Drupal

Earlier today, Drupal core was upgraded to version 5.6. This is a security release, and all users should upgrade.

For users with existing DrupalEd installs, you only need to upgrade core Drupal -- you do not need to use this specific package.

For new users to DrupalEd, this is the package for you.

Download it here to get started!

I'm writing these ideas out quickly -- there are sure to be holes in this, and gaps in this reasoning -- please point them out in the comments.

For some context on this post, see these two threads on Dan Meyer's blog.

Users working with online lessons will generally fall into at least one of the following categories:

1. People searching for lesson ideas (probably the majority)
2. People already creating content on their own blogs (a growing number of folks, but still a very small percentage, compared to people in category 1, or even teacher-bloggers)

DrupalEd 5.4 is now out.

This new release incorporates a security upgrade. Although DrupalEd was not affected by the specific conditions that triggered this upgrade, upgrading core is strongly recommended.

This release also incorporates some recent module upgrades. For the full details, read the upgrade_notes.txt file available in the download.

Download DrupalEd here.

Over the last couple weeks, there have been some large shifts in the world of Drupal development.

The first of these occurred last week, when Raincity Studios acquired Bryght. For the three non-geeks reading this blog, Raincity is a Vancouver, cA based design shop, and Bryght was the first Drupal company out there. While I have yet to meet the Raincity folks, I know several of the Bryght guys, and they do amazing work, both for their clients and within the Drupal community. This partnership promises some great things for advancing Drupal development, and Drupal design.

A mildly edited version of my response to Jim Groom's post over on the bava --

D'Arcy mentioned the need for this to scale, and he's right. With that said, I don't think we need to have scalability to 100K students as a first goal. The beauty of the small pieces loosely joined is that it's easier, and that it's a step away from the monolithic LMS's so beloved by so many --

Toward that end, it's good to consider what we'd need to carry from the blog to the aggregator in order to connect a student work with an institutional SIS/LMS. To start, I see two factors as essential: first, mapping a feed to a student, and second, mapping individual posts from within a feed to a course.