For a school project I need to introduce Drupal to elemantary school teachers with few knowledge about CMS.
To prepare the presentation I have the following subjects:
* What is a CMS?
* What are the advantages of CMS (in general vs 'traditional websites')
* What is Drupal?
* What possibilities/features/modules/etc does the system have? (accounttypes, webbased agenda,...)
* How can one use Drupal in a school environment?

I am currently stuck, don't know how to continue this list. Any good idea's? Maybe someone knows more useful features for a school or something to add on my list? Any help is appreciated :)

Comments

level02’s picture

Maybe this will help. I would suggest keeping it simple. Teachers don't really need to know what a CMS is, just how to use it. They don't need to know the advantages of CMS, other than to say that it can easily be changed/updated... They don't really need to even know what drupal is, just what it can do.

Features would be something to talk about like online exams, documents for download, post agendas/homework, test scores, permissions, roles, manage grades, * a personal workspace;
* a group workspace;
* the ability for site members to create informal working groups;
* the ability to create formal class spaces;
* a podcasting platform;
* a WYSIWYG text editor;
* wiki functionality;
* personal and class blogs;
* rss feeds for the entire site, individual courses, individual terms, and individual users;
* personal image galleries;
* personal file repositories;
* the ability to create private, invitation-only groups;
* social bookmarking, with searching within bookmark descriptions;
* spam protection;
* assignment calendars by course;
* event calendars for site-wide events;
* configurable user profiles with searchable text descriptions;
* the ability to create lists of "friends" among site members;
* the ability to find the missing sock in the dryer.
etc...

How one could use drupal in a school environment depends on the developer.

Is this for a report or are teachers actually going to be using drupal?

There are videocasts here and there are videos on youtube, etc. about schools/educators that use drupal. After a quick search these came up:

Introduction to Drupal for K-8
k-8 posting to your schools front page
A short screencast for library staff on our new Intranet software
Drupal for Educators and Academics

There is a group: http://groups.drupal.org/drupaled-distro that might answer some questions http://drupaled.org/

Good luck on your project.

feloescoto’s picture

I agree, keep it simple. They don't know and they don't want to know the difference between static/dynamic content.

I would just explain them the advantages of what you already did, like level02 said, tell them what they will be able to do with the new tool. Then, after they get a grip on it, you can tell them what the tool is all about.

And of course use the words 'Open Source' as much as you can, I have come to find out that people first have to understand the concept of 'Free as in free beer' first, they just go nuts thinking of people working for free and doing such wonderful things for nothing.

Wish you good luck in your presentation.

Geeks Socializing
http://inTribu.com

jscoble’s picture

I would focus on the aspects that would interest the audience. For teachers, as mentioned above, that probably wouldn't be very technical. You may wish to have a hand out that explains CMS, Drupal and Open Source with some links to sites, like Drupal.org, etc. so those that are interested or care about the technical details can find more information. And be prepared to answer the questions you list above. Or add the handout as content on the site that is readily reachable for the teachers so that they are encouraged to start interacting with Drupal.

The general CMS related questions can be answered by Googling. I know, Google doesn't like that term! Some self initiated research does help.

What is usually of greater interest to a non-technical audience are: what is it for, what can it do, how do I use it, and why would I want to use it. Basically, how does this affect the audience and why should they use it.

Introduce the major features(chose those that apply to your implementation), what they are, how they can be helpful, etc. Blogs or photo galleries, for example, is something that most people are familiar with, so that may be a good starting point. Find out how many people are familiar with blogs, raise your hands, and then provide a brief introduction to those that aren't. Show them how they can use blogs, how easy it is for them to add content, etc.

As for useful features for a school, are you the person that convinced the school to go this route, or did the presentation get dumped on you? If you convinced the school to go this route, then go with the features you discussed. If you just discussed Drupal in broad terms without any specific project goals, system capabilities(features), time lines, and milestones then you have a lot of leg work to do. Sorry, but that's the reality of implementing systems for others. If you weren't involved in the process and need to provide the presentation, then go to the project sponsors and the team that 'sold' the school on implementing a CMS system, in general, and Drupal specifically.

A lot of your success, as with most presentations, relies on your ability to engage the audience and communicate the information in a way that is meaningful to them and so that you don't lose them or overwhelm them with details. Explaining things that non-technical people don't care about is a good way to underwhelm the audience. Even as a life long geek, I find most technical presentations to be a bore and tune out fairly quickly, I think most elementary teachers would do the same.

Good luck and wow your audience!

rryan’s picture

For what it's worth, I'm a tech facilitator at a middle school. My job is to get teachers to use tech. IMHO, they don't care (generalizing here) about another tech tool. They don't have time. If you pile on 'another' tool that they probably don't understand, they'll shut you out.

Instead focus on how drupal (or any tool) can REPLACE what they already do. More specifically, how can drupal make them more efficient? What can it do better than what they do now?

At an elementary level you'll have two areas; student use and teacher use. I'd start with 1 or 2 areas, probably teacher use. I'd focus on parent communication to start. Easier than instructional integration.

For parent communication I use; simplenews (newsletters), calendars, rss feeds (duh) and email submission to classroom blogs (for teachers). I also use parent form submission for questions, field trip forms and all the other stuff that overwhelms teachers on any given day.

To many times techies approach teachers with another great 'toy' only to have it die.