Indeed, and for anyone who questions this, I offer the following scenario:
You or a loved one are in an accident and are gravely injured, landing in a hospital. There are two ER doctors on duty: One received a degree via the traditional route and one received it online.
Do you really not have a preference which doctor your are assigned?
Well, having done graduate degrees both ways, I can say the opposite, namely, that I would never again do an online program unless it were in an area that I didn't much care about. And I also have taught in higher education for 14 years.
Remember, too, Thomas Edison's claims that the motion picture would shortly eliminate all needs for textbooks. Not a dumb man, but that clearly didn't happen.
If you're on automatic deposit, the government WILL reach into your bank account and just take the money. Or refuse to pay you your state income tax refund (just ask any California state employee). Of which I'm one.
You are so depressing me.... because you're right. If you can't get them to switch to OO/NeoOffice/whatever, you're screwed, cause then you're certainly not going to be able to get them to switch to Moodle (should that turn out to be appropriate).
Speaking from experience: Microsoft site licenses for its products for academic institution cost $0
I dont think that you are speaking from Experience.
Micrsoft would never give away Server 2008, Vista, VS 2008 for a whole school for free. On the page you linked to you need to click on 'Compare Subscriptions'
and you will see that the cheapest they offer is $399 a year. That only gives you online access.
Each department needs to sign up for MSDNAA. The CS dept. cant use its software keys for the Math or Engineering dept.
No, but they WILL give it away for an entire department. They do it at my uni's CS department. For faculty, staff and students. Just to seed the market with crap. We had to go through some bullshit wherein we declared ourself to be a nonprofit blahdy-blahdy-blah... Just to force crap on our students.
I may be drinking funny KoolAid at 2:30 in the morning, but didn't BB buy WebCT and then issue some vague threat about enforcing some sort of Amazon-like one-click patent crap designed to make Moodle go away and STFU?
Okay, I'll bite: if you're using BB to do a crapload of stuff that most unis and instructors don't do, by all means, keep licensing it. Most of the people at my uni barely know how to do anything with it other than use it as a PowerPoint server. Sad, but true.
But if you're not using it for anything exotic, for the love of g*d, dump it and save yourself a boatload of money. I'm all for using the right tool for the right job, but I honestly know people who teach where I teach who say, well, they both suck, so let's suck equally with the thing that everybody's heard of and costs an obscene amount of money in a year in which our state is forcing state workers to take unpaid days off work every month.
Really sad.
And I see we've already had this conversation , so I'm really not arguing against you personally and your system if you are getting your money's worth. But, really, for unis using it as a PPT server... seriously bad use of money. And I swear that there are unfortunately alot of us out there doing just that.
Our schools are not foundering due to a lack of funding. They are foundering because a powerful public education cartel has driven school spending skyward, making the United States among the world's biggest education spenders, even as student achievement lags.
Yup. We just had to cut more than 20 course sections over four departments. I've survived 4 waves of layoffs as a part-time instructor. Groundskeepers have been cut. Minimal heat in the winter so we can save the state some money.
But I haven't heard of too many administrators losing their jobs, their state-funded homes and cars, etc.. We've got "Directors of Development" (read: fundraisers) who in some cases bring in only a fraction of their own salaries.
It is good to know that yours does, but we're a lowest-common-denominator state university system that not too long ago caught public flak over buying some pretty awful records management software (cough, cough, PeopleSoft). Remarkably few instructors I come into contact with use Blackboard for anything other than a Powerpoint delivery system, unfortunately; if that's how you're using it, you'd be better off with something free.
But, hey -- it's great you don't suck like we do!:-D
How are you saving money when you are the only one using money and the rest uses blackboard?
Well, I'm not claiming that I am saving money, but neither will I contribute to wasting it simply because all the other bobble-heads make the conscious decision to do so.
I rent my own server space and am learning to admin Moodle myself.
One fewer person looting the public kitty may not profoundly affect the fact that looting goes on, but one need not be a looter just because everybody else is.
Maybe M$ can afford to flood your market with crap, but Blackboard likes getting lots of money and is notoriously secretive about their licensing fee structure near as I can tell.
