My opinion is that the best way to improve this ratio is with consistent, visible demonstrations of success by women who are not unique, too remarkable, or otherwise easily fall into the category of "I can't be like that". In other words, we need high profile women who are "just one of the gals" in the same way that we have lots of high profile male contributors who are "just one of the guys". It's important that these women are a variety; not just 'geek women' but including women who, from the outside, appear as though they could also be or do any of the things that are stereotypically acceptable for women.
In order to encourage women to enter the system, the first thing they need to overcome is the culturally embedded notion of "I can't do that". The second thing they need to overcome is the culturally embedded notion of "I shouldn't do that, it's not right". And the third thing they need to overcome is possibly the hardest, of, "I don't want to do that." And finally, women need to be taught that succeeding in this arena won't cost them their identity.
What does this mean? It is important that the high profile female contributors do exactly what Angie is doing, and demonstrate her success. Look into history, and at the success of the "Rosie the Riveter" campaign. While it was predicated on an extreme imbalance in the workforce and a burning need, the basic messages within the campaign can still apply. "We can do it" is a powerful message, and it's important that truth is demonstrated visibly.
I suggest posting regular profiles of successful women in the community, and include Q&A to describe who they are and how they got involved and why they think they are successful, and angle these Q&As toward demonstrating why this success isn't (or doesn't have to be) unique.
Comments
A comment: I didn't address
A comment: I didn't address an additional stigma of the culture not being accepting of women. In part I think it's because the Drupal culture is mature enough to have less of this problem, and the only way to make this problem go from 'less' to 'zero' is through an actual process of balancing representation. Until then, we just have to police ourselves and correct poor attitudes.
Confidence is definitely a huge issue...
I first installed Linux back in 1995. I voraciously consumed any articles I could find about open source ethos. I looked on with awe at all of this awesome stuff going on with the free software movement and the kinds of useful products that came out of it. I was a huge advocate for getting friends, family, and schools using open source.
I also assumed that actually participating in all of this was way beyond me, and that anyone involved in open source had to be Really Smart (tm). I had all of these Einstein-level open source developers on a huge pedestal, and since I was just some lowly kid in community college who liked futzing with PHP and HTML, I assumed I would always be on the outside of that larger community. To existing contributors, of course this perception seems silly (and almost a little humourous), since we all know how bad some of the code is out there, at least at first. And we also know that this doesn't matter, because the way we work is to take ideas and refining them over time, with the help of a large group of people who each contribute what they can. On the "outside" though, the thin line between contributing and not can seem like an impenetrable, 80-foot thick wall, that reaches up as far and as wide as the eye can see.
Google Summer of Code poked a tiny hole in that wall, as I reasoned that since they were after students, they had to realize that I wouldn't know everything, and they'd maybe be a little bit more patient with me.
Note that this was 2005, ten years after I had first heard of open source, when I first thought I might possibly be worthy of maybe getting involved in an open source community. That completely sucks, and I continue to resent that the joy I get from participating in open source was cut off from me for so long, and to this day I try and do everything I possibly can to ensure that doesn't happen to anyone else. But if the SoC opportunity hadn't come up, I probably would /still/ be reading articles and watching from afar about this crazy "Drupal" thing. Sometimes I actually feel like I accidentally "cheated" my way into open source because I was fortunate enough to receive the SoC opportunity, which many many others were not. I actually have no idea how other women overcome this perception on their own.
Wow, that was a huge barfing of text. ;) Anyway! I agree with you. I think that drawing attention to women who have overcome this barrier is key, and we should make it a point to also include non-coders, since many of us start our contributing careers as designers or documentation writers or folks with business/marketing expertise, which are equally valid ways to contribute.
Awhile back on my blog I started this "Contributor Spotlight" thing where I tried to highlight individuals in the Drupal community doing important work, but who were relatively "underground" -- they're not working for big Drupal shops, aren't the main driving force for huge architectural changes, etc. -- as an attempt to show the diversity of ways people can help out, and draw attention to individuals "just like you" who are actively participating in the Drupal ecosystem. Maybe we could start something like that here, but focused solely on women contributors?
