Open Textbooks Win Over Publishers In CA 216
Unequivocal writes "Recently California's Governor announced a free digital textbook competition. The results of that competition were announced today. Many traditional publishers submitted textbooks in this digital textbook competition in CA as well as open publishers. An upstart nonprofit organization named CK-12 contributed a number of textbooks (all free and open source material). 'Of the 16 free digital textbooks for high school math and science reviewed, ten meet at least 90 percent of California's standards. Four meet 100 percent of standards.' Three of those recognized as 100% aligned to California standards were from CK-12 and one from H. Jerome Keisler. None of the publisher's submissions were so recognized. CK-12 has a very small staff, so this is a great proof of the power of open textbooks and open educational resources."
Common Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Thankfully common sense has prevailed. This is one monopoly that the world should be glad to see the back of.
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Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Funny)
No way, there are so many changes to Roman History all the time it definitely takes a full time publishing staff to keep up.
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you see how un-American this is? Your socialist "open" information is destroying yet another wholesome American industry. I bet we can blame Obama.
Re:Common Sense (Score:4, Funny)
I demand to see Julius Caesar's birth certificate!
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Interesting)
No one, for example, takes Gibbon's argument on the Fall of the Roman Empire seriously anymore; similarly, no one takes the argument that Islamic cultures economically failed (in comparison with Europe) because of anti-capitalist religious precepts seriously either. Yet both were a part of serious teaching a few decades ago (the age of some textbooks).
I remember one textbook I had as a child argued that the reason that Lowland Scots prospered in comparison with Highland Scots was due the Protestant work ethic bestowed upon them through Prebyterianism - in comparison, the Highlanders succumbed to their lethargic Catholic proclivities. Hilarious in hindsight, but slightly disturbing as real teaching.
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New people keep winning wars around the world, and once that is done, they get started on re-writing history...
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Actually, the understanding of historical concepts and trends evolves quite a bit.
"Evolves" is the right word, too; it doesn't imply improvement, just changing to fit the times. Is it really possible to write a better history of Rome than was written by its contemporaries? Or do we just consider ourselves more enlightened? Sure, we've seen where a lot of the trends were headed, but surely we've lost a lot of context for understanding the events.
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I remember one textbook I had as a child argued that the reason that Lowland Scots prospered in comparison with Highland Scots was due the Protestant work ethic bestowed upon them through Prebyterianism - in comparison, the Highlanders succumbed to their lethargic Catholic proclivities. Hilarious in hindsight, but slightly disturbing as real teaching.
That's hilarious indeed, when according to my textbook the real reason was that there was an immortal Highlander who kept running around cutting peoples' heads
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Who knows? The fact that history textbooks keep changing is telling. Are we getting better evidence about history all the time? Maybe. But I think mostly our perceptions of life - and therefore history - keep changing. So we rewrite the books, but they may not be more correct, just more contemporary.
Our history books will be scoffed at by the historians of future generations, too.
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No way, there are so many changes to Roman History all the time it definitely takes a full time publishing staff to keep up.
"A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam."
:)
Thanks to http://www.csbruce.com/~csbruce/quotes/general.html [csbruce.com] , a nice way to waste some time
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Funny)
If you noticed, it said "math and science textbooks"
"No way, there are so many changes to Basic Algebra all the time it definitely takes a full time publishing staff to keep up!"
Better now?
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Hah, I knew it! I'm not getting fat, the earth gravitational pull on me is increasing, making the scale show more weight every month.
Now that I've solved that mystery I'm going to get some mcdonalds.
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Funny)
No way, there are so many changes to the laws of physics teached at high school all the time it definitely takes a full time publishing staff to keep up.
Teached?
You must have used the free English textbook.
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Re:Common Sense (Score:4, Interesting)
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They probably define "new" as never been sold and bought back, not as fresh off the presses.
