This is the PDF report from the collaborative text editor session we had open during the presentation of Training Wheels - Learning and Teaching Drupal. Frozen in time immediately after the session. The live version is up at http://etherpad.com/DrupalSouth

1. Training Wheels: Learning and Teaching Drupal
When I say Training? What do you think?
and start typing....
wooooo!
What is training?
• Teaching and learning
• Mentoring
• Tutorials, examples
• Trial and error
• Structured education
• Empowerment
• Recipes
• Teaching is the best way to learn - synthesizes, also serendipity
• Pedagogy is the practice of education or the theory behind it
• Study pedagogy, practice education
• 4-5 pedagogies (basic education to advanced), or as many as there are educators...
Who needs training?
• users?
• designers?
• developers?
• usability experts?
• security specialists?
• sys-admins?
• CEOs and mangagement
• you?
• me!
Tips for training
• Re-teach something within 24 hours to /really/ learn it
• Recipe books don't work; you follow recipe, you don't learn the theory but they are great for a quick
start. This could be a separate discussion, because I find recipes to have some value for helping a
student lay an initial mental framework for a subject. Definitely a reciipe can create lots of questions
if there is someone there to answer them!
• Recipe books with suitable notes. Tutorial Recipies?
•
Certification
• Replace with benchmarking over testing
• Portfolios more useful?
• how (whether) to assess?
• we are taught a curriculum, can we echo it back (one model)

2. • Is assessment useful at all? (no. too subjective)
• Teach people how to evaluate a drupal.org profile page. That is a good way to understand their drupal
knowledge.
• http://theingots.org/: self assessment on office suite work.
• If politics are involved, certification can become a nightmare (e.g. the ECDL in Europe)
•
- What does best practice look like? Who does the 'best' training? Can we learn from them?
- When will the Acquia / Drupal Association certification program be ready? What might it look like
• Drupal Association has zero interest in developing "official" ceritification. We prefer to let the market
sort it out. good.
• Acquia's program is called "Yellow Jersey" It seems to be stagnated atm, but information is available
at http://acquia.com/community/projects/wiki/yellow-jersey. I doubt it will be stagnant for long since
it would seem like a good income stream (to them) in the long term.
• In paris, Acquia asked companies to contact them to be chosen to create training videos for them,
which they would host in a way that they can monetise, with the idea that income is shared between
the creator and Acquia. The idea behind this is to allow them to 1) rapidly build a video resource
library to cover many topics 2) put the onus on the creator to keep the materials fresh. I think the idea
then was that they could create certification courses use the videos for course material. I don't know if
or how this is relatd to yellow jersey.
• There is already at least one certification program in the market:
http://www.nobleprog.co.uk/certification/nobleprog+drupal+certification
• There was an intersting discussion about ceritfication and the community's reaction to it at
http://www.lullabot.com/blog/do-you-wanna-be-lullabot-drupal-certified. Another one at Dries's blog
http://buytaert.net/on-drupal-certification-programs
• emmajane adds that certification is "brutally expensive to develop". BSD as an example.
• http://www.orcesbr.ca/ojs/index.php/osbr - Open Source Business Resource
• http://www.bsdcertification.org/
• Perl Training http://perltraining.com.au/ has all of their course materials available online. In binary,
branded format (not a wiki).
• Still having a super negative reaction to the idea of "Drupal Certification". Knowledge gets outdated
very fast. It feels like BS to me and sort of a scam... Build classes and self assessment and portfolios
and transparent profile sorts of things, not Certification by some authority. *is an anarchist* *rant
rant *
•
- Where are the best resources? Can we share them? Can we build on them?
http://gotdrupal.com/ - excellent videos, sometimes technical but generally from a blank page perspective
http://learnbythedrop.com/ - another excellent series of videos, some paid ones available as well
http://planetdrupal.tv/ - an aggregator for video tutorials from across the web
http://drupal.org/handbook/customization/videocasts - List on drupal.org of all kinds of video turtorial stuff
under a variety of licenses

3. http://www.lullabot.com/ :)
- How can we work together to train our users and colleagues, and extend our own skills and knowledge?
Training material resource bank
- Can we all help build a resource bank of training materials available under an open license so the
community can contribute and develop a collaborative and modular course design that's flexible and
adaptable, and able to be freely translated into other languages?
- What does the Drupal learning curve look like? What skills do people need? Can they adapt skills from
other CMS's?
- Can we develop comparison tables so people can map their existing knowledge against the Drupal skill
set?
Links / Resources / Etc
http://drupalkata.com/home
http://drupalkata.com/drupalopenlearning/node/42
http://groups.drupal.org/node/15975/
Donna doing kung fu? I'd pay 2 c that :D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed Mind blowing concepts about teaching and
decolonization.
INGOTS International Grades - Open Technology http://theingots.org
This is really annoying: http://theingots.org/community/redtrainingshoe Ah, "Internet Safety" What the hell
is that? random