I fully agree with you that WPMu offers a loose space of experimentation for students, while at the same time framing a very specific community that is not so portal or CMS based. This space is a platform, as you noted, not an application. The WP-autoblog is cool because they can use a whole bunch of blogs to highlight different features of their work, aggregate the work of others they want to follow, or even bring in feeds from anywhere on the web with RSS. Moreover, they can export them all as one big user file and take it with them when they go. The looseness you describe might very well be the key -and the WP-autoblog solution is nice -I personally prefer WP-o_Matic- but they do the same thing in the end. Moreover, WPMu is no longer about content management as we traditionally understand it -it is about using the web as a repository and making connections and drawing in resources, not building an impregnable resource. Web 2.0 is about surfaces in the Foucauldian sense -i.e., the relationships are not necessarily about drilling to the depths of meaning. Rather, the web allows us to use the vast surfaces of information to draw connections, uncover resources, and trace patterns of thinking. In other words, to trace the relationship between statements that serve to create “discursive formations” that frame a particular web of understanding through a host of both planned, unintentional, and serendipitous relationships. WPMu, given the ability to aggregate anarchically, may allow for so many of these options.

As for files, makes students who want to upload documents, videos, images, etc -make them use google docs, youtube, flickr, and/or what have you. The less stuff they put in the actual blog as a repository the less they have to lose. Also, WordPress works best when you are bringing multimedia, images, etc. into it from sources like flickr and YouTube. Once they see how simple it is, they may also see the value for keeping all these things separate, but loosely joined. Additionally, the more they can manipulate access and openness to such resources the better off we all will be in terms of framing an accessible archive for teaching and learning (formally or not) through a series of surface connections.