Using Drupal In Education Unconference in Portland - Save the Date

3 min read

At DrupalCon Denver, we had an extremely successful Education Unconference and we're planning to do it again in Portland. The planning for this event is in the very early stages; we have nailed down a date - Monday, May 20, 2013 - and are in the process of securing a venue. The event will take place in Portland, Oregon, and as soon as we finalize the location, we will update the announcement page with details. One thing to note at the outset, though, is that we want to make this event an opportunity for people familiar with Drupal and people familiar with education to come together and discuss common issues. If you work in either one of these areas, please come - we all have a lot to learn from one another, and with one another.

Based on discussions in Denver (and within the Drupal community over the years), several general areas of interest continue to emerge. Some likely topics could include:

  • Large scale deployments, and how to balance the needs of individuals/units within an organization against maintaining a reasonably standardized platform;
  • Responsive web design;
  • Strategies for mobile web applications;
  • Ensuring accessibility within web sites;
  • Supporting communities of practice;
  • Drupal as a traditional LMS;
  • Using Drupal to support informal and inquiry-driven learning.

Admission is free of charge; just register here! The event will follow an unconference format, so if there is something you want to talk about, propose a topic, find some like-minded individuals, and let the conversation start.

As with the Denver unconference, we have similar high-level goals:

  • Facilitate connections between people working in the education space who would not have the opportunity to interact within the larger venue of DrupalCon;
  • Generate conversations among people working in different areas of education; in this way, K12 folks could talk to Higher Ed, people working in Libraries could talk to other stakeholders, etc - while there are many differences in what we do, there are also similarities, and it would be good to see some opportunities for collaboration materialize;
  • Set the stage for more focused BoFs at DrupalCon - rather than spend the first BoF of DrupalCon figuring out who wants to talk about what, we could lay the groundwork at the unconference for ongoing conversations throughout DrupalCon;
  • Discuss development methodologies and best practices that are making our lives easier, and more productive;
  • Demonstrate and discuss example sites, and talk about how we built great sites that help people learn more effectively;
  • Your idea here: https://2013.drupalpdx.org/forum/education-unconference-planning

So, mark May 20, 2013, on your calendars. The second Using Drupal in Education Unconference is on! We look forward to seeing you there.

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