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Improving Site Content and Features Has Been Was A Low Priority
Since March 2010; But Is Medium Priority Since March 2019

The WebLearningTools.org (WLTRes) web site, once my #1 priority to develop since about 2007, became my lowest priority of my three Joomla sites to continue developing since the Great Recession started in 2007-2008 and that recession, even with two 'successful years' of Obama as President 2008-2009, became much more probably irreversible by 2010.  Since March 2010 my first priority site to develop was the CAGreenIDEAS.org web site, then the USGreensIdeas.org web site.  Since May 2012 and because the USA political climate had turned "hard right"in the 2010 mid-term elections; the radical-right GOP now dominated both houses of Congress and would "round-file' pretty much every liberal bill Democrats and Obama would propose to Congress to pass and become law,  Because I switched my voter registration from Democrat to Green Party when it became a legal California party in 1991 and because these 'hard right' political turns in Congress and in more US state legislatures, in 2010 I became an IT volunteer for the Green Party of California IT Working Group.  I tried to help them for a few years to properly plan and develop 1+ of their official, test and development web sites being setup notably their CAGreens.org LIVE site repurposed on a 'more modern' feature-rich and more easy to maintain Drupal 7 (D7) CMS site of the same name. "We" in the IT group at that time had limited success and by 2013 the GPCA turned to renting a NationBuilder.com voter information site while keeping the D7 CAGreen.org site to provide party volunteers, staff and members information about our party, state issues and some of our candidates.  The emerging problem: "Too Many Chiefs" with too little professional IT experience were in the GPCA IT group. 

Therefore as of 2010 and to-date I continue to deeply apologize to all distance learning educators and web site technicians and web site programmers for taking this huge tangent from developing my WLTRes site "better" since March 2010.  I apologize to you all who have been highly interested in distance learning for not having "something better to show you by now."  For what other reasons has this been so?

Free open source, free and open (e.g. common core copyrighted) learning content cannot exist "in the public domain" (1) without a functioning US government leaning left-of-center if not "further left" and not leaning so much to-the-far-right towards so-called free market monetized commercial distance learning. (2) it cannot exist -- or flourish -- with so many US states similarly politically inclined right-wards by big-money influencing state policies and candidate campaigns. (3) It cannot manifest and emerge without a US Dept. of Education sufficiently funded to fund currently "smaller" distance learning projects like WLTRes again.

Similarly there can not be any free open source, open commons, creative commons distance learning sites collaboratively designed and developed primarly by volunteers and a few paid staff.  There cannot be US copyright law changes allowing more past, recent and current school and college text-books to be made available through freely accessed distance learning sites like the Open Library and other similar sites.  For the last several years colleges and universities that can afford to make the financial deals are "renting exclusive student access" to the digital textbook editions of some of the major text book publishers in the USA so their freshman and sophomores who can barely afford the much higher tuition today can have text books to read in their over-crowded classes.  But that increased cost of learning is passed on to all the students in hidden fees added to all students' higher tuition!  There also cannot be any learning web site content (in the USA) freely accessible and available in multiple languages!

All of these goals have been original goals for this WLTRes web site if only to at least inventory and evaluate them as they exist and emerge in the US, if not also abroad; if not yet also to show on WLTRes as sample content, "best cases," and "best practices" (as the exist so far) to educators, online learning content planners and developers, and to DL site planners and developers, if not also to show to DL site technicians how to create, maintain and improve free open source web sites that feature such content and state-of-the-art more individualized and personalized learning content to the students!

Instead Distance Learning today and for the next few years is destined to be mediocre, over-hyped "commercial" learning sites and for-a-fee learning content available potentially exclusively from just those very well funded, commercial for-profit learning sites and the educational institutions that can afford to use them.  Given an unregulated "free market" in DL, those big-money-backed commercial DL players WILL try to monopolize online public and private education to exist solely from their commercial web sites and mostly or exclusively for the benefit of their corporate owners and stock holders. Their fees for DL services and content will be "the largest the students (or their parents or care-takers) can afford to pay."  I.e. they will be "what the free market will bear" and to hell with the poor and under-privileged who cannot afford to access such content that would help them progress from Primary School to Secondary School and from Secondary School to Higher Education called college and post-graduate studies!  The human potential in those lower, poorer classes in the USA currently is destined to remain low and poor or to get lower and poorer for the next 1-2 generations, if trends continue!

I cannot "abide" that trend to continue "un-checked" and "un challenged;" hence my highest priority work and most time-spent developing the CAGreenIDEAS.org education site and on helping to develop and improve various official web sites for the Green Party of California.