Drupal 8 An Introduction

H2CM new website - A short-form project brief

In Dani Nordin’s Drupal for Designers, chapter 4 is includes a short-form project brief.

As I pack for Prague and another Drupalcon (my 6th!) and with PHPNW conference fast approaching it's time I re-visited my project brief:

1 Identify the Project Goals

According to Nordin a good list of project goals should be no more than about three bullet points.

1. To provide a new archive for Brian Hodges’ lecture notes and make these accessible and multilingual
2. To share / signpost papers to date and invite others to collaborate and share work
3. To highlight why Hodges’ model matters

Then Dani moved to personas and here I'll extend the above goals.

2 Identify the Audience

I am looking for student nurses, that is under graduates and post grad, indeed life-long learners within the field of health and social care. In seeking students the natural progression of this is to connect if possible with lecturers and faculty. Nordin lists several ways to characterise the personas through common aspects:

• Who they are
• What will win them
• What I need them to know
• Content focus

So immediately I can broadly identify and develop two personas:

Learners

Who they are: Student nurses, social work students including medicine and other health and social care disciplines. They will be seeking evidence in theory and practice, with sources and resources to apply to assigned work. They will also be open to ideas and techniques that can help them to structure and recall their learning.
What will win them: Make it easy for them to see what is offered, find what they seek, Brian Hodges' lecture notes, provide feedback on learning if students are willing to register and invest their time. Provide a responsive contact form to answer questions promptly. Link the content to evidence if, or as soon as possible. Make content relevant by allowing users to contribute to website's development and direction.
What I need them to know: I want to convey to them an understanding of Hodges’ model its purposes, structure, content and how the model might be applied in theory and practice.
Content focus: Lecture notes text and video; Quiz; Test; Certificate; h2cm grid; Case study template; Presentations; FAQ; Registration; Contact form; Polls; Bibliography; Biographies; Timeline; Photos.

Lecturers

Who are they: Health and social care related faculty, teaching on nursing, social work, learning disability and other programmes. A diverse range of subjects and disciplines could be included from mental health, acute care, community and across the life course.
What will win them: Illustrate the ways h2cm can facilitate learning the aspects of (for example) nursing, not only reinforcing the key concepts of nursing (care) but why they care.
What I need them to know: Understanding how h2cm fits within their respective curriculum. Gaining awareness of how can the model can potentially stimulate and challenge their students and complement assignments. Why Hodges' model is relevant at this particular time.
Content focus: Brian Hodges' lecture notes; Outstanding questions; Research directions; Blog; Contact form; Registration; h2cm examples.

On the old website I possibly over-egged the pudding in terms of 'audiences'. There is an introductory page for -

• students and lecturer; 
• patients and carers;
• the public (citizens);
• and managers with policy makers.

Nordin has a persona for The Sharer. There are people for whom this is their forte. Here though I would try to include sharing tools that might be utilised by specific audiences. So for lecturers ways sharing might be Academia.edu, ResearchGate and LinkedIn. Likewise there are student (social media oriented) communities.The content of the old was fixed - by me. This needs to change, so polls and discussion may help define what the students / lecturers would like to see, hear ...

3 Focus on Information Architecture and Content Strategy

Nordin is describing a website re-design and so am I with some simplifications. Taking step 3 literally and from reading having an information architecture is very important to me. Its importance is not just in earning a scout badge, but it may need to vary slightly across the site. Nordin's step three seems to emphasize content. I'm wondering about headings, subtitles and other structural and aesthetic points. How might these work and hopefully cohere across the archive and rest of the site? It is also the case of separating (in my head) information architecture and styling.

As to content strategy I've played and doodled with this on several occasions. There's even an A, B, C, ... about it if you check above.

4 Identify New Features or Technologies You Want to Include

Responsive design is as Nordin also indicates a must have for me. In successive Drupalcon keynotes Dries Buytaert has stressed the rise of mobile devices. It would be a major gain to have the archive readable by mobile and tablet users.

Thus far I've not made full use of video, Skype and even audio for delivering content. At Drupalcon Prague there's a session media management and the Scald module. I'm hardly a radio or TV station but as people say DO consider those things that you are not skilled at, or naturally drawn to. Slides and presentations both existing and contributions (or links) would also be a key content feature.

