I totally agree with you about the disconcerting feeling of dong this. I too feel that way often, and this experiment was something I have been dying to try as a way to challenge my own idea about sharing the work we do as it is a means of seeing whether the benefits may help us focus on the conversation, context and re-usable content rather than IT infrastructure which is so often a rabbit hole of money, time, and policy.

WPMu is in may ways insignificant in this regard, it is the idea that there are applications out there that allow us to share the work we are doing so easily that we can concentrate on the bigger questions like the one;s Brian and Stephen raise. I’ve become fascinated with the tools as a way to suggest that this isn’t rocket science, I don’t know PHP, I am not a server guy, and I really shouldn’t be able to help a school create an infrastructure for sharing so easily—but I can, which for me suggests anyone can–and the reason we don;t you nailed beautifully: it’s a “barrier of perception,” nothing more.

We’re still only on Vista 3 here so that will explain a lot of the constraints I suspect. Then again, you can only realise so much flexibility in an inherently walled application like Blackboard – but it does serve a purpose for some people.

Along those lines, I think if I’m going to sit here and advocate freedom to choose whatever platforms are best for us as learners, this must apply to locked-in, walled systems like the LMS as well as FOSS ones like WPMU, Drupal, and others. It would be hypocritical to let my hang-ups about freedom blind me to someone elses legitimate appreciation of the LMS.

I’m late for a meeting though so gotta dash!

Cheers,

Mike