I could have used my time productively tonight, but instead I put together a brand new stigmergicweb podcast, looking at school websites and how to improve their functionality.
Problems with many existing school websites:
- out of date information
- poor navigation, cluttered web pages (clown pants page design)
- content is maintained by a single person or small group of people within the school
- doesn't serve the school community
What we need:
- timely, relevant information
- design with web standards
- everyone is a contributor
- enhances the community. Several highly successful online communities exist including slashdot and kuro5hin.
Drupal is a great tool for setting up a dynamic web site that can be maintained by all members of the school community. It has many features that lend itself to enhancing communication and community within a school. My generic high school site is an example of how this might work.
I've heard from a couple of others who are working on these sorts of projects, and I've been watching with interest what the DrupalEd group are doing. Are there any other projects/models out there where Drupal is being used to manage a web site for a K-12 school?
(This is a cross post from my blog: http://stigmergicweb.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/09/stigmergicweb-pod...)
Comments
I've been using Drupal!
I've been using Drupal at UCSC for quite some time now. I've found that people (administrators) have a hard time letting go of control and actually allowing a community to prosper.
Do you think you could post a transcript of your podcast? I'm interested in knowing what you have to say, but do not have an iPod, or other mobile mp3 device, at the moment (otherwise, I'd listen to it on the metro going home!).
I am also setting up a collaborative authoring program at http://dmedia.ucsc.edu/~mruno/drupal/, as another example of what Drupal can do in an academic environment.
Best,
Matthew
Lincoln High School
Here at Lincoln High School in Portland, OR we are using Drupal. We started with Drupal at the beginning of this school year, and I believe we will continue. I am the graduating senior who started the project, so I'm not sure what will happen in the future, but I can tell you what has happened so far.
Three years ago, the long-time computer teacher retired. He took the server passwords with him, so the new full-time support guy was unable to update the site. He replaced it with a very basic page with links to external resources, which worked but definitely needed improvement.
When I came on the scene, we had nothing more than this to work with. I knew very little about making good websites, but I was in the right place at the right time and got saddled with the job of creating the site. I chose Postnuke at first, and we limped along with that until last summer, when I discovered Drupal. I switched over to Drupal at the beginning of this school year, and with the help of a dedicated parent and a couple other students, we have improved tremendously since then.
What has helped us a lot has been to develop some sort of process for working on the site. We have one senior (me) and a junior actively working on the site. A sophomore and a freshman are in training. A small number of teachers and the librarian supervise the program, and we communicate among ourselves using a mailing list and a development site, which includes a wiki and ticketing system. There is no question that our process is in its infancy, however, so we are always looking for ways to make our work better or more efficient.
We aren't using many of the great features of Drupal, but I think we could. The most heavily used functionality right now is the path aliasing and the menu system. I will follow this thread and read the links you provide to try to learn from others who are trying to do the same thing. Thanks!
Re: Lincoln High School
Sorry for the lag in responding to you post, but I wanted to make sure I let you know that I really like some of the stuff you have done with your school site. It has some of the useful functions that I'd like to build into the site at my school, if I get a chance. I may be in touch for some ideas!
Rob Wall
http://stigmergicweb.org
What useful functions?
I may be too close to see the big picture, but I wasn't aware that we have any functions. All we have is information as static pages.
Change colours.
I would first like to say that what you have for your website far surpasses the one I am maintaining. Earlier this year, our school board switched the entire school district over to drupal. Unfortunately, we are stuck with the Garland theme which, to say the least, isn’t that appealing. I was looking at your website and found the base theme that you are using, and I would like to use it, but I don’t know how to change the colours like you did. Could you help me out? I am not unlike you, a student in a high school who gets handed something that wasn’t practical. I like the drupal software but the school board has put a bunch of unnecessary things onto it, it is cluttered, outdated, and it doesn’t look good (to be blunt). So I am building a new drupal website with drupal 6.2. I am hoping to have this theme but I can’t figure out how to change the colours. Any insight, information, or help you could give would be greatly appreciated, and if anyone has suggestions on what a high school website should contain, please feel free to let me know. All ideas are greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Stephen
Winston Knoll Collegiate Webmaster
ConnectForKids.org
I work for the State of Michigan, Dept. of Labor and Economic Growth's office of Career and Technical Preperation (michigan.gov).
