Drupalcon Boston 2008 - palantir

Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis

demet — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 18:40:27 +0000

The sites for Arts & Sciences (http://artsci.wustl.edu/), The College (http://college.artsci.wustl.edu/), and University College (http://ucollege.wustl.edu/) at Washingtion University in St. Louis are all part of a single multi-site Drupal implementation for the division of Arts & Sciences.

These sites provide faculty, students and staff with information about academic programs, student services and advising, school policies and procedures, as well as news, events, and a directory of school faculty. Each of the three sites has a consistent look-and-feel that also captures the unique personality of each school and its community.

The sites include profiles of featured students and articles about people and projects that are making the most of what Washington University in St. Louis has to offer.

Indianapolis Museum of Art

demet — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 18:10:54 +0000

One of the nation’s leading art museums in development of new media content, the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is committed to using cutting-edge museum technology as a means to engage and educate its visitors. By using Drupal the IMA was able to elevate their Web presence with an innovative, non-traditional site that allows them to better communicate directly with their audience.

The IMA site includes access to over 64,000 pieces of art in the museum’s collection, which are provided through integration with their digital asset management system. Each artwork page features catalog information on the artwork as well as two sizes of image. A third, larger image is available via an Ajax popup. Users can also read and post comments and tag artwork using the steve.museum open-source folksonomy system designed specifically for museums.

In addition to providing information about upcoming events, exhibitions, and other general information about the museum, the site also includes blogs and integration with IMA-produced YouTube video content.

Virtual Kindergarten / Virtual Pre-K

demet — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 17:51:19 +0000

The Web sites for Virtual Pre-K (http://www.virtualpre-k.org/) and Virtual Kindergarten (http://www.virtualk.org/) were originally built in 2001 and 2004 as part of an early childhood learning initiative at the Chicago Public Schools. These Web sites work in conjunction with a CD-ROM application and video lessons that are available for parents, teachers, and caregivers for use in the home, classroom and childcare centers.

The Virtual Pre-K and Virtual K Web sites are home to bilingual information that helps parents make the most of their children’s early learning. The program addresses key learning concepts with a focus on early literacy and on math, social studies, and science skills. Each lesson pulls together low-cost activities in the classroom, at home, and in the community to reinforce the home-school connection.

More than 400 public school classrooms and public libraries in the Chicago area use the program, as well as the Dallas Independent School District, a consortium of Southern California counties, the Washoe County (Nevada) School District, and the School District of Philadelphia. The Virtual Kindergarten site was a 2006 Webby Honoree and CODIE award winner.

The two Web sites were recently ported into Drupal for ease of maintenance and future expansion, as well as addition of new features, including a blog.

Collections at the Art Institute of Chicago

demet — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 17:34:21 +0000

The world-renowned Museum at the Art Institute of Chicago contains more than 300,000 works of art in nearly every period, genre and region of the world.

The newly-launched Drupal-powered Collections section allows users to explore over 25,000 works from the Art Institute of Chicago’s permanent collection online. This online collection provides basic information about works of art representing all areas of the encyclopedic collection.

Users can take advantage of the My Collections feature to create their own online collections of their favorite artworks. These personal collections can be shared with friends, students or teachers via e-mail or as a link on the user’s Web site, blog or page on a social networking site.

The Drupal installation is integrated with the Museum’s design-time content management system, Collage, which controls all global theme elements for the site, as well as the Art Institute’s proprietary digital asset management system, which is the source of all the artwork content.