If a community can emerge this might also be that as Nordin suggests users can share internally within the site using (unconsciously) specific structures within Drupal. The latest means of classifying and searching a site will also be essential. Seeking to share h2cm with the world I've scheduled some sessions on leveraging the multilingual capabilities of Drupal 8.

Accessibility is another essential feature.

5 Upgrade, or Start from Scratch

This, thankfully, is not an upgrade. To the list in #4 I could have added database - a dynamic website because this is the primary need, the enabler. With that though comes complexity and responsibility. Website management then demands data be protected, secure, backed up, and this involves migration and upgrades. So, starting from scratch - yes, but with an eye to upgrading.

The NW Drupal meetings in Manchester and Drupalcon Prague program bring the news of the many new tools and changes in Drupal 8:

• Views in core;
• New configurable fields e.g. entity reference, date, e-mail and others;
• Multilingual changes;
• Blocks & Layouts;
• Responsive images and breakpoints.
  
  From Drupalcon Prague "Drupal 8 for Site Builders" session

In addition there is Symfony, the loss of some hooks, Twig a templating engine.

6 Figure Out Theming and CSS Issues

If .Net and Web Designer magazines inform us of two things it's the pace of change in tools and the range of tools. It's helpful then when those choices are reduced. This may be the case with CSS within Drupal and adopting a grid system, a point made by Todd Nienkerk (p.79).

There are some excellent themes and sub-themes within Drupal 7. Drupal 8 extends this potential. I posted previously about Omega.

To conclude:
I think there is an interesting project here, but thinking alone isn't going to get this done!

H5P framework: rich content and applications in Drupal

If I ever get to create a new site devoted to Hodges' model it will be an enjoyable experience. A couple of weeks ago I learned of a framework H5P (also a file format) that can be integrated into Drupal to create content types for educational purposes.

In addition to the archive material on the model, it is important to offer students a means to test their knowledge. This might involve a trial of several modules, including H5P:

H5P is a framework for creating HTML5 content and applications that can be easily moved between web-sites. H5P facilitates sharing and reuse of code used in rich content and applications. H5P also includes an authoring tool so that H5P content may be created and edited using a web-browser.
Organizations and governments spend millions of dollars creating rich Internet content, games and applications. The code used may be shared here on h5p.org as libraries so that others may fill in their own content and reuse the code.

Drupalcon Portland is now underway and I'm looking forward to tuning in live and following sessions, starting with Dries' keynote. This should begin at 7.30pm here in the UK. Drupalcon Munich seems ages ago now (4.7 even longer ..! ) and suddenly Prague is on the horizon.

Additional link:

Quiz Questions Import for Drupal 7 released

DrupalCamp North West November 24-25 Manchester

If your are based in the North West of England, or can travel to Manchester there are plans for a DrupalCamp in November 24-25th at Media City Salford.

You can sign up for news - http://ow.ly/dvj8r.

For the next few months the North West Drupal User Group are having 'back to basics' sessions (Madlab, Manchester 1st Weds in the month). I'm really grateful to Phil who sorted VirtualBox and DrupalPro on my Macbook last Wednesday. I've been struggling with MAMP since Drupalcon in Munich, asking too much of the conference wifi and paying the price with 'MySQL server gone away' and PDO errors. DrupalPro is quite something behold.

Thanks to the NW gang, friends old and new. Before DrupalCamp there is also PHPNW 2012 to enjoy next month.

Update: Drupal 7.14 + 8 and papers

My laptop is four years old next month and a refurb at that. The DVD and webcam no longer work. The Apple store in Manchester helped me update the OS to Snow Leopard and I'll catch up with the rest of the cat pack soon.

It seems I've 'summer cleaned', deleting files and older Drupal installs, the rain making me think it's April. Drupal 7.14 and version 8 are insitu. Drupal 8 would not install, MAMP's version of PHP being too old. I'm sure I checked the site, but must have missed the MAMP update which is now running. Trying to resolve this issue one really useful find c/o PHPNW is the package manager HomeBrew.

