Saturday, May 24, 2008

Session D: Drupal, Drupal, Drupal

Charlie Lowe explained that Drupal is a complex design tool, not simply a weblog tool or wiki; design choices available to site designer. Maybe Drupal is the tool for WPGV. See Building Powerful and Robust Websites with Drupal 6, drupal.org/vidcasts, teaching@drupaled.net (contact Charlie to join).

Dan Royer posted his presentation in a Drupal site. Covers the evolution of his experience with teaching a writing for the web course and how Drupal seems to be solving problems he was having: too much time spent on design rather than writing, messing with IE bugs, etc. Sees Drupal as the future: a skill that students need to have; Drupal as a tool that they might be able to take with them.

David Blakesley on Drupal design, theme work. Recommended 3 Firefox add-ons: Firebug, WebDeveloper, and IE Tags. Also graphic editor, text editor, and drupal module theme builder. Drupal theme sites listed.

What do I want for my course site:
1. A place for course materials (the book?)
2. A place to blog, probably collectively.To discuss readings, share notes, share work.
3. A bibliography (preferably annotated).
4. Possibly a site to host MEmorials.
5. A sandbox, a place for weekly experiments.

Keep the site open to student design, re-design. What are the images of WPGV, or maybe I should call the site the Virtual Peace Garden.