Drupal book: Using Drupal in Education

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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on December 2, 2008 at 10:48am

My copy is on order. Can't wait to read. Congratulations, Bill!

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Permalink Reply by Peggy George on December 2, 2008 at 12:45pm

Hi Bill,
Your ebook was long awaited and eagerly anticipated, and I'm excited to report I received my ebook and it was WELL WORTH the wait. What an outstanding resource for a beginner like me! I have scanned the entire book and am now ready to go back to use the very detailed step-by-step instructions you have provided for everything we might want to do with Drupal. My hard copy version is on it's way too but I'm so glad I chose to purchase the bundle so I have both! I highly recommend the bundle for anyone thinking about buying the book. The price is outstanding and you have a searchable book with the ebook so you can go back & forth between the directions and your Drupal site. Thanks for all of your hard work to bring us the very latest info on Drupal 6! Awesome tool!
Peggy

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Permalink Reply by Bill on January 10, 2009 at 5:00pm

Hello, Peggy,

I don't know how I missed this comment, and I apologize for not responding sooner. I'd love to hear how things are going.

Cheers,

Bill

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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on December 2, 2008 at 1:45pm

Seems like it would be a good thing for you to start a Drupal group here... Good for those who'd be interested, and good for you as they can get to know you (and order your book!)

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Permalink Reply by Bill on December 4, 2008 at 5:23pm

Hello, Steve,

I thought about this, but this is my concern: there is already a Drupal in Education group over at http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-education -- this group has over 600 members, and I don't want to fragment attention/mindspace between two locations.

In some ways, I think that people from this group would have a lot to gain from joining the Drupal in Education group. See, for example, this thread from today: http://groups.drupal.org/node/17253 -- a person was building their site, and they had some issues. They posted their question, and within four hours, their problem had been solved. And in the process, they got feedback from three people; one from the States, one from the UK, and one from Germany.

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Permalink Reply by Bill on December 4, 2008 at 5:17pm

Hello, all --

For those interested, you can grab a sample chapter here: http://www.packtpub.com/files/drupal-for-education-and-e-learning-s... (pdf download).

Or, use the short version: http://is.gd/a3Yw

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Permalink Reply by Miguel Guhlin on January 9, 2009 at 5:38pm

Bill, I have to agree with Steve...just because a bunch of folks are paying attention over there, there's a whole different audience over here! 8->

I'm trying to learn Joomla well-enough to do something with it but some of the challenges I've heard about Drupal are a tough to learn backend, too many features that have to be added to the install. On the plus side, a school district can have ONE install of Drupal--with multiple child sites-- that can update itself without trouble.

So, with 250 Joomla sites around my neck, Drupal seems interesting but you don't switch over to a whole new system overnight when no one else knows Drupal in your organization (and I'm ignorant of that, too).

While I appreciate offers of help, it seems like Drupal is for a district that hasn't tried anything yet but is ready to make the plunge. Also, what about the argument that Drupal installs should be hosted by web providers (e.g. Siteground) that have Fantastico and can support upgrades/updates, etc. relieving the load from school district staff which lack that expertise?

Warm regards,

Miguel Guhlin
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org
http://mguhlin.org

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Permalink Reply by Bill on January 10, 2009 at 5:10pm

Hello, Miguel,

I started to respond to your thoughts here, but it morphed into a discussion alongside some other things I was thinking about.

In short: On Sustainability, Experimentation, and Knowing When To Break the Mold.

Cheers,

Bill

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Permalink Reply by Richard Kassissieh on January 11, 2009 at 9:29am

Miguel, I am so pleased with Drupal as we design and develop our next web site. While I imagine you will want to make the most of your Joomla installations before moving on to the next thing, I strongly recommend Drupal. Given your expertise, the time required to ramp up on Drupal would be very worthwhile.

I have a administered a simple Drupal install for our Intranet for the past two years as an experiment. That was easy to set up and open to the school community. Planning a more sophisticated, intentional project is requiring some time, but it has been simply awesome to be able to use Drupal's power to achieve our goals with this site. It's just amazing how it is possible to customize Drupal and how the community has such a good grasp on the open, collaborative web environments that are becoming the new standard.

Feel free to drop me a line if you'd like more detail on our project.

Richard

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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on January 10, 2009 at 12:44am

Bill:

I've only read the first few chapters, but you are to be congratulated. The book is VERY well-written. Way to go.

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Permalink Reply by Bill on January 10, 2009 at 5:02pm

Hello, Steve,

Thank you for the kind words. We did our best to get a paper-based resource that could remain relevant within the context of the pace of development of the Drupal community.

Cheers,

Bill

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