Accessibility, therein lies the rub to much of this, and a while back I was convinced I was going to do everything I could to live by the best formats/standards possible, that faded as the labor involved presented itself. I could imagine the WP platform is a bit better than the avergae LMS, yet I think most of what is out there is pretty bad when looked at closely–which raises a much bigger question—why are we not developing towards this? Part of the answer lies in the old issues with learning objects, you have to enter a certain amount of data manually as you add links, images, videos, audio, etc ., and when you distribute authoring, that extremly hard to manage or guarantee.

I always wondered whether technologies like RSS, tagging, or some other way to loose or folksonomic meta data would actually help with accessibility, in may just muddy the waters further, but perhaps not if the person with a disability was part of the context of a course more specifically. And that might be where we need to think about this, how might our standards change, or at least be modified, id we understand the web-based resources we create as part of a course that is already contextualized and necessary part of a face-to-face experience? Might it change the online experience, I guess this depends on all sorts of factors, and suggests why accessibility is such a moving target, what are the range of concerns, how do we understand them within a specific context, etc. I don;t know, but the question do need to be asked and answered, despite how some may feel about how “sexy” such a topic is when you are proclaiming the innovation of your institution and all that nonsense

We’re inching toward some of these solutions at UC Davis, but we have a big challenge/opportunity to address before we really plunge into more of these technologies: accessibility. Yes, it’s one thing to make web sites accessible to federal standards. But it’s another thing entirely to make sure every podcast has a transcript and every video offers closed captioning and every clicker is accessible to anyone with any kind of disability. So that’s fun. (Guess who’s on the campus’s new Electronic Accessibility Steering Committee.)

Of course, at the UCD Teaching Resources Center we’re a “Damn the torpedoes!” bunch, so we went ahead and used WordPress as our site’s CMS, even though we were told to use HTML and the campus’s dull, dull, dull template because it was “accessible.” However, when one of the tech guys came over to investigate, he found that our WP site was actually more accessible according to his tests than the campus’s template or the new CMS they keep talking about debuting.

You installed your own WPMu on a Bluehost account and are gonna circumvent central IT and deliver courses in an open environemnt using all sorts of new-fangled tools? I guess some would call it boot strapping, but I like to call in EDUPUNK!

You know I’ll be watching closely, I might even pull all the feeds in for old times sake

@Andy,
I’m thinking of a new video series called 72 hours, it’s about edtech terrorism, and the we’re the only chance the instructional technology world has

Great post. Proud to know ya. Do keep an eye on the newest Little Engine in town, http://courseblogs.gardnercampbell.net. It’s a shiny new WPMu install that’ll get the show on the road at Baylor University. Listen for us as we come up that hill after you: “I know I can, I know I can.”

After all, it takes a lot to laugh, and it takes a train to cry.

Gardo