Drupal for Education and elearning, book review

Drupal for Education and elearning by James G Robertson and Bill Fitzgerald

One of the commonalities with packt’s Drupal titles is that whilst covering a variety of themes, they often include a lot of basic material that is included in all titles. This makes the titles great for those looking to cover a particular theme or topic from start to finish, but for those looking for more depth (or reviewing titles) you will spend some time reading through familiar territory such as installing, modules, site maintenance etc. On one hand covering the basics each time enables the writers to put topics in  appropriate context for their audience, but on the other, it was could be a nice idea to sell smaller titles stripped down to the basics that only cover completely relevant topics.

Anyway, enough of that tanget.

“Drupal for Education and elearning” is basically a title that describes how to configure several modules to best appeal to a school audience, in this case blogs, groups, submitting assessments and presenting multimedia content, often tied into what you might want to do this and how it potentially ties into a school program. It does this by introducing modules such as views, organic groups, media and concepts such as fields, display modes, entities and relationships.

The book also delves into some more complex topics such as PHP snippets and command line interactions that feel a little forced in for good measure, but they do at least hint at the future potential of your website.

All in all a great introductory guide for those in education looking to explore Drupal who aren’t afraid of delving into the deep end after some brief paddling.