Kieran Lal, Acquia, recently had the opportunity to give a presentation on Drupal in front of an information system's course at San Francisco State College. It's a good video for anyone that wants to learn everything they possibly can about Drupal and given only one hour to do so. I would have loved to seen more questions and answers on the video as Kieran is one of those people that responds very well when people present him with good questions and good ideas.
In keeping with tradition, the following are seven articles that were posted here at CMSReport.com and received less attention than I had hoped. Either the reader didn't show up to view the article or there was little discussion on the subject matter. I'll let you be the judge on whether these articles deserved the obscurity they received in 2008.
Augustana College, a United States college affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is using Drupal. According to Augustana's Web Editor the site was developed by Tim Broeker of Electric Jet using Drupal 5. Electric Pulp, a local Sioux Falls company, also contributed to the project by doing the design and CSS work.
I don't think I've ever met Tim Broeker, but what is interesting about this Drupal site developer is that he also has a Joomla! Core Team connection. Yes indeed, open source does matter.
Updated Sep 8 2008 per comments at CMSReport.com
Those that have read my blog know that I do get on my soapbox from time to time about the state of education in the United States. I can't help but be concerned about the future for America's young adults. Too many students are not opting to stay in school to continue their education. If U.S. students continue their lack of motivation in pursuing an education, I can't help but be gloomy on America's place in the 21st century as a world leader.
Yesterday, I talked about CMS Report's five most read articles that were published in 2007. Today, let's talk about seven of our articles that remained at the bottom of the dog pile. Listed below are Seven Great CMS Report Articles that you few people read.
I just can't believe the year Drupal is having. There has been an explosion of Drupal sites almost everywhere you turn. Drupal is very popular with the masses in 2007. So popular in fact, that I wonder as with all things popular if we'll be seeing 2008 as the backlash year against Drupal as it has quickly evolves as a litmus test for open source CMS (one of my predictions for 2008).
The latest Drupal-based site to flash on the screen of my browser is the portal (currently in beta) for the European Commission sponsored Science, Education and Learning in Freedom (SELF ) project. The site aims to be a community-driven platform for the production and distribution of educational materials. Its sustainability depends on the building of a strong community of users and participants of the platform. The site may actually be live by the time you read this post.
I found this article via Creative Commons' Science Commons. In the Financial Times article, "The irony of a web without science", James Boyle writes:
I really can't display every open source project's invitation for college students to apply to Google's Summer of Code. But just like the invitation from Drupal, WordPress would be another one of those projects I wouldn't have minded working on when I was going to college.
All I can do is shake my head in the direction education has taken in the United States. I've written about this topic in the past, a little here and on another blog of mine. In one of those blog posts, I wrote the following.
American society as a whole seems to have less value for education, especially in the sciences and math, than when I was growing up. Maybe I’m more sensitive to these numbers since I am a scientist at heart…but isn’t anyone else disturbed by this trend? While I feel there should have been something done to help reverse this downward spiral sooner, I’m glad at least that it is finally getting some some well deserved attention by the Bush administration.
College students in the United States are not showing up in those university programs that are focused on physical science, computer science, math, and engineering. There are a number of politicians, parents, and students that will blame the public school education system for the current state of education in the United States. I have some serious doubts whether fingers should really be pointed in the direction of the teachers or even school system. I think in many ways, those fingers should be pointed right back to the parents and their children. Perhaps life in America is so good that by the time the student becomes a young adult, life hasn't prepared them to face the challenges and disappointments they need to do well in the sciences.
Dries Buytaert, lead of the Drupal project, invited students on his blog to participate in Google's Summer of Code and at the same time help improve the Drupal core. This is Google's third year for the program which hopes to encourage college students to work on open source projects. Chris Dibona, Open Source Program Manager at Google, wrote: