Check it out here: http://drupaled.alphabetademo.org
The site can function as a blogging platform, a podcasting platform, a wiki, an informal learning space, a course management space, and/or as a replacement for an organizational intranet. Within the site, users can create working groups or communities of practice. The site also supports social bookmarking. The homepage of the site gives a more complete overview of the functionality.
We would like to turn this site into a downloadable installation profile as quickly as possible, so that whoever wants this functionality can grab it and install it. At the risk of stating the obvious, the entire site will be available as a downloadable install profile under the GPL license.
If you want to check the site out, feel free to create an account and play around. If you want to get involved, we'd love your help!
- To start, we'd love to get people's first impressions as they check out the site, What made sense? What was intuitive? What was confusing? We have set up a wiki page for this feedback; your responses will help us tweak the look and feel of the site to make it easier to use. Please, share your thoughts! The more feedback we get, the more tweaking we can do.
- Second, what do people need to know about using the site? We have begun some "Getting Started" documentation that people can build as they work through the site. What functionality do people need to know about as they use the site? This documentation wouldn't need to be technical, but rather should lay out how to use the site from an end-users perspective: ie, click here to do this.
As I envision it, this "Getting Started' documentation will be edited/distilled into a user's manual that will be included in the final install profile. This way, people who are new to Drupal, or new to working in an online environment, will have some guidance to help them get up to speed.
- Third: Spot where it's broken. See a broken link? Let us know about it.
- Fourth: Theming. If there are any graphic artists/designers who want to throw some expertise into making the site look pretty, please let us know.
- Fifth: Add your name to the contributor list. If you added documentation, provided feedback, or helped get the site live, let the world know. The Contributors List, along with the Getting Started documentation, will ship with the site.
- Help build the install profile
After we have received some input from the community (aka you), we will bring a version of this site live at DrupalEd.org -- in addition to providing a blogging platform for people who would want one, the DrupalEd site could also become a place for educators to get feedback on the non-technical issues of teaching and working online.
If you want to get involved with either the theming or in building the actual profile, leave a comment on this post, and we can work out the details here in the group.
Cheers,
Bill
Comments
Another site
http://teachernotes.org/school
The teachers are teacher1, teacher2, teacher3, and teacher4.
The students are student1 through student8.
All passes are '123'
I did not enable wiki or gui but that can come later.
Hello...
I'm not sure where the most appropriate place would be to introduce myself, so decided on here. I'm excited to find the education group - I heard about it at the OSCMS summit last week during the installation profiles session.
I'm also in Oregon, in Pendleton specifically, and work for the Umatilla-Morrow ESD. We provide a wide range of services to our school districts, including web design/development, so I am very interested in participating. We recently rolled out Drupal for our own site and one of the local high schools (plus several non-education related organizations). So far, I'm liking what I see Drupal has to offer, but it's been a scramble to get it all figured out.
The school website focus so far has been on the public side, but I know the potential is huge for teachers. We have a few teachers at most of our supported schools who use some form of web page for their classroom - mostly it's just been simple bookmarks so far. Each year, a few more teachers get interested in having a web page, but growth remains on the slow side.
Because we help manage at least 8 district websites and over 30 individual school websites, I would be interested to have the public site be tied into the instruction sites instead of kept separate, as this distribution model seems to do.
I'm in Corvallis
I'm in Corvallis and am trying to help the school district in deciding so any info from you would be super.
-Kathy
Drupal, Education, and Oregon
Hi Erika and Kathy,
I'd just like to pitch my $0.02. The OSU Open Source Lab and Oregon Virtual School District are working with OpenAcademic using their work on DrupalEd to provide tools to schools and districts in Oregon. Bill and Marc have done some fantastic work adding education-focused features to Drupal. I would really like to see their fine work being adopted here in Oregon. I'd be happy to assist however I can in getting these great tools out into your schools and getting used. We're certainly going to be pulling them into the OVSD architecture.
We have instructional staff
We have instructional staff at the ESD that I am anxious to meet with because they're the ones responsible for working directly with the teachers and have a much better idea on what will be used in and for the classroom than I do. They also are the ones who have a lot more influence in getting the teachers to actually use the tools.
Unfortunatly, it's spring break and almost everyone is out of the office this week! :)
Also in Oregon
Hello, Erika,
I was actually in that session at OSCMS -- we are located in Portland, OR, and, as Greg says, we would love to see more schools in Oregon using Drupal --
If you'd like to talk, feel free to get in touch -- also, please test out the demo site, and give feedback --
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Too many options, not structured enough?
To me it feels like the average non-tech user will feel overwhelmed with the amount of options presented. I think it would be better to display less options in the menu, or to have the user enable the options himself in his profile.
These are some items I would disable by default:
- Bookmarks
- All wiki pages
- My blog
I understand that the Create options are only available to people with the appropriate role and that most students will thus not have access to it. I would combine all this into a 'blackboard' though: one centralized page to store and manage all content.
Not everyone knows what a wiki page is, or has the need to edit them. So while the 'Getting started' and 'Questions' links are very important, It doesn't feel user-friendly to put them under such a heading. There are also references for instance linke "This wiki page gives an overview of how to create a course." I would leave out all references to "wiki" to enhance understandability and ease-of-use. It might also be more clear to create a well-organized menu instead of using the different blocks.
On the 'Submit course' page, the Highlighted Content option is very unclear. I can't make up what it does from the title or the description. Instead of putting a warning saying to only select views that begin with "group", only those options should be displayed to avoid confusion. The description could then be used to explain what exactly selecting one or more options from the list means.
If I find the time this week, I'll set up a small demo to show what I feel would be a more structured and user-friendly drupaled.org.
Yes, and yes
RE:
Yes -- on the demo site, we gave more permissions than would be advisable :)
Access to content types can and should be controlled by roles -- behind the scenes I created these roles, but for the purpose of the demo I assigned most of these rights to the authenticated user.
I'm also in complete agreement re the wiki -- some folks love it, while others are confused by it.
You're also right on with the Highlighted Content section -- the UI is very confusing for non-technical users, and requires some code and/or some theming to make it clearer.
If you want, rather than set up a demo, we could work together on an existing site -- this could save you some time on the setup. Let me know if you're interested.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
I'd love to
As in my previous thread about drupaled.org, I would very much like to participate. Drop me a note on how I can help.
I sent a message through your contact form
If for some reason you don't get it, feel free to contact me via skype -- username billmonkey
Thanks for your help, and I look forward to talking with you.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey