In my foreign language class we have a thick textbook, a workbook, a lab manual, three websites, CDs, DVDs, PowerPoint slides, and videos. It is not yet clear to me how well these materials fit together or to what extent they repeat each other. It may take me more than this semester to learn.
I have the feeling I am a dot in a complex pointilliste painting which I must nonetheless direct. I feel like a character in Marshall Berman’s All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. On my own I’d pare this down, perhaps, to a small grammar reference, a magazine, a blackboard, a coffee pot, and a web page with audio links.
I have not assigned all of the gadgets, nor am I using all of them, but I am not sure I have chosen the best ones.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
It turns out that the instructors, who teach most sections of this course (and do only that), have each undertaken a form of rewriting the book such that they can teach a decent class and yet say for public consumption that they are “following the book.” I wish I had time to do that, and I wish I’d known that was what was going on, but most of all I wish we had some say in the choice of textbook.