From: Jay Warner [mailto:
quality@a2q.com]
I am teaching TQM & intro stats these days, to students who are (mostly)
local. I make major use of email for communication during the week. I use
.ppt for lecture/presentations, mostly for ease of handling the different
graphics & text (except .eps). Yes, it is slow on the uptake, esp. during
composition, and it translates between Mac & Win98 with some difficulty.
I hand out Excel spread sheets for much of the stats calculation stuff -
avoids the issue of number manipulation a the early stages by people who are
often weakly numerate. I'm planning to put together a CD for the handouts.
I don't know .html well enough to use it. It is also relatively slow in
execution, but _is_ fairly platform independent.
Biggest problem of late has been incomplete distribution of emails, with or
without MS Word attachments. When students don't get a critical item, all
H--l breaks loose. Recommend you include automatic replies to everything,
request manual responses, and log them somewhere.
IN course programs which require/provide laptops, I expect presentations to
use .ppt, for the same reason I use it. (Don't forget: MS-DOS = Micro-Soft
dominates other systems :). Since I watch carefully for the information to
ink ratio, it doesn't usually get out of hand.
I have not found many web sites that do stats the way my specific text likes
them, or the way I like them. Some are downright cumbersome if you have
your
own data to enter. This will remain a problem, just as film & video
explications generally do/did not fit instructors' wishes well.
Jay
--
Jay Warner
Principal Scientist
Warner Consulting, Inc.
4444 North Green Bay Road
Racine, WI 53404-1216
USA
Ph: (262) 634-9100
FAX: (262) 681-1133
email:
quality@a2q.com
web:
http://www.a2q.com
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