Holy Batcrap, Dan! Like, is it a full moon? Are the planets in alignment?? Did I miss a supernova somewhere obvious???
:-) You know, I have always held that rumours of our supposedly concrete disagreement status are greatly exaggerated. Yeah, I've seen something very like what you are talking about (Point No. 1, that is; probably the others as well). Something very similar is why, although funding has been approved, my FrankenLab won't be fixed anytime soon, if at all. As for your points 2 & 3 (which to me seem to be the samething), I've seen that too. While in the midst of a rather painful msidt (see how it relates to midst??? msidt = master of science in instructional design and technology; sorry for the pun; it was a really dreadful program), we students were in the midst of this small (as in, *really* small) unit on copyrighted materials and fair use in the classroom, and a rather vocal seeming majority of my fellow students stridently held that their mission to educate trumped basic property rights. When I objected, I was basically called a "pie in the sky" and "ivory tower" higher-ed type. And I'll bet their software budget is bigger than mine. Judy On Mon, 20 Mar 2006, Dan Shafer wrote: > OMG, Judy, two things we can agree on in, what?, less than a month? Perhaps > the end of the cycle is imminent! > > :-) > > I spent two years once trying to sell a product into the "education market." > (I use quotation marks because in my experience -- which may well have been > unique for all I know -- there is no such thing as a "market" called > "education".) Here's what I ran into (enough years ago that some of it may > no longer be valid and it specifically applies to K-12, not secondary): > > 1. The decision-maker is often hard to find. This was a real deal-blocker > for us. I'm not kidding. In one case, we found out that the key decision > maker in determing what software a school district (a large one, at that) > would buy was the nephew of the superintendent who worked as an outside > consultant. He wasn't on an org chart and we could not make a direct > presentation to him. That was the extreme but it was only a matter of > degree. > > 2. Educators often cried poor-mouth, seeking deep, deep discounts that > would have resulted in our inability to stay in business but then they also > wanted reliable tech support (including pre-sale) and training. > > 3. Too often, educators felt justified taking our proprietary software and > duplicating it for their fellow educators, on the same basis as #2, i.e., > they were under-funded and under-paid. > > Now I'm not going to argue that educators are adequately compensated let > alone overpaid. And I know that in the U.S. at least the priority we place > on education in our budgets is horrific in contrast to the lip service we > pay to the importance of education in our society. But even programmers have > to eat (though they seem able to subsist of Jolt and Twinkies for extended > periods of time, with the odd pizza tossed in for good measure.) But what > does seem to me to be the case is that, as I think I hear you saying, > educators seem (in general) to be OK with taking advantage of people who > supply software technology to make their jobs easier but are not OK with > others wishing to take advantage of their good nature as altruistic > participants in the social discourse. > > And at the end, I just find this very interesting, not necessariiy negative > or problematic. > > On 3/20/06, Judy Perry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I suspect that there are remarkably few educators who would apply > to themselves the sentiment that they seem to demand of software > developers. > > > -- > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author > http://www.shafermedia.com > Get my book, "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought" > >From http://www.shafermediastore.com/tech_main.html > _______________________________________________ > use-revolution mailing list > use-revolution@lists.runrev.com > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription > preferences: > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution > _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution