Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

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anapologetos
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Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

Post by anapologetos » Sun Apr 13, 2008 2:28 am

Not sure if this is the right forum, but I couldn't find any kind of "general" forum--
Anyways....
I have the opportunity to teach at a local private middle-school about 45 7th graders (divided into 2 groups) 3 or 4 50 minute periods. (so basically 3 or 4 hours total)
It is a computer class, and the teachers are trying to find some new/exciting things to teach to them.
I have been working with Joomla! since before when it was Mambo, and I thought this might be a cool opportunity to give these students exposure to something like Joomla! We have the resources at the school to run up to 15 virtualized instances of Joomla!, so I was thinking of dividing the class into groups of 2 or 3, and teaching them the basics of Joomla!, then having them be able to play with their own instance of it. I was thinking of making my own repository of extensions and templates so that they dont get too overwhelmed... but what do you guys think?
First, is it going to be over their heads?
Secondly, do you think it would be interesting for them? I havent ever really taught a class before, but I have done alot of one on one teaching Joomla!.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!
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Re: Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

Post by Michelle Bisson » Sun Apr 13, 2008 5:06 pm

Excellent idea! Start out with the basics. Then teach them more advanced fonctions. Let them explore the software and do their own research as well on the documentation site and forum.

There is a sub forum specificially dedicated to Schools and Universities.

http://forum.joomla.org/viewforum.php?f=265

I'll let the global moderators know to move this post to that forum so that you can continue the discussion with others.

Michelle
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Re: Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

Post by user deleted » Sun Apr 13, 2008 5:58 pm

I'll let the global moderators know to move this post to that forum so that you can continue the discussion with others.

Michelle
Moderator note; moving from Events >> Schools and Universities

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Re: Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

Post by anapologetos » Mon Apr 14, 2008 10:34 pm

Does anybody have any other ideas?
Do you guys really think that 12/13 y/o's will be interested in Joomla!?
Thanks!
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Re: Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

Post by Michelle Bisson » Mon Apr 14, 2008 10:53 pm

Why not? What do you want to use the site for? A class website? Maybe you can describe what you are hoping to accomplish. I have a client who wanted me to give her 12 year old some Joomla! training so that she could update her website.

You might like to check out this sub forum to see if there are other schools with this age bracket who are trying to integrate a Joomla! Website into the curriculum.

Have fun!
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Re: Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

Post by anapologetos » Tue Apr 15, 2008 12:30 am

Well, as I stated on my orginal post, it is a 7th grade computer class--they are wanting to do something different==I was thinking:
-Split them up into groups of 3, and allow them to login to their own virtualized joomla install
-teach them about:
-Categories, etc..
-Templates
-Extensions
and then allow them to try and do it themselves picking from templates/ext that I have downloaded to a repository..
any thoughts?
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Re: Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

Post by Wendy » Tue Apr 15, 2008 4:24 am

Not sure if you had this in mind already, but I would maybe simplify it a little more by giving them a list of website topics to choose from (favourite music group, sports team, game system, animal, etc).

If possible, perhaps the teacher could get them to choose ahead of time and do a little research on their subjects so that when its time start building a site they'll have a better idea of what their content is and in turn a better idea of what template and types of extensions to use.

Basically, giving them a specific reason to use Joomla! will make the learning process easier.

Overall, your plan sounds like a great opportunity for the students :)
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Re: Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

Post by aboyd5292 » Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:26 pm

that sounds like something that i would have wanted to do in grade school. when i use joomla, before i post it to my site, i test it out using WampServer. just install it on each computer and follow Wamp directions, its completely free and the kids can access it from any computer as long as the computer is running the Wamp program, just put it in the startup folder and you are done! if you need any help, let me know.

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Re: Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

Post by anapologetos » Wed Apr 16, 2008 4:46 pm

RE: aboyd5292
Ya, we have that figured out--We are going to run Xen (virtualized) instances of Joomla! on a server, and have the students access their own instance...

One thing that I keep trying to figure out--If we want them to be able to personalize it, putting in their own logo/header would be really cool--but you really cant do that without getting alot more complicated---any ideas?

