Drupal Dreaming

Steve Hargadon is helping me keep my New Year's resolution of 1 hour of exercise everyday. Here is how it works. He keeps interviewing interesting people and uploading the podcasts and I keep downloading and listening to them while I do 30 minutes on the Treadmill, 10 min on the bike trainer and 20 min with weights. I am learning a great deal. Only drawback is not having the ability to jot down the hundreds of ideas that come while I listen and the wincing that comes from working out after being so inactive (chained to a computer) for a year.  For example, Will Richardson's podcast was full of  things I wanted to go back and think about more deeply. Too many to remember- which means i will have to go back and listen again and take notes.

Last night I listened to Steve Hargadon interview Bill Fitzgerald, of FunnyMonkey, about the Free and Open Source Software program Drupal. Steve and Bill define Drupal like this:

Drupal is a content management program that contains a set of tools for building a web-based community sites, which can include 1) a public-facing web presence, 2) the functionalities of the read/write web into a controlled school environment, or 3) Intranet/Personal Workspaces for techs and administrators.

My Experience
In a class I took from Gene Roche about planning for technology from a leadership perspective, part of our class work was to serve as consultants to a group of K12 stakeholders. The task we were given was to make recommendations from our experience with using/building with Drupal to create a media literacy site.  Besides learning a tremendous amount about project management, spontanious collaboration and adult learning that semester, I also learned a little bit about Drupal.

In true project management form different individuals in the class took on a different role. Jon Messer and I were the techie's on the team. Our job was to embed the modules and work the code ect..to allow for the functionality the others thought was needed. Overall, I was impressed with Drupal. There were modules that crashed and we went to the open community and asked for possible fixes, which many were shared immediately. But for the most part it was a very robust program that enabled us to deliver virtually any sort of electronic engaged interaction we wanted.

This was very exciting as I have been working with the Center for Teacher Quality for sometime on specs for the perfect teacher leader collaboration community. What components would a platform need to support authentic interaction between teachers who were using virtual means to collaborate on informal and formal projects and tasks? Drupal seemed to be the answer, but the learning curve would require a time investment I simply didnt have available, so I let go of my dream.

Drupal This

Then last night I listen to Bill and like wildfire the thoughts start racing. He particularly got my attention when he talked about teachers using Drupal to create a host of tools for students to use while learning while meeting the safety concerns at the same time. Interesting thought, using an open source product for a walled garden approach. As I felt my hair bristling at even the thought of doing that- Bill and Steve said something that really made sense.

I am paraphrasing here-- but Bill talked about how some bloggers do not feel blogs that aren't open for the public to comment on aren't even real blogs. But that he believes blogging for students should be as much about finding "voice" as it is finding audience. POWERFUL. And Steve added that we do not bring MBA players out on the playground to play with our students. Again... POWERFUL.

So my mind started racing... with Drupal you can make some conversations private and some public. Teachers have a great deal of control in how they want to embed communications options within the site. In Alabama, the project I have been helping to lead has faced huge obstacles around the Internet access and safety issue. It seemed in direct propotion, more web savvy the teachers became in using Web 2.0 tools for instruction and collaboration the more some District IT Directors blocked the sites. In extreme cases almost all Web 2.0 tools were blocked, including the virtual education community Tapped-In, developed by NSF and used by our project to support asynchronous collaboration. Recently, blogs that had been in use for over a year were blocked and that required teachers to either abandon some of the class and professional blogs and wikis they had created or to move them to an approved or undiscovered site. An excerpt from the activity report of an ABPC Fellow documents this challenge:

Our filter has reset several times so I have run into some obstacles. Also our district decided to block all personal weblogs and storage sites online. I had long email, phone, and personal conversations with…our district [IT] coordinator. Edublogs is available as are a few sites that fly under the radar of the filter, but Flickr, Bloglines, Yahoo Briefcase, and many other sites I promoted to my students are now blocked with little dialogue as to why.

It is frustrating, but the conversation and negociations continue to move forward.  Our focus needs to include superintendents, principals, and district IT directors.  I couldn't help but thinking as I listen to Bill talk about Drupal, maybe using it would provide the safety net IT folks long for while still giving students and teachers the access they need to learn. It is two steps forward and one back at times- advocating and educating  every step of the way.

Comments

[Bill Fitzgerald]

Hello, Sheryl,

Glad you enjoyed the podcast -- re: "maybe using it (Drupal) would provide the safety net IT folks long for while still giving students and teachers the access they need to learn"

You describe one way Drupal can fit within existing school infrastructures.

Like you, I also bristle at the notion of educational sites being blocked. But, if working within the system allows people to start using these tools now, I see that as an important intermediate step in helping people see the utility of these tools. When people use these tools, the conversation shifts from talking about the dangers of online interaction to questions of pedagogy -- and, IMO, that's the conversation we want to have.

Cheers,

Bill