DrupalEd sites?

I installed drupaled, and it seems to be a very basic course management system using default drupal group functions. Moodle would be a better option for this, I think. I was hoping it would be more of a school wide system, including such typical features as:

• lists of teachers and administrators, with contact forms

• rich calendar functions with various categories, including public, families, students, teachers, district, community, festivals. sports events, holidays, etc.

• Private staff document repository

• Public 'families' document respository

• Sample templates that look like a school site

• Sample school content, such as rules and regulations, enrollment procedures, grading procedures, emergency information, etc.

• Some sample school functions, such as an alert email system, alumni section, lunch menus, volunteer oportunities, etc.

This is a nice start, but unless I'm missing something, drupaled is nowhere near usable for a school. It's not much more than a raw drupal install with a few example users and groups (which probably will need to be deleted before anything real can happen).

J really hate to knock what others are working hard on, but I'm missing the point so far. What's drupaled good for?

@rptrevor -- to answer your original question, DrupalEd has been adopted at a few places, from k12 to higher ed. It's a flexible starting point -- nothing more, nothing less.

DrupalEd is also in need of an overhaul, which will be delivered with the D6 release later this summer. Any and all help from the community is appreciated -- please contact me if you would like to play a role in maintaining the profile.

RE what DrupalEd is vs what DrupalEd isn't:

DrupalEd is NOT a public facing web site. DrupalEd is NOT a course management system. If I had to describe it at all, I'd probably call it a social learning space, or a portfolio tool. It functions on the paradigm that a "class" space can support a community of learners, as opposed to a hierarchical structure with the teacher at the top and the students below.

The question of Moodle and/or Drupal has been discussed ad nauseum -- for a recent discussion on the topic, see http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2008/06/09/moodle-as-the-killer-app/

RE: "It seems to me, efforts would be better spent integrating Moodle and Google Apps for Education" -- Moodle, absolutely, as long as there is a clearly defined point where Moodle and Drupal intersect -- most efforts at integration become muddled in the functional spec: what does a learner do in Drupal, in Moodle, and precisely what data is shared b/w the apps. WRT google apps, I'd much prefer to see development hours going into supporting other open source tools, such as a cleaner OpenOffice bridge (which is currently ongoing as a SoC project) -- at some point, people in the edtech world will need to start looking seriously at issues of data integrity and control. Google apps brings some useful functionality, but folks need to clue up about the true price of the "free" service. For one view of how user data can get shared out in inadvertent ways: http://danbri.org/words/2008/07/03/359 -- if a student was watching youtube videos with a school-mandated account, it could get pretty interesting

Cheers,

Bill

FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers

Bill,
I applaud your work with DrupalEd, and I'm certainly not downplaying the importance of a standardized Drupal install for Education. Rather, I was just pointing out what would benefit my institution.

As for Google Apps, I find the argument that privacy is an issue slightly funny. We all sign into agreements with companies that handle our data, and the google Apps for education agreement is actually an enterprise service agreement. There are some very major universities signing on with Google Apps, in fact when I talked to Google, I believe they said 10,000 more schools would be moving over this summer. Amazing. The collaborative services that they provide have literally altered the perception of communication here, for the better.
In the case of viacom getting access to youtube videos, there are strict stipulations on what the people reviewing the IPs are allowed to use in court, and the court case itself is against Google, not the users that viewed the movies. Also, students here sign an acceptable use agreement that covers these types of misuse of an account.

So back to the point, I would love to see some tighter integration of the services into Drupal. I've had a very hard time getting the SSO module working, and I'd love to see some better document/calendar integration via a module. If only I were a better coder, but I am going to continue to try:)

Keep up the good work,
Chad
www.linuxbasement.com