Thanks again!
Anapologetos

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Re: Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

Post by AmyStephen » Thu Apr 17, 2008 1:02 am

At the very, very top of the Absolute Beginner's Guide to Joomla! is an excellent recommendation for your class:
If you do nothing else, take time to complete the Joomla! v 1.5 Quick Start Guide, written by Kevin Hayne. As you read the guide, walk through the video accompaniment created by Michael Casha. This is a well developed and efficient training guide and video set.
That guide and video were developed by two of our outstanding GHOP students (high school) and it is excellent. It will walk your students through each step to create a Joomla! website -- and adapt the default template. It will not take long for them to go through the material - and the videos can be viewed on their computers, too.

Hope this is still timely. It will be great to learn about your success, too!

All the best,
Amy :)

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Re: Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

Post by naturestemp » Sat Apr 19, 2008 4:34 pm

I was searching for an answer before I posted the question, how do I import my joomla site files to Wamp which I have installed and I came across this thread. Made me smile. Where can I enroll in this class? I may end up being rated as a special needs student though.

John Wade
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Re: Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

Post by tdawg » Sat Apr 19, 2008 4:46 pm

http://connerpro.com/site

I just want to say, oh yeah that age group can get into joomla.
Here is a 12 year old guy from Denver that I taught Joomla to, over the course of a dive trip in La Paz. We did it on the hotel computer. It all started with searching for a cool domain name, and I think his is cool, his name is conner, and he's a pro.

I find that he asks me bursts of questions, that get him over little humps of understanding. I find that little bursts of help, and periods where he just explores helps a bunch. Maybe in a classroom, you walk between them, fixing problems, listening to what they want to do next, then telling them how to do it.

http://connerpro.com/site
Now 6 months later, he is making all sorts of new media, and putting it up on his site. He eats it up, and sends me email asking questions all the time.

He just sent me this:
http://www.joomlatemplatebuilder.com/te ... uilder.php
That made template building easy for him.

Cheers!

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Re: Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

Post by tdawg » Sat Apr 19, 2008 5:00 pm

One more thing, I just visited his site for the first time in a while, here's quite a parody that he did of teaching in the modern day. What I like is that he provided a solution to the problem.
http://connerpro.com/site/index.php/Dig ... Tools.html

The kid amazes me.

One more thing, I give him free hosting (until he starts making his millions), so it does take SOMETHING to help these kids out, how do we get all kids free hosting, and make sure their content stays clean, while giving them the freedom to create what they want?

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Re: Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

Post by Michelle Bisson » Sun Apr 20, 2008 4:31 am

When organizing the class project, you might like to group them into teams depending on their interests.

Ex.
- Those who have good writing skills may be interested in writing the content,
- Those who have artistic skills concentrate on the graphics - http://www.sxc.hu/ is a great source for free graphics. Some graphics have restrictions or need to get permission before using them but many have no restrictions.
- Those who are more technically minded can focus on those things. ex. configuring Joomla! menu structure etc...
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Re: Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

Post by rgautam » Fri May 23, 2008 5:12 pm

Its really interesting idea. I'm not clear here that you are interested to teach Joomla as MS Word to update sites contents or go in detail with php, javascript, css.
I'm also a computer teacher and this kind of thought also comes in my mind and i also talk with students and other staffs. The problem i've found is student have to a lot work to learn these things and they don't get enough time to be fully concentrated in this topic. As we are computer professional and we like programmming and we are interested in CMS but all student may not be interested to learn these things. In my personal view CMS are necessary for the person who wants to run website and if we teach this to all the student this may not be interesting and useful for all.

In my openion its better to talk about joomla in class for only one day and if any student is interested then guide him/her after class. One small coding mistake eat up many hours of students time so its better to guide only interested students.


thanks.
please comment this reply.....

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Re: Teaching Joomla! to 7th grade class....

Post by anapologetos » Thu Jun 19, 2008 11:28 pm

Hey all,

Thanks for all the great ideas and comments--I just finished the class 2 weeks ago, and it went really well!
We actually ended up having 75 7th and 8th graders split up into 3 classes--I got 5 50min. periods with each class.
We basically went over the basics (creating users, Sections, Categories, Articles, backend & frontend, etc) we then went into messing with templates and some simple extensions--It sounded like the students really enjoyed it.

As for the technical side of it, I decided to run 28 instances of Joomla! in 28 Xen Dom's--It was a good learning experiance for me! :) For more details and a How To, check out my blog at http://tothelasttribe.com/blog/?p=14

Thanks again!
Anapologetos


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