Although we use Vignette, I noticed today when I was adding some content to our site, one of the links I added was to an education site that is powered by Drupal.
The site is ConnectForKids.org, and their mission statement is:
Connect for Kids makes the best use of communications technologies, specifically the Internet, to give adults – parents, grandparents, guardians, educators, advocates, policymakers, elected officials and others – the tools and information they need to improve the lives of children, youth and families. The Connect for Kids online publication covers more than 30 topics ranging from arts to youth development, foster care to adoption, and welfare reform to oral health.
Nice site, and good to see Drupal as their choice of CMS!
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Josh Stevens
Nautilus7 Design | www.nautilus7.com
German "Grundschule" uses Drupal
... http://www.kgs-marienschule.de/ . It replaced a Frontpage-based brochure plus TWiki-based project page.
UPDATE: With this website, our school became Grundschule des Monats last November.
Olav
--
Olav Schettler
Integrating drupal with my high school
My AP Java teacher was looking over my shoulder during our freetime as I was working on my new website a few weeks ago. She was so impressed on how good it looked, knowing I was only a freshman with no school web design courses on my belt, she asked how I got it to look so good. I continued to explain how I came into using drupal and the customizations I did for my site. She feels this system would be best thing to happen to our schools website. We are currently sharing information and attempting to convert the current site into a drupal managed website.
Re: Integrating drupal with my high school
Do you have a link to the site, or could you post one once it is ready?
Rob Wall
http://stigmergicweb.org
An important feature
While browsing through your generic HS site, I realized there is a certain set of features that would be very useful.
Short-term, we need a way to import existing documents into the site (for example, the policy manual). Long-term, we need to be able to make good-looking printed versions of books or pages and be able to export easily so that the material can be included in printed publications.
How are others doing this with Drupal?
Re: An important feature
I've added an attached document to a story on the generic high school site using the upload module (included in Drupal 4.6, but not enabled by default).
At the bottom of each page in a book is a "print friendly version" link. If you select this link on the main (top) page of a book, the entire book is formatted for printing.
Rob Wall
http://stigmergicweb.org
you can also change the css for the printer friendly version
The printer-friendly page is styled using /misc/print.css.
a process for producing a polished text from a collaborative boo
I have created large documents in the collaborative book, then downloaded them and styled them using OpenOffice. Once you get the hang of it, it's very easy, or as easy as formatting any other type of large document:
and Tables
Here's an example text, a book we put together as a class project. The students created everything in a Drupal collaborative book. I then did most of the styling in OpenOffice.
Offline Sync by Email
Some time back we hacked drupal for synchronisation of content between multiple schools here in Goa. since internet access is quite difficult and expensive for schools, we used email for synchronisation of data. more info:
http://knowledgeinitiatives.org/saraswati/
Just launched new site today
I've been working with Drupal since version 2 and have loved the improvements. I used Drupal as the basis for my Master's project a few years ago. I created an Intranet forum for the school district to allow teachers and support staff to collaborate, to become a commmunity of practice. Well, no such luck and that's a long story.
I have just release a 5.2 version site that can be found at www.orangeglen.com. I am really pushing it with the staff, who are very resistant to change, to get them to share what's going on with the community stake holders: parents, students and the staff themselves. There are a couple of functions or modules that I could really use, but haven't had the time to learn how to make. Hopefully the ED group with the aid of the Drupal community will begin to solve the education issues at hand.
Jason
JC SWAK - web hosting & design
www.jcswak.com