This weekend I'll upload my first Drupal test site. It's for a family member not a client, but this does not mean that the passing of time - months, years... has gone unnoticed. It's a pretty basic site, nothing elaborate. Three pages: About me, DJ-ing, and an Enquiry form. The enquiry form has been created using the Webform module.

I want the user form to be clean, without the tab options (view, edit...) being displayed. I removed them using Tab Tamer. There may be an easier way to do this - over riding, for example but it is all learning. The development effort is still not helped by picking Drupal up, putting it down...

The 'client' then wanted comments added to the form. Searching around the content types, module configurations ... was getting frustrating, a search brought me to the Drupal community and voila: success! Comments added to form. User requirements have shifted further ;-) the Sound Engineering page is to be reinstated. At least it's just a case of re-enabling it (I think) and tweaking the menu. This experience reminded me of tips from local Drupal meetings and Drupalcons: keeping a record of changes. If a new h2cm site is to be created then a log will be essential. If there is a new version of the DJ site then I will definitely use a responsive theme.

Drupalcon Munich is fast approaching. I've checked the schedule and created my personal itinerary. With Drupal 8 on the horizon for late 2013 the core conversations should be popular. I'm really looking forward to it. There are no BoFs (birds of a feather) sessions planned as yet on education or mental health. Anyone interested? I'll see if I can submit something.

On the papers front; when the details are known the bibliography entry will be fully completed:

Doyle, M., Jones, P. (2012-13) Hodges’ Health Career Model and its role and potential application in Forensic Mental Health Nursing, Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing.

I am still keen to explore the possibility of a symposium session next May as per previous posts. Likewise if there are any teaching opportunities in Australia to share Hodges' model and help to fund the (ad)venture please let me know.

Musings on a mixed and busy fortnight: Oxford Drupal Education Camp

There is a busy fortnight coming up here. If all goes according to plan it runs like this: Drupal, Visual Methodologies and Ruby.

On Thursday evening I will travel down to Oxford for Drupal Education Camp. My first Drupal effort is taking shape. There are five photos in a jCarousel. I think I'm almost there but after the five scroll through there are five empty placeholders or blanks. It's probably just a tweak to the settings. The enquiry form is completed. I'm not happy about the formatting which seems to characterise many Drupal pages: that of the long series of fields. Listening to discussion at Drupal NW this month also reminded me of the need for spam capture.

I'm hoping one or two Drupal mental health contacts from Cambridge in January may also attend. The accepted sessions for Oxford present a very useful mix (timing permitting), especially:

Drupal 7 Semantizer

How we built a virtual learning environment

There was a debate on the longevity of VLEs in Wolverhampton in 2008-09. As I tried to look up that event I noticed that variations on the theme of "The VLE is dead, long live the VLE" are still doing the rounds. Clearly a case of the undead.

So, three - four years on this should insightful: What is a VLE? Is there a hybrid form? How far can Drupal be pushed? Why do students use FB and by-pass the institutional 'tools'? Perhaps it's because the institutions are busy deliberating the existence of this TLA versus that?

Migrating data into Drupal using the migrate module

NeuroHub: The information environment for Neuroscientists

The content of a new h2cm website will (yes, I know....) combine archive material - Brian Hodges' notes - with new work. For student users a means to assess and measure understanding of the content makes sense. I implemented a crude multiple choice test. The questions were probably not too bad, but there was no log-in, administration. If assessment can be done in a standardised way then that would be a huge bonus. What a new site should be about though is facilitating students in developing their knowledge and application of Hodges' model. The context of that knowledge and application need not be wholly limited to nursing.

After Oxford, on Monday 25th and after work I'm heading east to Newcastle for two days. I'll reflect on that soon. The trick is going to be threading all these together.

Mental health follow-up II: Drupal ScienceCamp Cambridge 20-21st Jan 2012

After the birds of a feather (BoF) session in Cambridge last month I spent an hour chatting to Beatrice and Matthew Taylor who share my interest in mental health and Drupal.

Since that Sunday morning I've exchanged emails with them both and am sharing some points here raised by Matthew. ...

