A Link to "The Trouble With Textbooks: A Great American Rip-Off"

The following is a link to an article I published about textbooks.  I resolve to do something concrete about this problem, and one part of the solution will be abandoning the practice of using textbooks for certain courses.  I hope others will follow and offer suggestions.  I hope others may already be teaching without “required” textbooks. http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/22/the-trouble-with-textbooks-a-great-american-rip-off/

The Professor, Penmanship, and Online Education

This summer I am teaching online, in part because many students prefer to take classes online. Summer is the time for mischief, experimentation and creation—there is just something about that added sunlight, all sorts of plants I know not the names of in bloom everywhere—it just makes you want to try something new. In my…

The Creepy Invasion of Cengage in My Email Inbox

July 3 and I am minding my own business, just checking email before Independence Day, and I have an email from someone named Ashley Minton, Ashley.Minton@cengage.com, with a cc: to someone named Rachael Pigg-Wisner (Wisner) at rachael.wisner@cengage.com. Yes, the sender’s email contains two caps, and the carbon-copied recipient’s email is all lower-case. The email subject…