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Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Common Sense (Score:5, Interesting)
It's actually kind of funny, but my experience as the author of some free physics textbooks as been almost exactly the opposite of the situation you have in mind. My books are written for use at the college level, but I have quite a few high school users as well, and the vast majority of these high schools are religious high schools, mostly Catholic schools. The reason is simply that state education bureaucracies make it impossible in most cases for public schools to adopt open-source books, so the ones who can adopt them are mostly private schools, and a lot of private schools are religious. I have one book that's written for the type of course that biology majors usually take, and I've taken tons of opportunities to work in mentions of evolution, e.g., in the chapter that discusses refraction I start off with the evolution of the eye. Doesn't seem to have bothered thes folks a bit. Of course the Catholic Church doesn't have any issues with evolution anyway.
There have been plenty of fairly successful attempts, on the other hand, to get ID into schools through the traditional setup of public school bureaucracies, state legislatures, and textbook publishers. A lot of publishers water down the discussion of evolution in their K-12 texts in an effort to make them more salable in places like Texas.
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Wouldn't Intelligent Design course materials have to existed from the beginning of the Earth and not have changed over the six thousand years of its existence (with any previous editions that are found being obvious fakes placed by Satan to confuse and deceive)?
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Intelligent Design has *zero* positive evidence.
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How can you censor something that doesn't even exist? Wouldn't you need to have "repeatable experiments done with the scientific method" before you can suppress them?
=Smidge=
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It's almost like a kid that refuses not to believe in Santa Clause. Even if the parents show receipts, they're going to come up with something.
Let's hope this goes well... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Also great proof of the power... (Score:3, Funny)
...of insolvency.
Makes that free stuff all the better.
I'm fine with open-source textbooks... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Those are the best kind! (Haven't you ever searched through a stack of used textbooks searching for the one with good notes and highlighting?)
Re:I'm fine with open-source textbooks... (Score:5, Funny)
I always used to go though my textbooks before I turned them in and highlighted useless phrases and wrote totally incorrect notes in them.
But I am an asshole after all.
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Given most of the notes I've come across, this practice must be pretty common.
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Those are the best kind! (Haven't you ever searched through a stack of used textbooks searching for the one with good notes and highlighting?)
A textbook with very good notes and highlighting was a major part of the plot of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"
Wikibooks (Score:3, Insightful)
But I hope we don't resort to wiki textbooks which anyone can edit.
What do you have against Wikibooks [wikibooks.org], especially if you use the revision as of a given date that the instructor has approved?
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No instructor in his right mind would "approve" a wiki textbook. He'd have to read through the whole thing with a fine toothed comb. That's WHY textbooks come from big companies - because if there's a mistake you can reasonably blame the company. Try explaining that you decided to give your students as an authoritative reference some PDF you found on the Internet allegedly written by a hundred random, anonymous strangers.
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Richard Feynman on selecting California textbooks (Score:5, Informative)
In 1964 the eminent physicist Richard Feynman served on the State of California's Curriculum Commission and saw how the Commission chose math textbooks for use in California's public schools. In his acerbic memoir of that experience, titled "Judging Books by Their Covers," Feynman analyzed the Commission's idiotic method of evaluating books, and he described some of the tactics employed by schoolbook salesmen who wanted the Commission to adopt their shoddy products.
http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm [textbookleague.org]
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Re:Richard Feynman on selecting California textboo (Score:5, Informative)
For those who don't want to read the excerpt, here's the best (and most telling) bit: Of all those on the committee, only Feynman (I believe) actually read any of the books. Two books, followups to another textbook that had been submitted, had not even been finished, yet many of the committee panel gave them some of the highest ratings.
I wish I was as cool as Richard Feynman.
Re:Richard Feynman on selecting California textboo (Score:5, Interesting)
I was checking the comments to see if anybody had mentioned that yet, as I was going to say the same thing myself.
I *highly* recommend that link, as well as the book from whence it came, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman. In fact I think that book should be required reading for any self-respecting nerd.