Matthew:
There are lots of things that I'd like to talk to you about. I've been browsing your pages on the Hodges' Model and I'm really impressed. You've done a huge amount of work.

PJ:
Thanks for that! A lot of the content in the website is quite dated and the HTML & styling reflects this, but positive feedback is always very welcome and I also greatly appreciate your bringing the repeated paragraph in the Michel Serres paper to my attention (corrected now).

Matthew:
It seems to me, on first reading, that you're looking at things from within an institutional setting and that I'm on the outside. However, I can see that there are ways in which the two perspectives could overlap and that the technology now exists that can facilitate the testing of the fit between different health models (and their creation in the first place).

PJ:
Yes, I'm looking at things from an institutional setting in terms of working within the NHS (with regular social care contact), being on the service side of the nurse education system, and working amid a mechanistic medical system that also seeks to be (psycho-)social in orientation. H2cm - Hodges' model however, helps to provide flexibility in the perspectives we can adopt.

In that respect I left the 'institution' in 1985 to work in the community. Your point Matthew is a very useful reminder about not taking things for granted and to what extent is 'community care' free of the institution? What has the institution (of old) become?

I suppose the other side to this is that you are not on the outside. Instead of pushed into the nooks and recesses of individual minds, we need positive mental health to be pushed into the open. The community, the commons, society. We need an infusion of insight to combat stigma and a misalignment - holistic asymmetry - in physical and mental health education and delivery.

Matthew:
As you probably gathered, the direction that I'm coming from is that of personally managed mental health care records. Here are some of the websites that I'm using as guides:

http://www.media.mit.edu/research/groups/1465/collaborhythm
http://indivohealth.org/
http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/

PJ:
These website are well worth knowing about - thanks very much. I'll explore them in more depth. Making enquiries (seeking guidance) on my research aims it was suggested to me just before Christmas (c/o Wolverhampton University) that my work seems to be more about ontology than a literature search. I've realised this for quite a while. Key attractions of Drupal include its RDF functionality and the examples provided by specific modules such as Neologism.

Matthew:
I'm currently building an ontology for mental health (from a virtual world perspective) using OBO edit http://oboedit.org . My objective is to embed the ontology in a Drupal website http://www.playsthething.org.uk/ that also exists to promote a conference on well-being.

PJ:
I'm clear that I'm not about to create a mental health record system, truly fascinating a project as that may be (especially in some sectors). There are proprietary and open source solutions out there. I'm also aware of problems with the uptake of Google's, the NHS's and Microsoft's respective attempts to engage with the self-maintained and managed e-record. Drupal's appeal for me also lies in e-learning and using Drupal educationally.

If you've a specific objective in mind Matthew then that immediately cuts through my concerns and that's excellent. I'm lost in my own bag of potential users and requirements. The thought of embedding a health ontology into Drupal is an exciting prospect. I wonder if there is a basic ontology that could fit with h2cm (as one or more conceptual spaces)?

Matthew:
I've been asked to guest edit a section of ArtsProfessional magazine, coming out in May, that will be focused on arts and well-being. I'm going to use it as the opportunity for launching the 'Moonshot for Mental Health' that I touched on at the Cambridge Drupal conference.

If you'd like to write something for the magazine/website on the theme of arts and well-being (and why we need a moonshot for mental health) then just let me know. I can let you know more if you'd like to follow this up.

PJ:
I really would like to contribute, so although I work full-time please do f/w more details.

Last summer in Warrington at Disability Awareness Day (DAD) (July 15 for 2012) I came across Reflections. Specific examples of art were also displayed at this event at Walton Park by 5 Boroughs Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and others. There is so much more that the arts can offer in mental health and the residential care / nursing home sector.

Matthew:
I'd be delighted if you were able to promote a Drupal/MH meeting. I'll start putting something together. Let me know if you have any ideas.

PJ:
I will and would be pleased to assist. There may be scope for a venue in the NW - I could make enquiries at least. There is always Munich and the European Drupalcon this summer!

Thanks for getting in touch Matthew. Lovely to share and talk shop with you and Beatrice also. I hope we can meet again.
(I'll add your sites to the arts listing on Links III too.)