I know that webchick and
I know that webchick and other visible women in the community like Addison and Karen Stevenson have been a great inspiration to me and have helped me feel more welcome in the community. I think Drupal's 7% is awesome and a big reason for it is the visibility of the likes of webchick. I think for me it's important to see that not only can any woman become involved of any level, but they can also be Drupal "rockstars" and very important members and contributors.
What webchick says about it taking so long to become involved rings really true for me, and probably a lot of other women, as well. I obversed the community for a long time and have taken small steps to become involved and sometimes still really don't feel like I "fit" anywhere. Another poster in the introductions thread mentioned there oft being a humbleness in skillset that women bring and I find that to be true, not only of me but of a lot of other women I've spoken to. It's odd because sometimes I've found myself claim to not know something, or prefacing things with "I think" or "maybe" when in fact I know for sure and absolutely.
I do think that there is a fine balance between encouraging women and singling them out too much. I'm not sure if I'm communicating what I mean very well... I'll just stop here and hope this makes any sort of sense but I'm really glad to see this group either way!
If Dmitri can do it...
You know a community is ready to accept people on their merits when it has rockstars too young for high school. It's certainly made me feel like I don't have anything to prove except the quality of my contributions.
I'm a few years behind Angie in my involvement with open source, but I've gone through a similar process. I was evangelizing -- and even selling support services! -- for Drupal before I felt confident enough to contribute my first patch. I have yet to apply for a CVS account, even though I'm a great themer and I should be contributing themes. I guess part of my reluctance is perfectionism; I hate putting stuff out there that isn't quite right. I can also relate to what Brenda said about acting like you know less than you do. Not sure why that is. I had to force myself just now to put "great themer" instead of "pretty good." Sigh.
Perfectionism
I have the perfectionism problem, too. I've really been working on it, though, because like it's been pointed out before even the "rockstars" and core contributors don't release things that are immediately perfect. That's the great thing about a community that can improve, improve, improve upon something until it is "perfect" (sorta). But if nothing is there to improve upon, well.. it just never goes anywhere. I'm one to talk, though, as I still haven't released a module or a theme and I have both of which are half done and can probably be released already. :)
I think that the first step
I think that the first step into contributing to open source is difficult for both men and women. I spend a lot of time encouraging people of any gender to get involved. For beginning to intermediate coders, open source provides you with a great training ground and an opportunity to gain experience that can segue into better job opportunities. For anyone, there can be a positive feedback loop between any volunteer work you do and your paid work, so if you need a practical reason to get involved in an open source project, that's another good one. Of course, if you are running open source software and you find a bug or improve something or write some missing documentation, and then you share it with the world, then you also get the benefit of a few hundred (or thousand) pairs of eyes proofreading and/or testing your work so that any mistakes you've made can be caught before they cause you troubles. That's a pretty big practical motivator as far as I'm concerned, too.
The "girl vs. boy" thing does have some wrinkles, but I think that mostly it's the same thing as any other part of the tech world. Women aren't often told that they can do these things, so they don't realize that it's an option. Or worse, they are told that they CAN'T, and so they don't pursue the possibility at all. (You know, "Girl's aren't good at math" and "if you aren't good at math you can't be a programmer" etc...)
I'm just thinking outloud
I'm just thinking outloud here... As the mother of a 7-year-old daughter, this is the kind of thing I think about a lot. How do I help her believe that there are no limitations to what she might achieve? I think seeing me work happily in a male-dominated field helps. I try to expose her to strong female role models--we go to women's sporting events, her physician is female, we watch films with strong female leads, etc.--and that's important too. Because it seems to me that we know what we know. That is, we believe what we grow up seeing the world is like.