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You can read it in its entirety at
http://www.gorgorat.com/
And then you should go buy it and give it to a friend.
Re:Richard Feynman on selecting California textboo (Score:2)
Why don't they just select that blank textbook for all science programs, thus eliminating most of the stupid problems in all the other textbooks.
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No one really learns anything at the primary/secondary level anyway (aside from basic stuff like how to read, basic math. etc.). If you really want to learn about any given subject, you have to go to college--period. Schools are too burdened down with issues of conformity, discipline, teaching to too broad a spectrum of students, etc. In public schools at least, you can be a really bright kid--but how are you going to learn anything when you're sitting right next to several moronic hillbillies who disrupt c
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By any account, no one read it, including Feynman. He couldn't read a book w/ no pages, could he? Or is this a new kind of Chuck Norris joke?
aweome news (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:aweome news (Score:4, Interesting)
The text book industry is such a ridiculous racket it sickens me. Hopefully this becomes a standard thing across the world that colleges eventually adopt. Honestly, the only times I did open a textbook in high school and college was to do the problems out of the book. The Internet resources were more than enough to service my educational needs, in many cases it was actually far better than the crap in the textbooks.
The problem is that the education industry is a ridiculous racket. The textbook industry is merely a subset of the education industry. One mistake many people make is that since most schools are non-profit and/or government run, they think that they are not driven to make money. I used to work for two separate college bookstore companies (not at the same time). Everybody always thinks that the for profit companies charge more for textbooks than the college run bookstores. That is not true, most college run bookstores charge a higher markup than the contractual markup that the for profit companies have (the for profit companies have a contract with the college or university that--among other things--sets the amount of markup the bookstore charges for textbooks over the publisher's price).
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The problem is that the education industry is a ridiculous racket. The textbook industry is merely a subset of the education industry.
I couldn't agree more
Everybody always thinks that the for profit companies charge more for textbooks than the college run bookstores. That is not true, most college run bookstores charge a higher markup than the contractual markup that the for profit companies have (the for profit companies have a contract with the college or university that--among other things--sets the amount of markup the bookstore charges for textbooks over the publisher's price).
Agreed as well. In fact while I was in school and when I managed to get my parents to buy my textbooks, they wouldn't even bother with the local bookstores (including the university ones). Instead they would scour the Internet for them and usually find them for 1/3 of the price. The downside to this, however, is I'd come in with some pretty janky-ass looking books that weren't even allowed to be sold to people in my region, complete with 'NOT FOR SALE IN NORTH AMERICA' disclaimers pri
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Just did that for my son. 1st edition physics textbook, $160 at the bookstore; used copies around $130. Identical copy, new, purchased online from a bookseller in India: $14. In English, identical in every way (same page numbers, same sample problems), but with the "not
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Really? Do your university bookstores NOT sell the texts for the price printed on the cover?
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Everybody always thinks that the for profit companies charge more for textbooks than the college run bookstores. That is not true, most college run bookstores charge a higher markup than the contractual markup that the for profit companies have (the for profit companies have a contract with the college or university that--among other things--sets the amount of markup the bookstore charges for textbooks over the publisher's price).
I can't speak for that, since both colleges I attended did not have a college-run bookstore. Both were contracted and run by the parasitic bastards at Follett...
Instructor Materials and Supplements? (Score:5, Interesting)
Instructor materials and supplements were not included. So, this is basically a setup/joke.
Traditional textbooks are purchased because of the ancillary material that comes with them. This includes, support, Web sites for both students and instructors, assessment software, assessment preparation material, copious student assignments and solutions, automatic grading software, prepared lecture material, etc.
I have never seen open textbooks work in a subject area that requires frequent updates, such as fundamental computer concepts, or modern application software (office suites...). I do think, however, open can be somewhat successful solid subjects, such as calculus. Note that I bring up these subject area because a LOT of books are sold in these area. But, even in something like a math course, open textbooks run into the "staleness" issue. That is, students do the assignments or tests and then the solutions are passed on to the next year's students. Publishers do quite a bit of work to change problems. Do not underestimate the amount of work and editing/QA involved in such an effort.