Matthew Taylor - Director - Escape Artists
Studio 24, 7-15 Greatorex St, London, E1 5NF                              
EscapeArtists.co.uk | Support our Work

Escape Artists promotes mental wellbeing through the arts. The charity works across sectors and art forms with homeless people, mental health care service users, young people at risk, prisoners and other disadvantaged groups: providing structured routes into further education, training and employment.

Registered Charity Number 1086004 | Company Limited by Guarantee 4041776

Join us on SANe - The Social Arts NEtwork

Follow-up: Drupal ScienceCamp Cambridge 20-21st Jan 2012

Stefan van Hooft @_iCompute kindly took these notes for the Mental Health session, 10.45am 22 January 2012 (mentioned previously on W2tQ). Stefan captured the topics that were quickly and briefly raised among the seven attendees (contact details provided but withheld here). I have added some [additional comments] and my response follows:

--- Twitter hash tags ---
Mental Health #mhuk #ukmh [global mental health hash?]

RDF
Solr
Sparkle [SparQL]

• accessibility within website
• openair Open source mental health [OpenEHR]
• mental health record
• care plans
Who has access to information?

•  Set up a system, you can give and revoke others access to your data
• "Flourishing" or "In treatment"

Use Drupal:
     - distribution
     - accessibility
     -
Is there a Group on drupal.org about mental health?

Security is crucial!
Pubsubhubbup [ http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/ ]
Spartacus report
Burn out
#Nhssm, NHS social media

<->

Dear Stefan and All,

STEFAN'S SELF-ASSESSMENT TOOL

I am interested in the application you showed, it reminds me of the STAR - SPIDER format and approach. I think there's a tool like this in forensic mental health - and no doubt other areas?

http://hodges-model.blogspot.com/2010/06/carers-support-evidence-measures-and.html

At some point Stefan it would be good to feature your image based tool when suitably complete on my blog; do you have a video at all?

HODGES MODEL

If anyone is interested in receiving more details on Hodges model please let me know. This model looks simple but it is really powerful in terms of scope and application.

In addition should anyone have key resource suggestions to add here they would be much appreciated:

http://www.p-jones.demon.co.uk/links.htm

FUTURE MEETING

Matthew mentioned the possibility of a small gathering combining mental health and Drupal. I'd be pleased to help with publicity - twitter, FB, Linkedin and the blog and have links with many other groups.

DRUPAL HEALTH GROUP

Here is the link to the health care Drupal group:

http://groups.drupal.org/healthcare

- note at the top the link to Drupal health care sites.

openEHR

Here is openEHR which I mentioned:

http://www.openehr.org/home.html

RDF and related

http://sciencecollaboration.org/download

http://drupal.org/project/neologism

Lovely to meet everyone and really pleased to have the chance to share an hour (after the meeting) with Beatrice and Matthew. It is *great* in fact that the mental health and disability came up at a Drupal meet. I hope to attend Drupalcon Munich so maybe there is scope for a BoF meeting in the summer?

<->

Shortly I'll post some additional observations by Matthew Taylor another participant. There I'll expand on my requirements and expectations of Drupal.

Drupal ScienceCamp Cambridge 20-21st Jan 2012

Two weeks ago Drupal ScienceCamp was a great success thanks to the organisers and sponsors. There were about 60 attendees with a European flavour too. Being a Science Park we had to circumvent the fence, the alternate access gates closed over the weekend. The three of us who left the hotel soon became six ... as we walked around to the very smart venue - Napp Pharmaceuticals Limited.

On the Saturday I attended sessions on responsive design, Drupal modules, Less CSS (at this point I wish I could have split in two Drupal search and Solr Wizardry had very positive comments), From flipcharts to Drupal Features, and Migration, upgrading and moving house. All very helpful.

Sunday was spontaneously self-organising. People offered to deliver sessions and meetings in a BoF - birds of a feather format, others requested the things they were seeking. Whether a sign of my time in Drupal [v. 4.7], or possibly Drupal's ever increasing diffusion or both; seven of us gathered around mental health and disability.
More on this to follow.  ...