Drupal in Education Unconference 2012
3 min read
On Monday, March 19th, at Del Pueblo School in Denver, Colorado, around 75 Drupalists and educators met for a day of sessions focused on the needs of people working in education, and how Drupal can help.
Sessions ran all day, and some of the topics included how to manage hundreds of sites within an organization, responsive design best practices, how to use distributions within education, and how to ensure that sites are accessible.
One of our goals in planning this event was to carve out the space and time for people working within education to have substantive conversations with other practitioners, and to increase the communication between people working in different areas of educational systems. At a technical level, there are overlaps between some of the core issues people are addressing, regardless of whether they work in K12, Higher Ed, Government, in the classroom, or as part of administrative support. Philosophically, if we look at education as a process that unfolds continuously across people's lives, people within different levels of education can benefit from knowing more about how their counterparts are solving problems, and the rationales behind the systems they put in place. One of the things that struck me yesterday, as I talked with different people at the event, was the skill, talent, and focus of the people who came. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to sit in a room full of smart, talented people and listen to how they are doing their work.
In the conversations, there was also also a common thread of education as a social justice issue. The notion that a user interface should be evaluated from the perspective of how it empowers people to the need for multilingual translations (and how to best achieve them) were a couple of the ideas that I'll be thinking about for a while.
I'd like to thank the participants who came and made the day happen. And, if you were at the event and want to keep in touch with the other participants, please add your name to the wiki.
As mentioned earlier, the event was held at Del Pueblo School, and the space was generously made available to us by the Denver Public School System. Michael Wacker and Glenn Moses were instrumental in making this connection.
Also, get ready to mark your calendars. We will be organizing this event next year; we will announce the dates for the next event shortly after the dates for DrupalCon 2013 are announced.