If you think students are lazy these days, you should see the instructors. They demand new end-of-chapter problems, new quizzes, new tests. And they want it all automatically graded electronically. This can't be delivered by open textbooks.
Re:Instructor Materials and Supplements? (Score:4, Insightful)
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If you think students are lazy these days, you should see the instructors..
Maybe that is the real problem...
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No, but this can be done by most of the major learning management systems, both proprietary (Angel, Blackboard, etc) and open (Sakai, Moodle).
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K-12 education is generally not subject to a lot of updates and thus would be a better field, I think than college texts. But we don't pay for those textbooks directly, the costs are buried in our property tax bill in the US (where 1/3 of the whole bill often goes to primary/secondary education, the largest single chunk). That doesn't mean that we aren't paying, every year, for the textbook mafia's current stranglehold.
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Why would "fundamental computer concepts" need to be updated frequently? Is there new and exciting work being done in the field of logical operators and binary arithmetic?
Re:Instructor Materials and Supplements? (Score:5, Insightful)
"But, even in something like a math course, open textbooks run into the "staleness" issue. That is, students do the assignments or tests and then the solutions are passed on to the next year's students. Publishers do quite a bit of work to change problems. Do not underestimate the amount of work and editing/QA involved in such an effort."
This is now an absurd claim, at this point. WolframAlpha returns you the answer to any problem by just typing it in.
Take for example one I just made up as I was typing this:
Limit as x -> 0 of (sqrt(sin (x-5)) + tan((y- pi/2)^2)) / x(y-2)^2
And bingo, it gives the answer, as well as gives the series expansion:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Limit+as+x+-%3E+0+of+(sqrt(sin+(x-5))+%2B+tan((y-+pi%2F2) [wolframalpha.com]^2))+%2F+x(y-2)^2
Besides, an Open Textbook can be modified, updated, support the development of new resources, homework sets, etc. by the teachers themselves. So they can leverage the MASSIVE amount of prep work they all do anyway. But with a closed book system, these teachers all have to reinvent the wheel for themselves, as they cannot share their efforts based on a copyrighted book.
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Zero. You didn't show your work. Sure, you could probably take that series expansion and work backward into something I might believe you did yourself, but by the time you do all that you might as well just have answered the question yourself. And you're going to fail miserably on the next question, which is short answer.
Yes, I mark university assignments. No, I really don't care what answer they get.
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(emphasys is mine)
This is exactly my point. I downloaded CK12's trigonometry book and I've been extreme
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"I have never seen open textbooks work in a subject area that requires frequent updates, such as fundamental computer concepts, or modern application software (office suites...)."
Hopefully this will change. I've contributed a lot of my learning materials for OpenOffice.org to the Documentation Project [openoffice.org] (documentation.openoffice.org/conceptualguide) under an open license, including an eBook version of my paperback title [amazon.com] (ISBN 978-0-9778991-6-6), Moodle Course Package complete with quizzes, exa
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"But, even in something like a math course, open textbooks run into the "staleness" issue. That is, students do the assignments or tests and then the solutions are passed on to the next year's students. Publishers do quite a bit of work to change problems. Do not underestimate the amount of work and editing/QA involved in such an effort... If you think students are lazy these days, you should see the instructors. They demand new end-of-chapter problems, new quizzes, new tests. And they want it all automatic
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Your statement is literally true, but very misleading. The state didn't ask anyone to submit ancillary materials, so even if the ancillary materials exist, you're not going to see them listed on the clrn.org site. As a specific example, I submitted my physics textbook, and my ancillary materials are available here [lightandmatter.com]. They include a test bank, solutions to homework problems, and an instructor's manual.
