lot of contributed modules and features on Drupal 6 core (eventually we'll get to 7 and beyond).
"I'm a firm believer in keeping the LMS and teaching tools separate from a district's website and school's websites" -- This may come as a shock but I completely agree. We develop everything in separate systems (ELMS for content + LMS for gradebook + another ELMS system for interaction +.... you get the idea) because it helps reduce potential single point of failures.
But, standardizing on platform, everyone that works with those various systems (at some level) can collaborate and help build out all systems. Websites separate from LMSs separate from any other drupal site you make.
Sorry, a bit late on responding to this message (@'s really need to trigger a message like twitter). Alpha 6 of the platform was released last week and thanks for the follow. Always looking forward to learning together.
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
CLE vs ICMS
Hi
What's the difference between CLE (Collaborative learning enviroment) and ICMS (International CMS) in the drupal ELMS?
thanks
These are two different types
These are two different types of core focus. A Core Focus is ELMS essentially is just a slightly different install / default setting routine. In the case of ICMS (instructional CMS) is the focus so everything is based around instruction.
This gives you a course to version/offering of a course relationship and the offering is entirely content centric. This effectively changes some of the language around to reflect this course to version relationship and then sets defaults for newly created versions to have the ELMS ID best practices feature and the ELMS Content feature turned on by default. These can always be changed, this is just to get you down the right path with our business logic
Collaborative Learning Environment takes a Course to Studio relationship and is very student submission / social interaction centric. This effectively changes the language to reflect this course to studio relationship and sets the default studios to have the ELMS Studio feature turned on by default.
This reflects my own philosophy of design that everything boils down to a Parent to Site relationship, where Site is an organic group and can have whatever features turned on that you want. In the future there will be additional Install Cores present like E-portfolio, Blog centric, community site centric. There is nothing saying you can't start with 1 (or the none at all) and work from there to do whatever you want, this is just to provide a starting point. It's all running off the same code base except it loads a few modules by default different.
Ex Uno Plures
http://elmsln.org/
http://btopro.com/
http://drupal.psu.edu/
New distribution for K12 and University departments
We released Julio, an install profile designed for schools - the announcement is at http://funnymonkey.com/introducing-julio
The code is all on drupal.org - you can download and install a complete tarball at https://drupal.org/project/julio
It's still a dev release, and we are working on some minor cleanup that will get us to a point release.
FunnyMonkey