Go to Moodle.org and search for posts about licensing fees. Might be a real eye-opener.
At the not small state university where I teach (more than 40,000 students), I'm probably the only person using Moodle and when students complain that it sucks as much as Blackboard, I remind that that, (a) sure, (b) but it sucks for free, and (c) how do they like those tuition increases?!
My undergrad degree is in history and I'm certain I heard/read it there. I will take a look through my renaissance and Jewish history library (such as it is) for the reference. I seem to recall it was in the church's period of "burn them by day/study them by night".
Either way (if I find it or not), I'll come back and let you know.
The grandparent is also right that there is a real problem with signal to noise. There is so much data, and so much of it really random crap, that one of the major challenges future historians are likely to face is to sort through it to find the useful shit.
And it may have been the same problem with Gutenberg in the middle ages. I've read economic historical analysis that claims the issue of movable type press documents devaluing handwritten manuscripts was as big an issue as copyright piracy is now.
Do you think they printed the Bible so much because they loved it? No. They printed it because it was public domain.
I'm not certain that's strictly true. Yes, it devalued manuscript production and changed the balance of power in Europe, but I'm pretty certain that the Vatican claimed to own the rights to the Bible and that Jewish communities had to obtain permission (read: extortion) to reproduce the Old Testament.
Oh, and what was the name of that English dude who was finally hounded to death in I think Germany or the Netherlands for wanting to do an English translation of the Bible? Tyndale maybe?
I'm fairly certain that the folks who executed him for it didn't consider the bible to be in the public domain.
Slashdot Mirror
And, what about theatre, the vocal, performing/musical arts and visual arts? What about newspaper/radio/television production?
Indeed, and for anyone who questions this, I offer the following scenario:
You or a loved one are in an accident and are gravely injured, landing in a hospital. There are two ER doctors on duty: One received a degree via the traditional route and one received it online.
Do you really not have a preference which doctor your are assigned?
Well, having done graduate degrees both ways, I can say the opposite, namely, that I would never again do an online program unless it were in an area that I didn't much care about. And I also have taught in higher education for 14 years.
Remember, too, Thomas Edison's claims that the motion picture would shortly eliminate all needs for textbooks. Not a dumb man, but that clearly didn't happen.
How about plutocrat?
I'm not.
She'd do it.
If you're on automatic deposit, the government WILL reach into your bank account and just take the money. Or refuse to pay you your state income tax refund (just ask any California state employee). Of which I'm one.
Did you fail to notice that you were not negotiating your own contract?
You should never piss off the geek community... it WILL cut off its nose to spite your fugly face.
Sigh.
I gotta agree with you.
Again
You are so depressing me.... because you're right. If you can't get them to switch to OO/NeoOffice/whatever, you're screwed, cause then you're certainly not going to be able to get them to switch to Moodle (should that turn out to be appropriate).
Speaking from experience: Microsoft site licenses for its products for academic institution cost $0
I dont think that you are speaking from Experience.
Micrsoft would never give away Server 2008, Vista, VS 2008 for a whole school for free.
On the page you linked to you need to click on 'Compare Subscriptions'
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/academic/bb676724.aspx
and you will see that the cheapest they offer is $399 a year. That only gives you online access.
Each department needs to sign up for MSDNAA. The CS dept. cant use its software keys for the Math or Engineering dept.
No, but they WILL give it away for an entire department. They do it at my uni's CS department. For faculty, staff and students. Just to seed the market with crap. We had to go through some bullshit wherein we declared ourself to be a nonprofit blahdy-blahdy-blah... Just to force crap on our students.
Sigh.
I may be drinking funny KoolAid at 2:30 in the morning, but didn't BB buy WebCT and then issue some vague threat about enforcing some sort of Amazon-like one-click patent crap designed to make Moodle go away and STFU?
Okay, I'll bite: if you're using BB to do a crapload of stuff that most unis and instructors don't do, by all means, keep licensing it. Most of the people at my uni barely know how to do anything with it other than use it as a PowerPoint server. Sad, but true.
