Open Letter to Blue Systems re: recent ice storm BB problems

[SteveRiley]

Uh, that doesn't sound like a quote of mine, Woody...

[woodsmoke]

lol silly it is from the linky!

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

Ah, now I see. I think that's supposed to be read as something of a joke. In my experience, Xorg-Edgers has been rock solid for many release cycles now.

[woodsmoke]

Another indication of why NOW is the sweet spot for the open source community to actually get an open source project on the desktop in "the college system' and also provide jobs for Linux programmers.

The drek that is Blackboard has yet again reared one of it's many Hydra like heads and the Blackboard people "could care less".

For reasons which I will not state because they would end up getting me evicted from the forum, the college had to hire outside help to teach my labs this semester, not next semester.

I am not the only one, this is a nationwide problem and it will be ongoing.

Because of a quirk in the original Blackboard programming the "lab teacher" is now the instructor and I am a "student".

This is not just a pride thing, there are some adminstrative things that I cannot do.

But for the preening professors to whom status is their currency in the teacher lounges....it IS a pride thing. And pride can be an UGLY thing for the admins that have to deal with it.

And, on top of it, the students are now very "edgy" as to just WHO is going to be recording grades, etc. in other words, having access to THEIR information, other than "the teacher".

Again, this is not just me, I ran into it yesterday and, surprisingly, ran into it from colleagues in other places within the space of a couple of hours today.

NOW is the time to approach a 'college system", not the big Universities, they have too much "pride of place".

But a state's "college system" or "community college system".

They are the ones that are being most heavily affected by this.

And the community colleges only get the bread crumbs of money from the Feds. Their budgets are tight, tight, tight.

If Moodle and/or Sakai are fully functional, then all that is needed for SOMEbody to approach the "state level director" for a state's "college" or "community college" system and offer to run a parallel system to Blackboard FOR FREE to let instructors try the system out.

If they like it, then the state will SAVE money by employing either a "Linux" corporation or.......hiring Linux programmers to deploy Sakai/Moodle.

hundreds of thousands of students will SEE and interact with open source, tens of thousands of instructors will work with open source, and thousands of admins will administer it...

But, the further the ice storm receeds from the collective consciousness of the people.....

There is a tide in the affairs of men.............as the Bard said......which, if taken at the flood leads on to victory.

Or if not then there should be no complaints about "why don't people use Linux".

woodsmoke