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The Highway Is on Campus Now
Your hallway probably contains more total computing
power than your entire campus did in the early 1980s.
In fact,
there may be a supercomputer on your desk, at least
according to a 1980's definition of supercomputer.
You also have the kind of connectivity that a Fortune 100
company would have had for its private net just a few years ago, except better;
your computer is on the net.
As such, the computers and wires in place on your campus look a lot like; dare I
say it;
the information highway of the future.
The emphasis of
/Preps/
will be
to leverage this infrastructure to facilitate the sharing of those materials
that
you give away for free as a matter of course.
Why Hide Your Stuff on Your Hard Drive?
You probably have a wide and varied
collection of handouts, assignments, sample problems, lecture notes and other materials that live on a hard disk
somewhere and which you must print, get copied, and hand out sheet by sheet during class.
Lately many instructors have begun to convert their
private word processing documents to publicly accessible
HTML
files.
Rather than dealing with paper yourself, you can put the document
on the same World Wide Web you are using to read this.
Students then retrieve the handout from a computer; a skill
which becomes more important; and fortunately easier; with each generation of student.
You can even complete the electronic cycle by having them turn in their homework by email.
Share with One or One Thousand
It is in the nature of electronic communication that anything
you create for your own students can be shared with anyone else on
the planet for almost no additional cost.
All that is needed is
a site which lets us list the stuff we want to contribute and find the stuff we want to read.
The premise of
/Syllabits/
is
to provide such a virtual space for business education.
