At 9:41 PM -0500 6/25/99, Stephanie da Silva wrote:
> Student passed my mail to teacher, her response is below. It
> appears she thinks this practice is acceptable and does not consider
> the impact it makes upon list owners.
Oh, heck. this stuff is old hat. it's just new that they're doing it
at listservers. There are teachers who assign coursework without
worrying about the impact on others (didn't we all have a teacher in
college who for some reason assumed their class was the only one you
were taking that semester?)
We see these kind of requests on a regular basis, where teachers
assign students to do some research on stuff. Since we run a
hockey-history oriented web site, we get a lot of canadian kids
writing us to answer questions (or write their paper for them...).
Occasionally, we get one where the requests are somewhat over the
top. We deal with those either by discussing it with the teacher
directly, or by random cases of intermittent deafness. But in
general, if you're running public resources, it shouldn't surprise
you that they get used as a resource. And occasionally, someone has a
different idea of what acceptable use is. Teachers are, in general,
horribly underworked and overpaid. I'm generally willing to cut them
some slack because they're doing a tough job in a culture where an
athlete could make enough in a year to fund many schools, while the
teacher is there paying for pencils out of their own pocket because
the school has no budget. (but there are limits). In a case like
this, I'd simply point the user at my list documentation. If the list
documentation isn't good enough to walk them through it, it needs to
be fixed. if they simply want me to do it for them, then the user
needs to be fixed, and I'd treat it like any user who thinks I'm
their paid servant...
Yes, the instructor ought to be more proactive about stuff like this,
but most likely, tey're already doing 60-70 hour weeks, and I can
understand if they don't necessarily agree with me on it.
By the way, if she's at cc.ca.us that's a Community College campus,
aka a junior college or 2 year school. Wchih means she's quite far
down the teaching totem pole, so to speak, and you should keep that
in mind as well. Some people teach at those schools because they
teach part time or teach something they really care for (my mother
loves the local CC for their art classes, for instance). But most
people teach there because they haven't gotten the degrees or the
ability to teach at a higher level....
--
Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? <http://www.plaidworks.com/hockey/>)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
<http://www.plaidworks.com/> + <http://www.lists.apple.com/>
Snakes and trees aren't natural enemies -- but if the tree attacks first...
(Ranger Gord, The Red Green Show)
