July 2009
The Mix That Works
Submitted by jmanley on Thu, 07/09/2009 - 15:19
Sometimes, I describe our ministry niche as employing technology to bring Christian education as close to "the village" as possible. Sounds simple. But yesterday a few of us met with a family exploring membership with MAF. Somewhere in the conversation I mused that we in Learning Technologies offer a unique blend of art, on one hand and technology, on the other.
The technology aspects show up easily. Computers, networks, software development, audio players and cell phones from the IT side. Curriculum development, course writing, pedagogical theory, and distance education considerations from the instructional side. But what about art? Are we just a coalition of baud rates and constructivism? Or, does human creativity factor into our work as well?
As a jungle pilot I called on isolated villages every day. And, I quickly learned the peril of ignoring social subtleties. If I (in my 2nd language) said, "I'm sorry I forgot to bring your mail," they heard (also in their 2nd language) "I didn't bring it on purpose and if you don't like it you can lump it!" Kind of a bummer to realize that I'd come such a great distance only to educate them that Christians were mean, insensitive bullies.
Using Drupal as a Social Oriented Content Platform
Submitted by thettinger on Tue, 07/14/2009 - 14:20
One of MAF-LT's recent projects is to build a collaborative website for learning and technology. We are looking to create a constructive social platform similar to Facebook or Ning. However, we wanted it to be its own entity, and have features that were not readily available in those platforms. After looking through different options that would have the requirements of a blog, a forum, a wiki, and a library, we came up with a few different options: we could create a site with multiple platform tools, using the best software for each requirement, or use a solution such as Drupal, that has modules to integrate all the requirements into one platform. We decided to research options for Drupal, to see if it would meet our requirements. Read on for more information about our research into using Drupal as a wiki and a forum.