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So for what do we pay those people who are supposed to instruct our children? What do you call them again? Oh, that's right, teachers. I thought they were supposed to have some responsibility i
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"But, even in something like a math course, open textbooks run into the "staleness" issue. That is, students do the assignments or tests and then the solutions are passed on to the next year's students."
That's odd, because I remember using high school textbooks that were several years old. It was literally to the point where the teacher would certify the condition of each book using something similar to the check-out card in library books.
Each book was numbered and it was recorded who got what book, and wha
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It would make sense to me to just have a more comprehensive book and change the amount of it you teach eac
Reference library (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it would be great that at the time of graduation a person had an entire electronic library of reference material. This could make it possible, if you are in 8th grade and find that you are rusty on some of the information from last year, just run a search.
some notes from an attendee (Score:5, Informative)
I was at the symposium where the results were announced, and I wrote up some notes about it here [theassayer.org]. It was actually a pretty interesting panel discussion, with open-source types side by side on the platform along with reps from the publishing industry and the computer hardware industry (which is drooling over the opportunity this represents of selling more computers to schools so they can access electronic books).
The slashdot summary is not particularly accurate.
What Pearson submitted was just a consumable biology workbook, so it's not especially surprising that it wasn't judged as developing all the topics on the list.
The story isn't really that the traditional publishers tried and failed, it's that they essentially sat this one out. Pearson did a half-assed token submission, and the other publisher that had a rep at the symposium, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, didn't submit anything at all. They're clearly highly allergic to the "free" part of "Free Digital Textbook Initiative."
Re:some notes from an attendee (Score:4, Interesting)
Ben,
Thanks for the clarification and your efforts in the free books arena.
I took some time to look through a bit of what CK12 has available on their website and it's clear who the real champion of these free textbook successes is... Jimmy Wales [wikimediafoundation.org] and the work of Millions of dedicated people who have contributed to the Wikipedia project.
Some positive things about open textbooks. (Score:5, Informative)
Here are some positive things to think about, which assumes the books will be available electronically--making them easily printable and available from anywhere. These comments come from someone who grew up in a family of K-12 teachers:
1. Being able to "take a textbook home" without having to carry it will almost certainly lead to more at-home study and better students.
2. People who choose to do home schooling will benefit from this. And, by using the same texts, there is an opportunity for a smooth transition to/from home schooling.
3. Schools with budget problems might see a big win here.
4. The moderate hassle of keeping track of textbooks which are loaned to students each semester/school-year/etc. will be mitigated.
I am sure there are some others.
As for the problem of teaching aids, I believe an on-line repository allowing teachers to contribute aids they have developed for themselves for others to use would quickly fill this void. In my experience, K-12 teachers are almost always willing to contribute their efforts to help fellow teachers.
Todd
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'cause math should be low-res pixel graphics... (Score:4, Insightful)
and not line up on the baseline --- look at the CK-12 Calculus textbook (http://cafreetextbooks.ck12.org/math/CK12_Calculus.pdf) --- and of course Arial is the perfect choice for running text and it's perfect appropriate to use Computer Modern for equations in text, but Times and Symbol to label graphs....
Would someone please teach these people about typography?
William
Re:'cause math should be low-res pixel graphics... (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, a person who is truly upset by the typography of a math textbook.
I commend you. You sir, are a nerd's nerd.
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Why are these not written in LaTeX? This looks like they were written in Word with the equations generated by another program and copied in.
It was specifically designed to do stuff like this. I'm trying to learn it right now, it's definitely not the easiest, but it's 100x more powerful than Word and it's just PlainText.
Imagine doing an "svn checkout http://textbooks.org/grade/12/calculus [textbooks.org]" and or seeing the entire revision history.
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About LaTeX:
``It was specifically designed to do stuff like this. I'm trying to learn it right now, it's definitely not the easiest, but it's 100x more powerful than Word and it's just PlainText.''
