Thanks to Steve Krause for finding blogHelper's Using WordPress as CMS. Steve notably omitted the counter from blogHelper, 5 Reasons Not to Use WordPress As a CMS. As blogHelper points out,

You’re Pushing It
WordPress was built to be a blog platform first, everything else second. So, everytime you push it to do something else, remember that you’re making it do something it wasn’t meant to do.

I see this all the time. People using WordPress, or more often MT, as a web publishing tool to try to build a website that really needs a full-featured CMS such as Drupal, Joomla, or Plone. Think of MT or WP as a specialized, $20 Lego car model kit. It's meant to build that car and maybe with a few variations. And perhaps you can squeeze something else out of it. But if you are looking to do more than build that kind of Lego car, you really need the mega tub of Legos or maybe K'nex (depending on the range of things you want to build).

This is a good analogy, too, because many newbies to CMS's are easily frustrated because they can't find directions to build exactly what they want. Documentation on the CMS websites is much like the booklet that comes with that giant box of Legos or K'nex. It'll have a few examples, but the software designers just can't explain how to build the whole range of websites and their variations (on the other hand, it is very easy to do so with WP or MT). For that, one has to become familiar with the building blocks, learn to use one's imagination, and look at what others are building with their box of blocks.

So the best advice is to dive into a CMS and begin experimenting. I don't know about anyone else, but the way I learned to build with Legos was just to sit down and play with them. And like playing with those Legos, there were many times when I have had to tear down a site and begin again until I really got good at working with the pieces.

On July 11, IBM's site developerWorks posted its first article in a series, called, Using open source software to design, develop, and deploy a collaborative Web site. The series adopts a fake organization as a client for whom to develop a collaborative website using only open source software. The goal of the series is to give developers some guidance in developing similar solutions.

Of note in the first article is an interesting and comprehensive discussion of content management systems and the selection process they used to decide which framework to ultimately implement for their project. Wouldn't you know it? They picked Drupal!

Obviously, Ryan Tansey's got some IT background and is more tech savvy than the average student, but nevertheless, it is definitely worthwhile to hear a student's perspective on Blackboard use in his institution.

There are a lot of positive and negative points here, some to be expected, but most interesting is Ryan's observation that using Blackboard ineffectively was more detrimental to his learning experience than not using it at all. This ought to be a wake up call to campus administrators that you can't just throw the technology out there and expect it to be used correctly. Sometimes, it creates more problems than it's worth (and to an open source advocate like me, Blackboard's not worth anywhere near what it costs to begin with).

To end on a positive note, Ryan raised an important point about how classroom time is better optimized:

Those faculty who actively put material online and clarified assignments made it easier for everyone to maximize their time in class. The instructional time in these classes began sooner and lasted longer. We were not burdened with handout distributions and assignment clarifications. I found the classroom discussions in these courses broader and livelier.

Gee. I had forgotten about the mess of paper handouts. I haven't done that in years, since my first year teaching :-)

Link courtesy of EdTechPost

Really Linux has posted a Moodle tutorial that's supposed to have even newbie Linux users up and running Moodle in 45 minutes: This beginner article by Mark Rais provides step-by-step instructions for installing Moodle, a Learning Management System, on to a Fedora Linux server. It provides everything necessary to setup a full powered intranet web-server that can support course listings, event calendars, student/teacher communication and much more. Best of all, a prototype server can be functional within about 45 minutes. For those not in the know, Moodle is a free alternative to Blackboard or WebCT--nuff said!