Drupal for Education and E-Learning [Paperback]

Bill Fitzgerald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 28, 2008

Create engaging learning experiences using Drupal. A friendly and clear guide from the creator of the DrupalEd distribution. This book is for anybody looking to use Drupal to support teaching and learning; more generally, the examples given in this book can also be used by anybody looking to use Drupal to publish social media. This book is not a developer's manual; you do NOT need to know code, or HTML, or CSS, to benefit from this book. People new to Drupal will find clear examples describing how to set up their site. More experienced Drupallers will find tips and tricks for extending their site, and step-by-step instructions on how to make the most out of Drupal's flexibility.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bill Fitzgerald was born in 1968, and worked as a teacher for 16 years. During that time, he taught English and History, and worked as a Technology Director at the K12 level. Bill began using technology in his own teaching in the early 90s; from there, he moved on to database design and systems administration. During that time, Bill began developing strategies to support technology integration in 1:1 laptop systems, and in desktop computing environments. In 2003, Bill and Marc Poris founded FunnyMonkey, a Drupal development shop working primarily within education. Bill started and manages the Drupal in Education group on http://groups.drupal.org, and is active in various educational and open-source communities. Bill blogs about education and technology at http://funnymonkey.com/blog. When Bill is not staring deeply into computer screens, he can be found riding his fixed gear bicycle through Portland, OR, or spending far too much time drinking coffee.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (November 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847195024
• ISBN-13: 978-1847195029
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,190,459 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars learn drupal using this great "cookbook", December 14, 2008

By 

Joseph Moraca "Joe Moraca" (Sarasota, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Drupal for Education and E-Learning (Paperback)

Drupal for Education and E-Learning

Another great book in the drupal revolution! This book is unique in that it is really a "cookbook" for a teacher (of any kind) to setup a new drupal site to use to enhance their classes.

The target audience is new or intermediate drupal users. The examples go through creating a very usable class oriented website, but the skills illustrated in the book would really work for any website design.

I enjoyed reading one of the first tips in the introduction.. "take notes," it sounds like a teacher but it is a great way for a new system admin to document the choices they made setting up their system. It makes it much easier to go back to change something down the road.

There is just about no programming talk in Drupal for Education - so don't be scared - this book will show you how to set up a very useful drupal website as a "site admin." You will be using the administration interface (and copying files) the whole way. The last chapter goes into some of the more technical duties of running adrupal website like backups and "cron" jobs.

The examples in the book - which are all drupal version 6 - go through how to use CCK and Views the main "drupal extensions" that allow an admin to really customize their website. The authors then start adding cool stuff like audio, pictures and video functionality.

Forums, tagging, user accounts and permissions and managing multiple classes on the same website are also well covered. So the secret to this book is that it is a great "learn by example" book for really anyone that wants to setup a pretty complex website. If you go through the examples in this book you will have the skills to create many other "vertical market" type websites.

Thanks for another great book in the Packt series of drupal books.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good tool for certain Drupal tasks, February 13, 2009

By 

Stephen J. Recker (Western Maryland USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Drupal for Education and E-Learning (Paperback)

I bought this group because I was looking for help setting up Organic Groups. I got more than I bargained for. It covers a number of topics in a task-based way, much like the Lullabot 'Using Drupal' book. Thankfully, the two books don't cover the same topics. I was hoping for a much more complex look at Taxonomy strategies for college sites, but that is not what this book is about. It was still worth the money.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great on instruction, light on theory, January 17, 2009

By 

Sean Effel - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Drupal for Education and E-Learning (Paperback)

This is a mixed review for Bill Fitzgerald's Drupal for Education and E-Learning.

It's a great book that covers the methods for adding blogs, forums, podcasts, and videos to a learning environment using Drupal as a platform. Those who have already decided that Drupal is a good choice for education will get good instruction - those on the edge might be persuaded to choose Drupal for their programs. Drupal offers a lot features out of the box, and even more with contributed modules, and the lessons in this book cover them squarely.

The author makes each lesson concise and digestible and has a well developed arc and learning curve throughout the book. Teaching Drupal in building blocks is key. The technical examples are all spot on and really show off the capacity and flexibility of Drupal. I am confident that readers will grasp the author's tutorials and be in a great place to roll with it as their learning continues. I can also appreciate the last chapter which lays out options for readers to learn more with free resources that already exist.

However, the one shortcoming of this book is that the author provides little context or theory for using Drupal in the classroom. The author has excellent tutorials for creating blogs for teachers and students but hardly addresses the merits of blogs in the classroom. I was hoping for convincing arguments on why blogs, forums, podcasts and videos are good for learners and how Drupal can cater specifically to the education community.

E-learning is a massive field and that broader topic was slightly out of scope for the purposes of this book. But it would have been nice to include more visualization exercises that would help teachers incorporate Drupal into real classroom curriculum and help highlight the benefits of doing so. I'm afraid that educators and school administrators seeking such advice may come away from this book a bit disappointed.

In the end, however, if you are seeking a technical manual for setting up education tools with Drupal then this makes for a great companion.