And the best advantage of all: it works. When the choice is between LaTeX and MS Word, people often choose MS Word because it's easier to get started with. This is actually a good idea when you're writing simple documents of a few pages each. But if your document will be more than a few pages, have lots of figures
PGDP uses LaTeX sometimes (Score:3, Interesting)
Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées (1838) (ed. Joseph Liouville) (warning, PGDP membership required) [pgdp.net]
Now this is probably not a really suitable example for school use, but e.g. a book like Elementary Algebra for Schools, by H.S. Hall and S.R. Knight (1885) (warning, PGDP membership required) [pgdp.net] sounds about right.
That book has already been checked and formatted but ne
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Why don't you?
Send them an email with you thoughts and some examples.
Seriously. Open and online text books can vastly improve education and the education system, but it needs peple like you to do a bit.
And if it's online, eventually ALL education systems can get value for it.
CK-12 textbooks painful to read (Score:4, Interesting)
Someone else criticized the typography of the C-12 textbooks. The graphs are worse. I'm reading their "Calculus" book. The axis scales on the graphs tend to be very tiny. You have to zoom way, way in using a PDF viewer to read the axes. At which point the graph lines show serious jaggies. Tables of numeric values are left-aligned, which makes it hard to compare values.
There's very little motivation. The text just jumps right in, throwing formulas at the kids.
The language is painful. "Recall that a particular pair of numbers is a solution if direct substitution of the X and Y values into the original equation yields a true equation statement." This is formally correct, but it uses the concept of evaluating an equation as a truth-valued Boolean statement, which is beyond the scope of this text.
On pages 15-16, the book discusses depreciation. One problem says "Assuming the rate of depreciation of the car is constant..." What they mean is that the price declines linearly (into negative territory?). A "constant rate of depreciation" is usually understood as a constant percentage rate. (The financial community uses "straight line depreciation" to refer to linear depreciation.) This also could have led to a useful discussion of exponentials, compound interest, decay, and inflation, but they don't go there. They change the subject and go on.
The text assumes that the student has some specific model of graphing calculator, but doesn't say what it is. (Incidentally, the whole course is a PDF file formatted for printing, not HTML with applets, which might be more useful.)
There's a section on fitting a curve to a set of data. It tells the student what buttons to push on the calculator, but says nothing about what's going on inside.
The terms "open interval" and "closed interval" are used, but not defined before use. The text also uses capital letters like N to indicate sets of pairs of reals on page 68. This is a confusing usage from more advanced math. I think that some of the theorems were cut and pasted from another source, and don't quite fit the text.
When the text finally gets to integrals and derivatives, it doesn't start by pointing out that they're inverse operations. Both are presented separately. The text would be better if it started off with a completely graphical presentation of what's going on, instead of starting with derivations.
This text has all the stuff on the checklist, but presents them incoherently. This is not a good textbook.
Re:Computers to read the textbooks (Score:5, Insightful)
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I got my EEE PC for under $200 and am enrolled full time working toward a BSBA. That's what my observations are based off of, as a reference.
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I got my EEE PC for under $200 and am enrolled full time working toward a BSBA. That's what my observations are based off of, as a reference.
O_O Which one was that?
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I'd rather have the 700, honestly. I have an old..er..ancient 10" VIAO laptop already. Looking for something smaller. :)
I'll look into that. Sweet.
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Try dropping a netbook on the floor.
The OLPC XO-1, which opened the low-cost segment of the subnotebook market, was designed to be rugged. Why have other computer makers failed at this?
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Panasonic used to have a line of "rugged" laptops, didn't they?
Re:Computers to read the textbooks (Score:5, Insightful)
Since, with an OSS document(or one that you own the rights to) you can have anybody you want print it, you can put out the printing for competitive bid, and should be able to get it done for not too much above cost(and printing is actually pretty cheap, compared to textbook costs).
The issue of open vs. proprietary, for textbooks, is pretty much orthogonal to the issue of digital vs. printed.
