Dave’s Educational Blog » Blog Archive » Opensim/Drupal integration for education - proposal and call for help

Opensim/Drupal integration for education - proposal and call for help
June 24, 2008 – 11:05 pm

Well… i’m finally getting my teeth back into opensim and finding that there are a couple of things i’d like to get built over the next couple of months. We’ve already gotten a good start on the automated installer for opensim, but what i’d really like to do now is attempt an integration with drupal. I’ll be keeping my running requirements list for that integration on the openhabitat project page and will hopefully pop a few updates into here from time to time.

What I need
I need two things.

1. I need a good drupal/opensim programmer. Someone familiar with both platforms who can spearhead the drupal integration (or, if you like opensim integration).
2. I need some sense that there are other folks in the British Higher Education community who would find this integration compelling for an application to the emerge community for extra funding.

I've received a number of requests for help with 'Drupal Basics' in the last couple of weeks. Here's something to get you started, hope it helps.

...this chart from technocrati is tracking the blogosphere's conversation of drupal: Posts that contain Drupal per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

Congratulations to my students for their great work on iBoerne.com. Our submission for Student Showcase
has been accepted for the 2007 TCEA Convention !

iBoerne.com: an Interactive Online Game for Programming Students | jessecravens.com

iBoerne.com is a mashup of Google maps and Drupal using the drupal gmap module to create virtual competition between teams of students. The teams are: Yellow, Red, Green, Blue. The rules of the game were created to encourage the six member teams to discuss concepts such as project management, virtual teams, workflow, efficiency, and collaboration tools.

Both sessionswest.com and bajioranch.com received embedded google maps this weekend courtesy of the great drupal gmap module. I'm looking forward to taking this module and getting really creative - the possibilities are endless.

For community websites this module gets really exciting by allowing users that have lat,long information entered to be displayed on a single map so that you can see where in the world all of your users are coming from. The gmap.module also includes functionality to allow users to set their latitude and longitude on a gmap in an interactive fashion.

I am speaking with some of my other clients about incorporating more complex maps such as a historical map of the Tuscarawas River Band's 'Full Circle' tour. For other band's this may be expressed in a 'Places we have played" Interactive Map. For non-profits, such as the findingmyvoice.org project - this could be beneficial in providing individuals with disabilites an interactive map of local colleges and universities Disability Services departments.

I am beginning to make educators aware of my launch of campustechnology.org .

What is the goal of campustechnology.org?

Campustechnology.org focuses on everything related to 'open education, open content, open systems thinking, open virtual learning environments, and open source instructional tools, and the hardware that promotes an 'open schools' philosophy.

green.campustechnology.org

I also have plans for green.campustechnology.org - which will promote sustainable schools, environmental education initiatives, and all eco-friendly services, products, and programs related to learning environments.

I just completed a migration from wordpress to Drupal using the wordpress2drupal module. It was fairly simple. I plan on discussing this further. - more later

Another new design for SessionsWest.com. I was digging for inspiration for this site, when Jeff called me from San Deigo last week right before he was about to go surfing. The color sheme is known as 'Morning surf,' and I built a custom flash player inspired by the album cover from the Fever Sessions. This new buildout has been my most complex drupal site to date. I embedded a photo gallery, and the mp3 player I mentioned earlier. I used drupal's front page module to give the home page a real clean, simple entry to the site. All in all it doesn't get much more simple, but I think thats what I like about it , and it reflects Jeff's style to the tee.

We have been having a little fun at Digett.com. Trevor conjoured up the klller flash/video/audio, and Mark volunteered for the Naked Cowboy role. This also marks are first Drupal launch: EnchantedBreakfast.com. We will be sponsoring an upcoming Boerne Chamber of Commerce Networking Breakfast on Tuesday, May 23rd at Enchanted Springs Ranch. Enjoy.

Follow the linked image to view the video.