Problems with new tools
i am having all sorts of problems with setting permissions on the Drupal site i have created. i want to make student blogs public so that i can pull them down with an RSS news reader and so that their blogs on my Drupal site can be read by the world. i also want to keep all course content and information private so that only students can view it. so far, i have accomplished keeping my blog private where i make course announcements, etc. however, the links i have at the top of each screen (i.e., course links i created) are showing up on the restricted page that anonymous users see and it’s the login screen for students. i would rather have these links show up after students get logged in. hmmm.
phpBB is also forcing me to spend a lot of time learning the ropes. as i mentioned previously, i have upgraded from version 2 to version 3 and this is a HUGE upgrade. all of the administration tools are new and permissions are vastly different. i ended up figuring things out, but i actually had to change the way i set things up to get it to work. i was pretty frustrated after spending the hours i spent. i am typically a pretty good guy at trial and error and figuring out how to tweak, but this stuff was boggling. i can’t imagine a teacher who isn’t very astute at using technical technology tools even hoping to use these tools if they have to set them up in the first place. that’s discouraging to me because i really want to be an open source cheerleader.
but, i think it’s sometimes nice to see that even geeks run into troubles using technology. heh.
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