Today was spent mostly in meetings. When I wasn't in meetings, I was either getting ready for meetings or trying to plough through email or respond to problems and questions. Or filling out my stupid Annual Faculty Review. I hate filling out the AFR. And I got volunteered to be on yet another committee today. Yay.
Last night, Paul mentioned something interesting. He'd found a 1989 obituary in the Sunday Republican of B. D. Emmart, a former Communications professor at UMass from 1966 to 1972, who was an expert in Esperanto. The article mentioned that he had written several monographs in and about Esperanto. I'll have to see if there are any traces of his work left anywhere at the University.
I noticed yesterday that WebCT got bought by Blackboard. I had been planning to write an article about what your classroom would be like if it were built like WebCT, but now I'll have to rethink how to approach it. I've also realized that it is the best opportunity I'm going to get to try to adjust the University's trajectory with respect to free course management systems. I'm thinking of writing an open letter that says "Look -- you're 0 for 2. You bought Prometheus and it got killed by WebCT. Then you bought WebCT and it is going to be killed by Blackboard. Maybe you should get a clue and get off the proprietary software bandwagon before you strike out." It probably won't make any difference, but if there's a chance, this is it. The problem is that the University crafts its RFPs in such a way that the only ones who can make a serious proposal are the giant integrators, like Toilet and Douche -- there's no way for a free software project to have a budget that would allow them to get in the door.
StevenBrewer