I don't think the problem is limited to technology or any other traditionally male-dominated profession. If in my daughter's life, the plumber is female and the vet is female and the nanny is male, if at home Mom fixes the wireless router while Dad makes mac-n-cheese, then that's how the world is for her. Those aren't the 'gender stereo-type' messages the world was sending me when I was that age. Probably not for most of us.
Yeah, I probably only have 'til she's 12 or so to manipulate her little brain this way. Then her peers and the world are going to take over and who knows what messages she'll get. But those are important 12 years. We can lay a real foundation in that time.
And I think what brenda003 said is really critical, too. Seeing just one or two women "doing it" can sometimes be enough to encourage other women to try as well. I can tell you, I was thrilled to see so many women post to this group. It was a relief and sort of a sense of comfort--like, 'okay, maybe I do belong here after all.' Maybe we just need more trailblazers.
Mothering Teen Girls...
As a mother of a 16 year old girl (plus 8 and 18 year old boys), let me assure you that you have more than just until she is 12. The peer stuff is working already, unless you manage to keep her under a rock. You don't sound like the type to isolate your kids, though. My experience has been that the teen years give even MORE opportunity to show my daughter a range of role models and opportunities.
Now it's not just about her watching people do things, but about her doing things herself. I encourage my daughter to do all sorts of things, both the stereotypically female things and the stereotypically male things. We do a lot of things together and we talk about things a lot. I share my thoughts about my own life with her -- not in a lectur-y way but in an "I can't believe what happened at work today..." sort of way, just like I would with any other friend. I think that helps give her realistic ideas about what adult life is really like. I've always gotten my kids involved in my studies and work with me as and when I could, and this year during a teacher's strike my daughter worked as a desktop support technician at the company where I was working. She got some good experience that way, plus a lot of very positive feedback from the people around her.
The teen years can actually be super awesome. Don't let the stereotypes get you down!
Just wanted to say that
Just wanted to say that that's great what you are doing. I had the privilege of growing up with a mother who encouraged me and my sister to try anything (as long as it wasn't directly harmful); this included everything from ballroom dancing to scouting (in Sweden the girls are "scouts" too, not "guides") to programming. That way, we got to choose for ourselves what we wanted to do. My sister went on to attend a dance school for three years, and now she is aiming at becoming a psychologist, whereas I'm doing mathematics and working to get my head around the more 'nitty-gritty' aspects of Drupal. Ultimately, what it's about is freedom of choice, and if you know what is out there to choose from, then obviously the choice is much more free.
4 year old girl
I'm the father of a four-year-old (yes, that's Ashlin in the pic), and am disgusted by some of the stuff that she'd brought home from nursery school. "Girls don't do that." "I'm going to be a mommy when I grow up, because I'm a girl." The other day, she wore a pony tail, and I mentioned I had one when I was young. "You're just tricking me. Boys can't have long hair." It's a lot to counteract, and that's just at 4. I had to give up on the princess/pink thing when she was 2 (although she does like cars and pirates as well).
We do what we can, but unless we want to keep her in a bubble (we don't), we don't have much control over the influence of people outside our home. We now have her enrolled in a Sudbury school, so at least she'll be free and encouraged to pursue her own interests as she grows up.
I'm glad to see this group start up for women in Drupal. I want to be a part of helping to change some of those numbers, so that by the time Ashlin is a web developer (fingers crossed), or zoo keeper (that would be cool too), or another betty crocker (if that's what she really wants), at least in the world of Drupal I hope we get those proportions equal.
I'll go to lurking after this intro, though, since it's really not my place to speak up here. Just wanted to let you guys know you have some allies in the other camp.
Aaron Winborn
aaronwinborn.com
Aaron Winborn
Drupal Multimedia (my book, available now!)
AaronWinborn.com
Advomatic
When I spent some time
When I spent some time during Drupalcon thinking about the reasons I haven't contributed much to note about to the Drupal community, the recurring thing that seemed to come to mind was motivation. Perhaps it's a little embarassing to admit, but outside of the sentiment that "it's the right thing to be doing", there isn't a whole lot there to motivate me to contribute..... and I wonder if that's one of the key differences between someone who considers their skill set to be a themer versus someone who considers their skill set to be a developer.
