[wp-edu] What features and what kind of use do you need?

[Douglas Hanna]

Claudio,

Welcome!

Here are my thoughts in response to your questions.

> What are the WordPress features that you think be useful for your projects?

Obviously, posting and commenting are the things that really make
WordPress what it is and they help in education too. Flexible themes
and user options and the wide array of plugins available for WordPress
create essentially unlimited opportunities. There are a lot of ways to
organize content using tags and categories, which can be really useful
as well.

> You want to build a community of teachers and students, give a blog to
> every student, let students post articles?

I think it depends on the intention of the class and of the
implementation of blogging. Do you want to provide students with a
medium to showcase some of their writing or do you want to expose them
to blogging in full force? If you want to do the later, students and
teachers getting their own blog is most appropriate. If you want to do
the former, then one blog could probably serve the needs of the
project. I think it boils down to this: do you want the blog/project
to have one voice or many?

> What type of interaction do you think is the best for a good
> educational project?

Comments are great. WordPress is improving commenting and it is
definitely on the agenda. Contact forms obviously offer a more
traditional form of communication and interaction. And of course,
students and teachers can respond to other students and teachers via
blog posts if the blog or project is setup that way. Commenting in the
way of linking to another post and adding your own thoughts is a great
way to take advantage of blogging for education.

> At the moment WP - a simple installation of WP - allows only comments.
> It's ok for you or you need more?

You do a lot more than just comment with a simple WordPress
installation. I talked about some of the features in your first
question and I think one of the most prominent features is the ability
to easily install plugins. There are so many plugins available and
with them, you can do so much that it is unbelievable.

> For your needs is better WordPress Mu? Or you need custom features?

We just had another discussion about WordPress MU versus a regular
installation of WordPress. Here is a link to our archives:
http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-edu/2008-November/thread.html

> Do you have already considered to use other platforms (Joomla, Drupal,
> Moodle...) and why do you think that WP is more suitable for you?

I personally haven't used any other content management systems or blog
software since I started using WordPress.

Hopefully this is helpful! Again, welcome to the wp-edu list.

--
Douglas Hanna
Automattic | WordPress.com
Blog: http://www.serviceuntitled.com