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Re:Computers to read the textbooks (Score:5, Insightful)
"Public domain" means not under copyright. "Open source" typically implies "Under copyright; but available subject either to essentially no terms, or subject to the requirement that you extend the rights given to you to any people you give the work to". Those are sometimes equivalent in effect (public domain vs. new BSD doesn't make a big difference in many contexts); but that doesn't make them equivalent in general.
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"Open source" means editable and Free (Score:2)
So if there are special restrictions, and they want to retain copyright, then give it a Creative Commons [creativecommons.org] license.
Creative Commons BY and BY-SA are not the only licenses for Free textbooks. Nor are they even the only licenses for editable Free textbooks.
But definitely don't call it open source. Open source specifically applies to software.
The GNU General Public License defines "source code" as the form of a work designed for editing. The GNU Free Documentation License defines "transparent" in a similar way. So "open source", said of a work other than a computer program, means that the work is both Free and available in an editable form.
Re. Open Source = software (Score:2)
Isn't knowledge human software?
Sorry to confuse matters :-)
Re:Computers to read the textbooks (Score:5, Informative)
The books are not in the public domain--they are available under permissive copyright licenses. For example, CK-12 Calculus [ck12.org] (PDF) is licensed under CC BY-SA (page 2 of the PDF). This is the only book I checked, but I expect most (if not all) are licensed similarly.
If the books were public domain, they could be redistributed as proprietary works under another's name. Instead, these books are essentially GPL'd (again, assuming they're all licensed similarly).
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So, I guess that anything created as a result of knowledge gained from these books must also be licensed under the GPL. Brilliant! In another generation everything will be open-source!
(Yes, I know the difference between the GPL and the CC licenses. It's a joke. Lighten up.)
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"If the books were public domain, they could be redistributed as proprietary works under another's name."
Books are not software. I'm not sure if it's actually illegal or not for you to take, say, Hamlet and distribute it with your name on it, but try it and see what happens.
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I'm not sure if it's actually illegal or not for you to take, say, Hamlet and distribute it with your name on it, but try it and see what happens.
I don't think repackaging and selling Hamlet would be illegal... It would be immoral, and most importantly, people would find out and throw eggs at you on the street. ... ...or maybe not, considering the many, barely-changed versions of Romeo and Juliet available for different media (West Side Story, High School Musical, innumerable soap operas, etc.)
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Open source can have meaning in the matter of textbooks though it's not clear from what I've read so far that actual open source is what they're doing. If you have a chart, for instance, an open source textbook will make available the underlying table of figures used to create that chart. A public domain textbook probably won't. A public domain textbook might be scanned from the original paper or might just be paper but an open source textbook will include the source files needed to build the author intende
Best. Book. Evar. (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is, without the massive costs which go into textbooks, they can be cheap. And, even better, if my book gets lost, damaged, or stolen who cares? It's five bucks. I also have the option to mark up my book in any way I want, and I am not worried about the resale value at the end of the class (which will be about a tenth of the books original cost to me, unless the school changes editions and the bookstore staff just laughs at me).
For K-12 schools, this will be even better. Instead of handing a kid a $50 book, which he is going to destroy; you give him a $5 reproduction, and require him to put it in his own $2 three ring binder. When he loses it, you just give him another copy. He can even write in the book, and keep it at the end of the year. If your students have computers, you can even go so far as to give them digital copies.
The only thing which needs to be checked is the quality and accuracy of the information. But, the State (at least California) is already doing that. And, like many Open Source projects, you can have the advantage of lots of people looking at it before hand. There just isn't a downside to having Open Source books, unless you are a textbook publisher, in which case they suck. But, as far as I care, they can join the buggy whip manufacturers on the sidelines of history.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This was a huge topic of discussion at the symposium where the results were announced. I've blogged about it here [theassayer.org], but I'll quote the relevant part of what I wrote: "Nobody seemed sure about the implications of the settlement in the Williams case, which requires equal access to books for all students. W
Re:WooHoo my first first (Score:5, Funny)
I actually posted before you from my kindle, but amazon deleted it.