It's been my observation about developers is that when they're developing something, there tends to be two end goals with what they're developing. One, to please whatever client that the particular piece of code is going into and two, to make something that's reusable for the next client that comes down the road and wants something similar to what the first client wanted... and thus by default, something that can be released to the community to be reused by other people. The developers are motivated by the fact that A. someone wanted a feature to begin with and B. doing a good job to make their own life easier in the future, and with a little polishing... the lives of everyone else in the community too.
When you're talking about the discipline of theming, it seems to be a different ball game from my experience. By far and large, very very little of what I do in my day to day for work is stuff that's reusable by the community. It's all custom work done for a specific site which likely cannot specifically be reused elsewhere. That being the case, if I want to contribute anything back to the community, I have to make a special effort to do so. If I were to make a theme, I'd have to do it from scratch outside and separate from whatever I was doing for work. The same goes for documentation, it's generally outside of the scope of what I need to do for a client, thus something to do on my own time. That being the case... after I've put in all my hours of work for my job, often times the last thing I really want to be doing is doing more work. It's not that I don't want to give back... it's more that doing so requires starting an entirely different project than what I was working on for work.
If I were to make a guess and a gross generalization based on women I've run into that work with Drupal, there seems to be a higher concentration of women in the theming/design side of the spectrum... and if what I'm currently feeling about contributing being extra effort is what others feel.... it would make sense to me why we aren't seeing many women contribute as there probably are who actually work with Drupal.
This is a good point...
And hints at a larger issue of lack of incentives for theme contributors.
If someone wanted to make Drupal theming their main business as a freelancer, it would be hugely beneficial to them to have a few beautiful, well-coded themes contributed under their username at Drupal.org to act as their "resume" of sorts. When Lullabot is looking for themers and developers to refer our clients to, for example, the first place we check is /user/XXX/track. We get a nice list of all the projects (modules/themes) the person has contributed contributed, and we can take a look at the code of these too to see the sophistication of the code, whether or not they adhere to best practices, etc. I'd be nervous about referring a themer to a client if they didn't have at least a couple themes on Drupal.org that I could take a look at.
However, some of the women present at the meetup do theming as only part of their regular "day jobs" and don't have an interest in branching off and going freelance. In this case it's exactly as you say: contributing a theme involves ripping out all the client-specific stuff, inventing some other design to work within the same template, and then spending a lot of time cleaning it up and abstracting it. Lots of work, for seemingly little gain.
I think there are a few options here:
Just some thoughts. I'd welcome any others, since I'm not a themer myself. ;)
case study
One other thought - writeup a case study that focuses on design and theme. You can annotate some screeshots to guide the user to the more interesting tricks that you have done. You can paste in some css to show your techniques. See the case studies section of the handbook.
And even more on the theme thing
Take a base theme like Hunchbaque (which has some nice semantic mark-up) and make a beautiful variant. People love plug-and-play themes, and we could sure benefit from some pretty themes that build on the solid coding foundations created by others, and offer some pretty "skinning".
Maybe this is where I should start. Here I've been in the community some four years and, aside from leading a company that tries to do its part in contributing, I've contributed almost no code (those exceptions being php snippets).
Designers: Theming is not that hard if you know your css.
What if each of us who do theming committed to contributing one new theme during the month of April?
Laura
pingVision, LLC (we're hiring)
PINGV | Strategy • Design • Drupal Development
+1 on the other ideas added
+1 on the other ideas added to this post, and +1 on the whole idea of encouraging themers to contribute.
