I just gave a demo of Drupal to the UCalgary “web content management system” workgroup - they’re trying to figure out which is The One True CMS that will be supported by IT for use on campus by faculties and departments to easily manage their websites.
Previous sessions were given by advocates of RedDot, ADX Studio, Joomla, Ironpoint, and OmniUpdate. That’s a pretty wide range of proposed solutions, from the high-end, high-cost “enterprise” options, all the way to free/open source options.
Drupal 4.7 has an amazing “Content Creation Kit” module available for it (apparently, the module drove much of the node redevelopment between 4.6 and 4.7). It lets you easily create new content types, on the fly, without touching any code. It provides a set of primitives, and you can assemble them however you want - even providing lists of acceptable entries.
This is similar to the Flexinode module that’s been around for awhile now, but Flexinode was apparently a proof-of-concept hack that wasn’t intended to be adopted as widely as it has been, and apparently has scalability issues. CCK is sort of like Flexinode, reloaded. There is even a migration path planned to help folks who are heavily invested in Flexinode to move forward to the “modern” way of doing things.
Dave, Patty and I spent 2 (and a bit) glorious days in beautiful downtown Lethbridge for the ADETA Interface 2006 conference. It was my first time to Lethbridge (aside from a blur seen from a speeding car that didn’t leave the highway, back when I was a kid). We wound up spending some time exploring, hiking, and wandering around town (and the U of L campus).
The Interface conference was different than any other conference I’ve been to. It was much homier, with all of the attendees appearing to know each other already. This was my first Interface, so although I knew many of the names, I didn’t recognize many faces.
In the process of getting ready for our session on Thursday, I started to put together an ePortfolio for myself using Pachyderm. I’ve done several “sample” ePortfolios before, but not a full-blown attempt. Something about eating your own dogfood… So I gave it a shot. It’s still pretty rough, and the “Projects” and “About this…” sections are still empty, but it’s a start. I need to flesh out most of the pages as well, as I’ve currently just got command+c command+v content migration from blog posts and wiki pages.
Patti and I are putting a wiki page together to support our ePortfolio session at Interface 2006 in Lethbridge this Thursday. The session is nominally about the ePortfolio pilot project we’re doing with our Faculty of Education, but I’m hoping we’ll get to have a discussion about ePortfolios (HATE that “e”) in general.
I just added some “What is a ePortfolio?” content, and it feels like it could turn into a thesis pretty darned quickly. Not sure I want to go down that road, though…
QOOP now allows orders for photo printing from Canadian addresses - meaning I can order stuff from Flickr, and have it printed as calendars, posters, books, T-shirts, etc… I just ordered a 13.5" x 19" poster containing all 757 photos I’ve published to Flickr (or at least as many that fit nicely on a poster - it couldn’t fit in all of them, so dropped about 20 photos from 2004).
I participated in a meeting on campus today that wound up dealing with politics more than anything else. I was having a really hard time trying to figure out why the problem being defined was worth such extreme polarization and strategy worthy of a Pentagon scenario, or at least an episode of Survivor. Actually, I still haven’t figured that part out, but will do my best to contribute to the group as appropriate. Oy.
I just promoted Photodoto.com to my coveted 5-star rating in Blogbridge. I’ve been subscribed to this great photography blog for awhile now, and it’s been consistently interesting and useful. It’s just starting out, but they’re putting some great stuff together as the community forms.
Another great photo blog I follow is Chris Garrett’s DSLRBlog. I also follow a whole bunch of Flickr feeds.
I was forwarded an email last night by someone asking where they could download a copy of CAREO to use as a national learning object repository (in a nice, tropical country south of here). I’ve been thinking about it since I checked email early this morning. There is no need for CAREO (or its ilk) anymore. Other solutions have evolved and surpassed what we came up with as a prototype Learning Object Repository.
Wow. Calgary didn’t even show up to game 7. No energy. No chemistry. They couldn’t keep the puck on a stick no matter what they did. What a shame, because they had played so well all season, only to crumble in the playoffs.
Here’s hoping the Oilers can keep the Stanley Cup in Alberta…
Well, not really an update. More like a ping to keep this from dropping off my back burner.
I’m just a little frustrated that I haven’t had a chance to do anything more than just whiteboard. Actually, I feel like I’ve done SFA about this, which is just wrong because I think EduGlu (or an evolution of MyGlu, or of AggRSSive, or of Drupal, or something else) is probably one of the Most Important Things That Need To Be Done™. I’m going to try to put some more thought into this (at the bare minimum) and possibly prototype something (likely wishful thinking at the moment).
I just promoted 