We write a lot on OStatic about the importance of using open source textbooks, tools and software in educational institutions. Open Scholar is a great tool for helping schools and colleges create collaborative academic Web sites without spending a dime on software.
Drupal-based Open Scholar is a free, open source content management system designed to easily build Web sites for classrooms, academic projects, individual professors, or entire universities. It installs easily and can host an unlimited number of sites on a single installation. Open Scholar supports customizable domains so schools can have relevant URLs and requires no programming knowledge to have a site up and running in minutes.
The software is packed with useful features like social collaboration tools, content aggregation, and themes. It comes pre-configured with Google Analytics, and a batch of plugins let administrators add blogging, announcements, image galleries and more to the site.
At least one big name school is using Open Scholar to reach out to its community. Harvard University created two different sites -- one for its professors' personal Web pages, and another for academic projects.
Tags: cms, drupal, open scholar
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