I also want to point out that some coders just contribute back code they created for a client (i.e. something they got paid to do), but many of us who contribute code do a lot of (unpaid) work above and beyond what we do for clients. Contributing code involves lots of time for maintenance, adding in features that we're not necessarily using ourselves, fixing bugs that don't affect any of our own sites, etc, so it's not that contributing code takes no extra time :)
I am NOT a themer, but I really really appreciate good themes and would love to see more of them, especially ones that can easily be tweaked by non-themers.
usability issues?
For me, confidence, or overcoming stereotypes isn't a problem. It's pretty much a non-issue. I think you'll find -- as the NY Times article recently suggests -- the Girlz pretty much "OWN" the blog scene -- and I think there's a natural fit with Drupal as a more sophisticated way of extending their dominance over online interconnectedness.
You find that with the bloggers -- there are a lot of women bloggers out there. They tend to be practical, and task or hobby based and semi-addicted to WordPress -- and using the technology to serve their own ends. I think if some aspects of Drupal became as friendly to a quick start as WordPress is. (Wordpress has a really nice theme-preview feature). It's a lot more interesting and powerful program, you'd see more interest there.
I also think the theme ideas in this thread should bud out into a separate thread. :) I'm interested in that, as I tend to spend a lot of my professional time in that area.
NY Times article
That's so interesting that you brought up that story -- I was pretty fascinated by it myself. I presented it to my department at work (we do stuff around youth and technology). What's interesting is that it totally shows that girls are really excited to blog & create stuff for their personal space. But while girls will USE the software, they won't take that next step and MAKE/CHANGE the software. Also, I kind of thought it was disturbing that one possibility for why girls are into honing their online personalities and being confessional online is that they are used to thinking of themselves as objects.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/fashion/21webgirls.html
I'm not sure whether the article was 100% positive about the way girls are interacting with technology -- though there are some positive trends. Sadly, whereas women make up usually somewhere between 20 - 30% of the IT field (from my cursory research), they only make up 2% of the open source community! Drupal's a bit better with 7% -- but still there has to be some reason for this lag. I've been thinking about it a little and would love to talk more about it!
it's the NY Times -- what do they know?
I found that NY Times article really describes the types of online behaviors I see in my local school among 5th and 6th grade girls, and not much else. I'm not as worried because I think there's a natural progression that starts with using the tools, and then leads to customizing them.
I was encouraged by the fact that these girls clearly see internet programs as tools that they can use and manipulate to serve their needs. I see a lot of that with the pre-teens i volunteer with. I think it's cool, and will lead to women who are confident shaping technology to serve them instead of the other way around.
I think webchick tapped into
I think webchick tapped into it with her post above on confidence. For some reason, girls (and later women) tend to be very hesitant to just jump out there and give stuff a try for all to see without having the faintest clue about what they're doing. I know I suffered from that growing up, though I've gotten somewhat better over time.
Boys, and later men, seem (in general of course, this is all generalities we're talking about) to have very little fear of acceptance relative to girls/women. They just do it and put it out there for all to see. Damn the consequences. I know growing up, even when I KNEW I was competent in a subject, I would still have to go home and learn and learn or practice and practice in private before I would even make a peep in public-- it really didn't matter what the subject.
It's total lack of confidence-- even when we know we have something to contribute. Who knows, maybe boys get all this confidence because they have to learn how to approach girls to ask them out at a very early age. Think about it... the jack nicholsons of the world have no compunction about approaching the lara flynn boyles but, how many roseanne barrs do you see with jake gyllenhaals?
confidence builds with practice
I have found a lot of both men and women who are fairly insecure about jumping in without knowing what they are doing -- especially in a public forum.
I've found, both personally and professionally, that confidence builds with practice.
Maybe y'all know of good "practice" steps where a new contributer can get their feet wet in a slightly safer environment?
I saw the suggestion of helping with the support queue. Is that a good 'practice' area from a developers standpoint?
