Drupal for Education and E-Learning

400 Pages·2008·19.05 MB·English

by  Bill Fitzgerald

Drupal for Education and
E-Learning
Teaching and learning in the classroom using the
Drupal CMS
Bill Fitzgerald

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
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Drupal for Education and E-Learning
Copyright © 2008 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in
critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of
the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold
without warranty, either express or implied. The author, Packt Publishing, and its
dealers and distributors will not be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to
be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the
companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals.
However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: November 2008
Production Reference: 1181108
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847195-02-9
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar ([e-mail])
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Credits
Author Project Manager
Bill Fitzgerald Abhijeet Deobhakta
Reviewers Project Coordinator
Joel “Senpai” Farris Brinell Lewis
Michael Peacock Lata Basantani
Peter M. Wolanin
Indexer
Senior Acquisition Editor Monica Ajmera
David Barnes
Proofreader
Development Editor Dirk Manuel
Swapna V. Verlekar
Production Coordinator
Technical Editor Shantanu Zagade
Dhiraj Chandiramani
Cover Work
Editorial Team Leader Shantanu Zagade
Akshara Aware
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About the Author
Bill Fitzgerald was born in 1968, and worked as a teacher for 16 years. During that
time, he taught English and history, and worked as a Technology Director at the K12
level. Bill began using technology in his own teaching in the early '90s; from there,
he moved on to database design and systems administration. During that time, Bill
began developing strategies to support technology integration in 1:1 laptop systems,
and in desktop computing environments.
In 2003, Bill and Marc Poris founded FunnyMonkey, a Drupal development shop
working primarily within the education industry. Bill started, and manages the
Drupal in Education group on http://groups.drupal.org, and is active in
various educational and open source communities. Bill blogs about education and
technology at http://funnymonkey.com/blog.
When Bill is not staring deeply into computer screens, he can be found riding
his fixed gear bicycle through Portland, OR, or spending far too much time
drinking coffee.
This book took nearly six months to write, and I would not have
been able to complete it without the support of numerous people.
First, my wife Isabelle gave unending support and understanding
throughout the entire process—when I was stressed, she helped me
laugh, and that was a gift beyond words.

Additionally, Marc Poris and Jeff Graham, compatriots at
FunnyMonkey, provided support of a different kind: when I was
stressed, they wrote code, and their snippets and modules grace the
pages of this text.

