Another hot button issue in Portland these days is whether families have the right to demand a PDF version of any assigned textbook, versus a hardcopy edition. We have lots of tree huggers around here, worried about "green" and unsustainability. To quote one of my colleagues (from her blog):
"We need the text book companies to print thousands of copies of new textbooks every year, not so the authors can make money, though they make a little, but so the companies can make money... Do some central planning, and if the government can't do that without going through corporations, then it is time to [do it ourselves]".
Hmmmm, Lindsey reports her blog taken off line by Google thought police (or does someone else have that power -- under the table deal with China, to outsource censorship?). Truly, it had some swear words, I noticed them too (kept a copy, lots of us did). She's got some other blogs planned. Fair warning about Google (the search feature within blogs is also anemic, could be we're seeing an over-stretched infrastructure here, wouldn't surprise anyone). I didn't see anyone liking the "PDF option" option yet, except on some of the student organizer blogs. I'm guessing most teachers are too comfortably middle class to wanna rock the boat around gratuitous tree killing. I also got some hate mail (from Florida) claiming Portland has no right to subvert the authority of CS departments by phasing in Pythonic math with no direction from them. I pointed out we're working closely with MIT and various Silicon Forest companies with a strong CS track record, don't need to work with universities in Florida, or anyone kowtowing to ETS for that matter. Such is life in the fast lane, back to work, Kirby