How our young colleagues are being educated....

Mon Jan 5 14:40:52 UTC 2015

On Thu, 25 Dec 2014 19:21:34 -0500
Miles Fidelman <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net> wrote:

> Cisco as the basis of networking material? Does nobody use Comer, 
> Stallings, or Tannenbaum as basic texts anymore?

I currently use a Comer book.  I've also used a Tannenbaum book in the
past, but not recently.  My favorite book, when I've used it was Radia
Perlman's.

Increasingly I'm seeing a trend away from actually relying on books if
even requiring them to be read anymore.  This is both a trend with
faculty and students.  I frequently get asked if the book is required,
even when the course page clearly says it is.  Students and often
faculty often I find rely too heavily on Wikipedia pages, which I've
found myself going to update since they lead to wrong assumptions and
answers in questions I've assigned.

I like to augment, as many faculty do, classic or timely research papers
into assignments so that students are at least forced to look at
something other than vendor white papers and blog posts found in search
engines.

John