I've just read Bill Fitzgerald's Drupal for Education and E-Learning, available from Packt Publishing. I'm writing this from and educator's point of view - that is as both a traditional classroom teacher guy and as a Drupal trainer.

It's a great book that covers the methods for adding blogs, forums, podcasts, and videos to a learning environment using Drupal as a platform. Those who have already decided that Drupal is a good choice for education will get good instruction - those on the edge might be persuaded to choose Drupal for their programs. Drupal offers a lot features out of the box, and even more with contributed modules, and the lessons in this book cover them squarely.

The author makes each lesson concise and digestible and has a well developed arc and learning curve throughout the book. Teaching Drupal in building blocks is key. The technical examples are all spot on and really show off the capacity and flexibility of Drupal. I am confident that readers will grasp the author's tutorials and be in a great place to roll with it as their learning continues. I can also appreciate the last chapter which lays out options for readers to learn more with free resources that already exist.

However, the one shortcoming of this book is that the author provides little context or theory for using Drupal in the classroom. The author has excellent tutorials for creating blogs for teachers and students but hardly addresses the merits of blogs in the classroom. I was hoping for convincing arguments on why blogs, forums, podcasts and videos are good for learners and how Drupal can cater specifically to the education community.

E-learning is a massive field and that broader topic was slightly out of scope for the purposes of this book. But it would have been nice to include more visualization exercises that would help teachers incorporate Drupal into real classroom curriculum and help highlight the benefits of doing so. I'm afraid that educators and school administrators seeking such advice may come away from this book a bit disappointed.

In the end, however, if you are seeking a technical manual for setting up education tools with Drupal then this makes for a great companion. I recommend it for anyone experimenting with Drupal on their own. I also recommend you look over the other great Drupal oriented titles from Packt Publishing.

Purchasing this and other Drupal books through the link below will give back some small amount of your purchase to the Drupal Association, a caretaker organization of the Drupal project: http://drupal.org/books