The first question on this topic is far more fundamental: Should teachers be developing materials in isolation - 'You in your small corner, and I in mine.' Far too much energy is spent up and down the land in re-inventing the wheel.

Yes, there are proprietary products which can be great fun - and often cost a lot. But if every different teacher could make a small contribution to the whole panorama of teaching and learning I'm sure that we would be much further on. We now have a marvelous 'blogoshere' which should be capable of assisting mixed groups of teachers who also have the qualities of graphicists, linguists, analysts and psychologists etc, all working together. And the whole point of this is then to share our products in return for access to those from others.

But my main concern is that we can then share these with others over the VLE. Not that there is anything wrong with the concept of the VLE - it's just that far too many of us have had bad experiences of poorly implemented VLEs. I think that the VLE concept has a great future in enabling remote access to the school's learning environment, their own PLE, close-coupled to its MIS, assessment modules, e-Portfolios and the like. Quite simply, if you are suffering from a bad VLE get on and change it before you get locked in further to a product or service of which you are not satisfied. After all, there are some 35 VLEs to choose from!

So back to the original question: It does not really matter about the tools used, it is more about the learning the material supports. BUT, unless you have taken guidance about the ability to share your end products, all your efforts could be in vain. There are many very competent people putting serious efforts into solving problems of interoperability that few teachers are aware of. Developers all around the world, highly educatied people are wrestling with SCORM, Common Cartridge, IMS, LEAP etc in order to allow the compatibility we assume is available. I do not expect teachers to be educated in these mysteries but that they should be wise enough to ask the question before investing time and effort in creating materials. Far from being a 'straightjacket', until we have tools of interoperability we will never be able to share in the dream of sharing in and benefitting from the 'wisdom of the crowd'.