Finally, the team of people I worked with at Packt provided a great
blend of guidance and support. David Barnes, Brinell Lewis, and
Swapna Verlekar all worked with me to keep the project on track,
and I thank them for the opportunity to write this book.
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About the Reviewers
An avid user of the Drupal framework since 2006, Joel "Senpai" Farris is highly
active in the Drupal Community as a Document Maintainer, Patch Tester, core and
contributed modules Patch Creator, and an expert in the support of and care for
new Drupalites.
Under the monicker Senpai (http://groups.drupal.org/user/4009), Joel co-led
the charge for the Drupal Dojo training sessions (http://drupaldojo.net) for over
a year, and was joined in that endeavor by some of the community's most famous
personas, including Josh Koenig (http://groups.drupal.org/user/429) of
Chapter 3, LLC (http://www.chapterthree.com), Addison Berry (http://groups.
drupal.org/user/1607) of Lullabot (http://www.lullabot.com), Squidster
(http://groups.drupal.org/user/3763), Dmitri Gaskin (http://groups.
drupal.org/user/1322), and many, many others who gave freely of their time
so that all people could learn ninja Drupal tactics in a cutting-edge and
edifying environment.
Joel currently functions as the Chief Operations Officer for the new San Diego
WorkHabit offices, and is passionate about any opportunity to get the company's
staff involved in outreach operations. He is responsible for implementing and
maintaining the WorkHabit Community Fridays, in which qualified individuals take
an entire payday to work on one selected core or contrib patch in order to further
Drupal's progress.
Thanks go to my parents, who were both lifelong educators and
enabled me to begin learning computers from the dawn of personal
computing, and my sister who's currently teaching grade school and
loving it. Thanks also to Bill Fitzgerald, who's devotion to Excellence
In Drupal has far surpassed what even he thought was possible only
a year ago. Go, Bill, go!
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Michael Peacock (http://www.michaelpeacock.co.uk) is a web developer
from Newcastle, UK, and has a degree in Software Engineering from the University
of Durham. After meeting his business partner whilst studying at Durham,
he co-founded Peacock Carter (http://www.peacockcarter.co.uk) a
Newcastle-based creative consultancy specializing in web design, web
development, and corporate identity.
Michael loves working on web-related projects, and when he isn't working on client
projects he is often tinkering in a web application of his own invention. He has been
involved with a number of books, having written two books himself (and is working
on his third!): Selling online with Drupal e-Commerce (Packt), Building websites with
TYPO3 (Packt), and acted as a technical reviewer for Mobile Web Development (Packt)
and Drupal Education & E-Learning (Packt).
You can follow Michael on Twitter: www.twitter.com/michaelpeacock.
Peter Wolanin has been programming since elementary school. He attended
Princeton University and went on to earn his Ph.D. in Physics at the University
of Michigan. Following his biophysics thesis work, Peter returned to Princeton
University and conducted post-doctoral work in the Department of Molecular
Biology. At Michigan and Princeton, Peter taught lab and seminar courses for
undergraduate students.
Peter became interested in using Drupal through a friend who learned of it through
its use by the Howard Dean Presidential campaign. He started contributing to
Drupal core development in 2006, helped to rewrite the menu system, rewrote the
book module for Drupal 6, is actively participating in Drupal 7 development, is a
member of the Drupal security and documentation teams, and maintains several
contributed modules.
Peter started working for Acquia, Inc., in the summer of 2008, as a senior engineer.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Introduction 7
What is Drupal 7
Drupal—A Short Historical Overview 8
What Drupal Can Do For You 8
Drupal Terminology 9
Taking Notes 11
Summary 12
Chapter 2: Installing Drupal 13
Assumptions 13
The Domain 14
The Web Host 14
Web Server 14
PHP version 14
MySQL version 14
FTP and Shell Access to Your Web Host 14
A Local Testing Environment 15
The Most Effective Way versus The Easy Way 15
Installing Drupal—The Quick Version 15
Installing Drupal—The Detailed Version 16
Getting the Codebase 16
Creating the Database and the Database User 17
Completing the Install 19
Enabling Core Modules 23
Assigning Rights to the Authenticated User Role 25
Summary 27
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Table of Contents
Chapter 3: Getting Started 29
The Core Install 29
Core User Functionality 30
My Account 30
Create Content 32
Log Out 32
Administrative Functionality 32
Content Management 33
Site Building 35
Site Configuration 36
User Management 37
Reports 37
Next Steps: Building the Foundation 39
Installing Modules and Themes 39
Files 40
Directories 40
Core Modules and Themes 40
The Sites Directory 40
Adding Modules and Themes: The Steps 41
Step 1: Download 42
Step 2: Decompress 43
Step 3: Upload 43
Step 4: Enable 44
Configuring Modules and Themes 45
Modules and Themes: A Summary 46
Creating Roles 46
Creating Content Types 47
Step 1: Creating the Content Type 48
A: Identification 50
B: Submission Form Settings 50
C: Workflow Settings 52
D: Comment Settings 53
Step 2: Adding Fields 54
Step 3: Assigning Taxonomies 59
Identification 61
Content Types 61
Settings 61
Step 4: Assigning Privileges 61
The Result 64
Creating Content Types: A Summary 64
Creating Views 65
Step 1: Add a View 66
Step 2: Set the Defaults 68
Step a: Adding Fields 69
Step b: Adding Filters 75
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Table of Contents
Step c: Adding Arguments (optional) 78
Step d: Setting Style 79
Step e: Setting Additional Configuration Options 81
Step 3: Add a Display Type 82
Save Your View! 89
Creating Views: A Summary 89
Summary 89
Chapter 4: Creating a Teacher Blog 91
Installing the Text Editor 91
Uploading and Enabling FCKeditor 91
Configuring FCKeditor 93
Assigning Permissions 95
Editing the Advanced Profile 97
Editing Visibility Settings in the Global Profile 98
Setting the Proper Input Formats 99
Creating Content Types for the Teacher Blog 102
The Blog Post Content Type 103
Add Fields 103
Assign Taxonomy 104
Assign Permissions 104
Hey! Why Not Use the Blog Module? 106
The Assignment Content Type 106
Getting Started: Installing Modules 107
The Assignment Content Type 108
Add Fields 109
Assign Taxonomy 112
Assign Permissions 113
Sample Users and Testing 113
Adding New Users 113
Section Summary 114
Adding Sample Content 115
Views for the Teacher Blog and Assignments 117
The Teacher Blog View 118
Add a View 118
Set the Defaults 118
Add a Display Type 122
The Assignment View 123
Editing the Default Values 124
Edit the Calendar Page Display 129
Summary 131
Chapter 5: Enrolling Students 133
Understanding Roles, and Assigning Rights 133
Assigning Rights 134
Rights for the Student Role 134
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