But if you're not using it for anything exotic, for the love of g*d, dump it and save yourself a boatload of money. I'm all for using the right tool for the right job, but I honestly know people who teach where I teach who say, well, they both suck, so let's suck equally with the thing that everybody's heard of and costs an obscene amount of money in a year in which our state is forcing state workers to take unpaid days off work every month.
Really sad.
And I see we've already had this conversation , so I'm really not arguing against you personally and your system if you are getting your money's worth. But, really, for unis using it as a PPT server... seriously bad use of money. And I swear that there are unfortunately alot of us out there doing just that.
Our schools are not foundering due to a lack of funding. They are foundering because a powerful public education cartel has driven school spending skyward, making the United States among the world's biggest education spenders, even as student achievement lags.
Where is this cartel and how can I join it?
Because, seriously, my union sucks...
Yup. We just had to cut more than 20 course sections over four departments. I've survived 4 waves of layoffs as a part-time instructor. Groundskeepers have been cut. Minimal heat in the winter so we can save the state some money.
But I haven't heard of too many administrators losing their jobs, their state-funded homes and cars, etc.. We've got "Directors of Development" (read: fundraisers) who in some cases bring in only a fraction of their own salaries.
We don't do anything like that.
It is good to know that yours does, but we're a lowest-common-denominator state university system that not too long ago caught public flak over buying some pretty awful records management software (cough, cough, PeopleSoft). Remarkably few instructors I come into contact with use Blackboard for anything other than a Powerpoint delivery system, unfortunately; if that's how you're using it, you'd be better off with something free.
But, hey -- it's great you don't suck like we do! :-D
How are you saving money when you are the only one using money and the rest uses blackboard?
Well, I'm not claiming that I am saving money, but neither will I contribute to wasting it simply because all the other bobble-heads make the conscious decision to do so.
I rent my own server space and am learning to admin Moodle myself.
One fewer person looting the public kitty may not profoundly affect the fact that looting goes on, but one need not be a looter just because everybody else is.
Maybe M$ can afford to flood your market with crap, but Blackboard likes getting lots of money and is notoriously secretive about their licensing fee structure near as I can tell.
Go to Moodle.org and search for posts about licensing fees. Might be a real eye-opener.
At the not small state university where I teach (more than 40,000 students), I'm probably the only person using Moodle and when students complain that it sucks as much as Blackboard, I remind that that, (a) sure, (b) but it sucks for free, and (c) how do they like those tuition increases?!
My undergrad degree is in history and I'm certain I heard/read it there. I will take a look through my renaissance and Jewish history library (such as it is) for the reference. I seem to recall it was in the church's period of "burn them by day/study them by night".
Either way (if I find it or not), I'll come back and let you know.
Imagine the picture future historians would draw of this era if all they had to go on was YouTube.
Or Slashdot postings.
The grandparent is also right that there is a real problem with signal to noise. There is so much data, and so much of it really random crap, that one of the major challenges future historians are likely to face is to sort through it to find the useful shit.
Kinda like we have to do right now, eh?
What about when that teenager grows up and becomes somebody important (good or bad) and historians want to understand why?
And it may have been the same problem with Gutenberg in the middle ages. I've read economic historical analysis that claims the issue of movable type press documents devaluing handwritten manuscripts was as big an issue as copyright piracy is now.
Do you think they printed the Bible so much because they loved it? No. They printed it because it was public domain.
I'm not certain that's strictly true. Yes, it devalued manuscript production and changed the balance of power in Europe, but I'm pretty certain that the Vatican claimed to own the rights to the Bible and that Jewish communities had to obtain permission (read: extortion) to reproduce the Old Testament.
Oh, and what was the name of that English dude who was finally hounded to death in I think Germany or the Netherlands for wanting to do an English translation of the Bible? Tyndale maybe?
I'm fairly certain that the folks who executed him for it didn't consider the bible to be in the public domain.
Plus the stuff, especially film footage, starts to seriously deteriorate, copies vanish, museums burn down...
All you need to know about Atari can be dug up in the Arizona desert somewhere...
Are you certain you're not mistaking that for the Lisa in the Utah desert?