Okay, so it's not quite "dinner with Larry Lessig," but today I spent some time with the US Public Printer, Bruce James. In addition to overseeing the US Government Printing Office (GPO), he's the president of RIT's Board of Trustees. He brought about a dozen members of his management team along, as well. Our department was their last stop on the tour, so I didn't expect they'd be paying a lot of attention after a long day of touring.
I was in for a surprise. I talked about our new XML course sequence, which got approved today by our grad curriculum committee. (Well, the first three courses; I still have to write the fourth.) It includes an Intro to XML course that focuses on DTDs, schemas, metadatas, and general XML concepts, an XML Transformation & Presentation course that covers XSLT, XSL-FO, XPath, XPointer, and XLink, and an XML Programming course including tools for parsing XML, and web services approaches. The last course will be a "Semantic Web Seminar" where students will tackle a real-world information problem and develop an XML-based solution.
They really got it. They were scheduled for a half hour with us, but stayed at least an hour, asking questions, making suggestions, and appearing genuinely supportive and enthusiastic about the curriculum. I think we'll be talking more about partnerships--which is really exciting. I think there will be some great co-op opportunities for our students, as well.
On a side note, I was the only woman in the room. Me, three male colleagues, and (at least) a dozen male GPO executives. Hmmm.
Woo hoo! You didn't mention that the Grad Committee approved your XML sequence, that's awesome! Now we can take the first XML course (I'm assuming you're sticking to the original idea and letting undergrads take it as well?)
Oh, and btw, this might be a great segway into the approval of your MicroContent Research Center (I hope I got that name right). That would be exciting. Congrats, Liz! :)
:-) I had a short interview today with Bruce James and Bob Trapell (?) They seemed very interested in the fact that I am a printing and publishing student whose primary focus has been on the transfer of information between print and electronic form. I told them that I had actually just finished your XML class in the winter and it gave me some great ideas.
I guess trying to tie the two mediums together is really what they are looking for. Glad i took your class :-)
At the end of the quarter I would like to show you some things that I have been working on with another class using XML in magazine structures. Currently i'm investigating into itellectual property rights for this project, because i think if i can get the workflow down it could be a truly amazing thing.
Anyways, hope all is well what are you thoughts on Apple's music store!
opps forget about that last part. I didn't read down far enough to see your review on Apple's service. I just put the new iPod on my credit card, no more zip disks for me!
Ivan, that's the best feedback a teacher could possibly get. Thanks for letting me know! I look forward to hearing about your new XML related project.
I *need* a new iPod. Am trying to figure out if I can justify it as an "external storage device."
The new ipod came to my apartment on Friday. It hasn't left my pocket yet. Of course you can connect to servers while you are on campus and the need for a pocket harddrive becomes unnecessary, but off campus i would rather not wait 30 minutes to get a couple of image files.
The coolest thing is the FM adapters that you can use to play your ipod in a car or hotel room that has a radio!
There's no real justification for me getting a new iPod, but that doesn't stop me from wanting one. :)
Ivan, keep me posted on your talks with GPO. We're talking to them this Friday to explore some partnership possibilities. Feel free to stop by my office next week and I'll give you an update.