"Nobody teaches assembly language"

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Wed Jun 23 22:20:15 2004

> > "Wouldn't showing your class a picture be just as good as showing
> > them the real computer?"

> You know, letting the students use the computers is just asking for
> trouble. Best to let the administrator know that so he can, you know, ban
> anyone from actually *using* the computers and soiling the keyboards and
> monitors.

We used to run our own lab. We have always claimed that
for teaching computers, we need a different setup than is
used for students word processing history papers.
We need to UNLOCK everything, and let the students change
wallpaper, registry, and ANYTHING else, and then be able
to quickly and easily restore machines back to a "default"
configuration.

But they have taken control of our lab away from us, and
even installing a different compiler requires submitting
to them. Everything is LOCKED, and students can't even
get to the control panel.
For a while, their lockdown was misinterpreting compiler
usage as unauthorized attempts to install programs.
(creating .EXE files on the machine!) But they did fix THAT.

> > They hired an incompetent consultant to decide what computers to get.
> What an incompetent consluttant. What he should have done was ask all the
> instructors what they wanted and then told that to the administration.

His biggest screwup was a refusal to accept that CIS needs different
systems than English.
Received on Wed Jun 23 2004 - 22:20:15 BST