A few thoughts
**scary code
A few months ago, I was teaching web design at a digital arts college, and my students had to learn some basic html code. Many of them were afraid of it, period -- women and men alike, but were willing to tough it out because they are artists and want to make their digital designs come to life on their own websites. I think their willingness to tough out the code relates directly to their interest in making their media project all on their own, and making it behave perfectly -- or bending their ideas to suit their ability to make a project work.
**wordpress vs. drupal
I agree with codeknitter about the connections between blogging/ girls /word press. The main usefulness (to me) of a product like WordPress is the ease of which it supports promotion of one's self, organization or project. Truthfully, if someone wants to get a site up fast and knows nothing about html, ftp, servers, code, photo manipulation, basic file structure -- there's just a lot to learn. And really, while Drupal is so super cool and works for self-promotion -- most people just don't need all the fun extra stuff that drupal offers (yet.)
drupal is much more helpful with projects like social sites, online stores and catalogs, events, and other slightly more complex projects. These all connect up with belonging to organizations, small businesses, etc. So you either have to have a really cool idea of your own, or already be part of some sort of community/project/business. So maybe either drupallers needs to soup up 'click to install' (which is totally happening already) and directly wrap some tutorials designed for bloggers/beginners (and intercept beginners with training resources and tutorials about 'open source 101' (which is sort of there already, but maybe could use some work) )
and/or
provide examples of projects with more complexity created by small college organizations, non-profits, and/or girls/kids who have used drupal to make forums for classmates, their softball team, or other projects that have more complexity. Do those exist? If not...well, maybe we can facilitate that?
I have no idea how people find their ways to content management systems. If code is scary...databases are worse. Drupal is so awesome because it's actually fun. Just the other day I was quizzed by a woman who has an interactivity department at a local university. She wondered why I was so excited about drupal -- and my reasons were: 1. you don't have to do all the boring stuff anymore 2. you can mix and rearrange content and use it for political, educational, and social 'statements.' - and do a lot more for people with less work/time/money 3. it's part of a community that is way cooler than the stuffier CMS's - and you could join it if you really tried.
But really, my reasons for never thinking I could have been a developer for a software company are just about the same as why I just wouldn't know how to participate in drupal/open source. I had to get over a lot of hurdles...all while refusing to admit to myself that taking real computer science classes would have really helped. Keep in mind, that all these discussions about getting women/girls involved in drupal are likely to be paralleled by any discussions about involvement of any disadvantaged community. I like the universal design principles!
Hey Chach! I just thought
Hey Chach!
I just thought that what you wrote was really interesting--I think it's really important to recognize the different backgrounds we all come from, it seems to me that a lot more of the women involved in Drupal have come to it through a variety of paths that unlike our male counterparts, often didn't involve traditional or formal training in programming. It was funny, I was talking to my dad today, telling him about how our Drupal Camp went this weekend, which I helped organize, and saying how I felt like my work was really appreciated, and that I feel even more accepted into the community as someone who only a couple years ago was a total newb/outsider. And he really had trouble understanding that I could reach this level of involvement and acceptance in such a short time, not having a formal education in comp sci, or anything of the sort. He was kind of like "Oh, it's so nice they let an outsider be involved", and I had to try and explain to him that it's not so unusual for people, especially women to have come from a totally different area of work, and that nobody really sees me as being an outsider at this point!
Hope all is well with you!
It's not necessarily what you do on drupal.org that counts
I haven't checked in a bunch of code yet, I've been more focusing on managing my translation project and its support. There are groups out there who are not comfortable with asking questions in forums or don't understand English well enough to read documentation/find answers on their own. In cases where there is no localized forum the first person they usually ask is the person who provides translation. Truth to be told, Drupal texts are tough to translate when there are no words for the tech jargon in the language.
