Teacher gives Cisco course manual away

NEWS.COM reports that a computing instructor who tried for years to get Cisco to improve its training manuals has printed his own and is distributing it on the net for free.

According to the US site, Matt Basham couldn't get Cisco to understand that the manuals for its Cisco Certified Network Associate course cost too much and assumed that the students knew more than they did.

In the end he gave up, wrote an 800-page Cisco networking textbook which worked on the basis that students probably knew nothing other than how write their own name and how to open beer bottles with their teeth. He then published it on the web.

Lulu.com, the online textbook publisher which is distributing the book said that 2,000 copies had already been downloaded.

Basham said he had contacted Cisco Press, who do all the networking giant's text books about publishing it, but it wasn't interested. However, after the free book appeared online last week, the company emailed him requesting a meeting to discuss the 'start from stratch' training programme he was running.

So all's well that ends swell. µ

L'INQ
News.com