Bud the Teacher

In conjunction with our work within the Drupal community and with OpenAcademic, we have brought a site live for people to check out: http://drupaled.alphabetademo.org

The site can function as a blogging platform, a podcasting platform,
a wiki, an informal learning space, a course management space, and/or
as a replacement for an organizational intranet. Within the site, users
can create working groups or communities of practice. The site also
supports social bookmarking. The homepage of the site gives a more
complete overview of the functionality.

We would like to turn this site into a downloadable installation
profile as quickly as possible, so that whoever wants this
functionality can grab it and install it. This install profile will be
released under the GPL license.

If you want to check the site out, feel free to create an account and play around. If you want to get involved, we’d love your help!

• To start, we’d love to get people’s first impressions as they check
  out the site, What made sense? What was intuitive? What was confusing?
  We have set up a wiki page for this feedback;
  your responses will help us tweak the look and feel of the site to make
  it easier to use. Please, share your thoughts! The more feedback we
  get, the more tweaking we can do.
• Second, what do people need to know about using the site? We have begun some "Getting Started" documentation
  that people can build as they work through the site. What functionality
  do people need to know about as they use the site? This documentation
  wouldn’t need to be technical, but rather should lay out how to use the
  site from an end-users perspective: ie, click here to do this.
  

  As I envision it, this "Getting Started’ documentation will be
  edited/distilled into a user’s manual that will be included in the
  final install profile. This way, people who are new to Drupal, or new
  to working in an online environment, will have some guidance to help
  them get up to speed.
  

• Third: Spot where it’s broken. See a broken link? Let us know about it.
• Fourth: Theming. If there are any graphic artists/designers who
  want to throw some expertise into making the site look pretty, please
  let us know by leaving a comment here, or on this post.
• Fifth: Add your name to the contributor list.
  If you added documentation, provided feedback, or helped get the site
  live, let the world know. The Contributors List, along with the Getting
  Started documentation, will ship with the site.

After we have received some input from the community (aka you), we will bring a version of this site live at DrupalEd.org
– in addition to providing a blogging platform for people who would
want one, the DrupalEd site could also become a place for educators to
get feedback on the non-technical issues of teaching and working online.

As I said, it’s pretty dynamic — but can and will get better as folks share feedback and responses and suggestions and ideas.  I’d encourage you to give it a look.  Bill’s a very responsive guy — and he’s eager for your thoughts.  Give it a whirl.