I've been in the open source community for 8 years now and I've never done it for fame, I've kept low profile because I always thought I wasn't "good enough". My plan for this year is to contribute more, learn more and perhaps write some documentation in another language besides English.
lack of confidence probably the biggest hurdle
I've been using Drupal for almost 2 years now, and have a number of modules that I either fully maintain by myself or help out with. Despite this, I'd still be reluctant to involve myself in Drupal core - either by documenting stuff or picking patches to test, etc. It's as merlinofchaos says above, a bit of a "I can't do that!" mentality. However, in an effort to chip-in, I've been hanging out in the #drupal-support IRC channel and trying to help those with Drupal problems whenever I have a chance. I think it's a great (and easy) way of getting more involved and also a good confidence booster - you'd be surprised by how much you do actually know and just didn't realise it!
Oh girl! Drupal Camp Vancouver...
Oh dear, I am sorely behind on reading all the Drupalchix posts!
We just wrapped Drupal Camp Vancouver yesterday, which I helped organize, and I just wanted to post and say what a great showing of Drupalchix it was! If anyone wants to read my wrap up blog post, it's here.
Just to reiterate some of what I wrote, we had a great turnout--I should try and figure out what ratio we hit, but it was quite good! And we had 5 women from Vancouver and Seattle (Katherine Bailey, Raincity Studios; Audrey Foo, Raincity Studios; Robin Barre, CivicActions; Alexandra Samuel, Social Signal; and Jennifer Hodgdon, Poplarware) present sessions (some did more than one), some of which were quite technical, and all of which were quite well received.
Looks like a lot of the shops have been hiring great smart gals lately, and introducing them into the Drupal community, and that now as Drupal is becoming more popular, others are finding their way to our events--for example, we had a group of Librarians from one of the suburbs of Vancouver attend, as they are planning to make a new site for the municipal library branches.
Also, in case they're reading, I just really wanted to thank Angie and Addison--talking to Angie in Boston, as well as Addison's session on contributing really opened my eyes to the fact that there is a lot I can do to contribute even if I'm not writing code, and that was what really gave me the kick in the butt I needed to step up and help organize what turned out to be an amazing event!
Props to you Ariane!
Drupal Camp Vancouver was a really excellent event - extremely well organised, so well done again :-)
I too was delighted to see so many other women presenting and taking part - I wouldn't be surprised if we broke some sort of record for OS events. May the trend continue!
Katherine
Thanks Katherine! I hope
Thanks Katherine! I hope the trend continues as well! Maybe we should actually start tracking stats on this...would be interesting to see how things change as time goes on...
Props on Drupal 5.8 core update!
Hey--just noticed that at least 2 of us had bug fixes in the latest core update--webchick (of course!) and also Jacine, one of the lovely people I remember meeting in Boston--looks like it was her first patch, so congrats! Go chicks go! :-)
Wow... Thanks Ariane!
I had no clue that my teeny little fix got included in the last update until reading your post.
And yes, it was my first patch! Yey! How exciting! ;)
Syllabus for teaching drupal @ high school level?
Hi everyone, I just got hired (3 days ago) to teach web design at a high school. I would like to use Drupal. I would be teaching it as I learn it. I've monkeyed around with it a bit on my own, but am not yet fluent. I come from fine arts, and have 13 years of graphic design-production background, mostly print, a bit of basic web design experience as well.
Anyone out there that could suggest a rough and ready outline? Web links? Thanks in advance!
Lynda and Pact
Hey, Congratulations!
That sounds like a great challenge, good for you for taking it on. Drupal is awesome for schools. I am also new to Drupal and have come across some great resources.
The best book from Pact Publishing and is called Building powerful and robust websites with Drupal 6 by David Mercer ISBN#978-1-847192-97-4 You can get the e-book on Amazon and a good price on the print edition.
You can also check out Lynda.com's new Drupal Essental Training. I haven't taken the course, but I am a Lynda subscriber and have always been very impressed with their video tutorials. The lowest price subscription is $25 a month or you can buy the DVD's.
Lullabot.com has some good tutorials and has a DVD as well. They are great.
Good Luck!
Nicole Bluto
New Drupler and member of L.A. Drupal and Drupal Chix.
...
This might give you some ideas for an outline:
http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=620