Today, I had one of my team in my office. She was frustrated that we'd switched from the Moodle wiki back to PMWiki. In truth, the decision had been made the previous day after frustrating experiments with Moodle the previous week. I like the simplicity of PMWiki, and I've seen at least one teacher take off with it (view example) and, of course, I use PMWiki for my two main wikis, Around the Corner and ITLS Project Management (need to rename it Knowledge Management).

We've been debating the merits of using one technology over another. While it would be nice to just throw caution to the winds, and embrace PBwiki or WIkispaces, it comes back to the issue of control. Using an external service is a real pain because it puts our content elsewhere. I have often wished that I could take Wikispaces or PBwiki's engine and drop it on a district server--at no charge, of course, so there! PBwiki gold advocates--but that doesn't seem likely. You'd think Wikispaces or PBwiki would be overjoyed to have a large school district in Texas embrace their product simply for the honor of saying, "THAT school district is using our product! If it's good enough for those discerning educators in Texas, why not for you folks in North Carolina?" <mischevious grin>

I had hoped Moodle's wiki and blogging modules would be robust enough to get the job done, but, no, it wasn't meant to be (at least, not yet...who knows what might happen in two years?).

So the vigorous debate we've been having is whether to standardize on particular tools. We've been at the blogging bit since 2005, Moodling since about the same time although it's only this past school year that I awoke to the potential (and had time to explore it). This in spite of one of my team's advocacy that we use the tool. And, wikis are a big thing, at least, I think so.

So, here's the division of labor among the applications:

• For campus blogging, we use b2Evolution.net
• For online forums, book studies, quizzes, course management, we use Moodle.
• For wikis, we use PMWiki.
• For campus web sites, we use Joomla.

What a potential mess for district to be in. I still love this diagram of one school district I worked with earlier this summer. Look at all the different web-based apps they have to deal with....

I wonder if other districts won't encounter similar Web 2.0 app overload. How do you manage all your tools, especially when there is such overlap between them?

To be honest, back to wikis, I'm not quite sure PMWiki is the way to go...it lacks a graphical user interface, and even though DekiWiki promised to be a workable solution, we stalled on installation after jumping through numerous hoops. Simply, I walked away from the DekiWiki installation thinking, "No wonder you have to pay for support! It won't work otherwise." That may be an unfair comment, but if the solution can't be made to work by K-12 district instructional staff as good as we are (we've done lots of these installs!), then it's probably NOT going to work for us.

After all, expecting network services folks to maintain a wiki solution involves their time, effort, and enthusiasm (lacking in this regard)...that's a point the PBwiki folks make quite well. And, why should district staff be enthusiastic? In addition to more work, there is a lack of engaged, passionate embrace of new technologies except as they make their current jobs easier.

As educators, we can see the benefits of these solutions in the hands of teachers and students...they cannot, no matter we talk ourselves blue in the face. With so much overlap between the tools (Moodle handles blogging and wikis, b2Evolution is just blogging, PMWiki can be used for classroom teacher web pages, AND to a limited degree, blogging, and we're using Joomla for campus web sites), what to do?

We are also working with other solutions. We have a variety of "electronic management systems" (EMSs):

• Course management system - Moodle
• Content Management System - Joomla
• Curriculum Management System (thank goodness, I'm not overseeing that one...yet)
• Learning Management System - Course Insite

Here's how it looks in diagram form:

What ARE other districts doing? Embracing the ambiguity?