Slashdot Mirror
Virginia Begins Open-Source Physics Textbook
eldavojohn writes "The Commonwealth of Virginia has issued a request for contributions to an open source physics textbook (or 'flexbook' they termed it). They are partnering with CK-12 to make this educational textbook under the Creative Commons by Attribution Share-Alike license."
It's about time, can't wait to see the result and more of the same for other subjects. Education for everyone, free-ish. This is how it should be.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Ass, but www.textbooktorrents.com saved me a bunch of money.
Why pay for rev.2 and rev.3 when you bought rev.1 and are getting reamed by changed question numbers?
I saved my friends about 2k$ this semester from what I found there.
I hope it won't be Wikipedia style...
Kick out spdf and welcome the era of open-source text books. Hooray!!
Is Project Gutenburg not going to lend a hand in this?
slashdot rocks
This is a good idea. Base it on a standard description of each concept like an old fashioned text book, but also allow:
- Discussion threads with students and teachers. (moderated, Slashdot style?)
- Contributed examples, again by students and teachers. You could do something like the PHP documentation, where the best contributed examples are prominently displayed at the bottom of the relevant page.
- Interactive tools to illustrate particular concepts.
- Copious linkage to similar resources.
A successful project like this could easily spawn similar projects for the other sciences.
Due to gravity being "just a theory," the state of Virginia will be requiring the textbooks to include alternative theories as to why objects with mass have gravity -- chief among them, the concept of Intelligent Falling.
Why reinventing warm water?
Go to Light and Matter for a high quality book set about physics.
By the way, CK-12,org already has one.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Most physics without solving PDEs is pointless. But I don't think that is the point of this class. High school physics focuses more on physical intuition and the understanding of the scientific method than on actual calculations. The only areas of high school physics that could apply to the real world are the simplest constant value problems. I would consider a high school physics class a success if the students could describe Newton's Laws of Mechanics, the Work-Energy Theorem, Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation, Snell's Law, the First Law of Thermodynamics, the general gist of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Pascal's Law, the Ideal Gas Equation, the general gist of the wave equation, simple vector operations, and some electronics. I wouldn't expect students to do any real calculations until they had mastered calculus. And I wouldn't expect them to be useful for anything unless they had mastered ODEs and PDEs (and other mathmatics of physics topics like complex analysis, linear algebra, calculus of variations, and vector calculus).
In theory, this is a great idea. Virginia wants to have a core set of physics materials which will stay current, and then allow teachers to choose several "electives" from "contemporary and emerging physics topics" to enhance their curriculum.
The thing to keep in mind is that this is their first step; the "flexbook," in its first form isn't going to replace the printed textbooks. After all, they want version 1 to be released on Feb. 27, 2009.
--
Yeah, I RTFA.
Open source? What could that possibly have to do with a textbook? Is it compiled?
If it's written in LaTex and you can get the source with the book, then it would be a wholly accurate description.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Sounds great until the "Intelligent Design" movement starts forcing their opinions on "physics" (aka, mind of God) into this book.
The battle has not yet begun...
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Considering the religious and cultural makeup of Virginia, I look forward to an accurate physical description of our 6,000 year old universe.
NO! This is an Outrage!! This is blasphemy!! Any honest fool knows that the best way to provide education,a or anything else for that matter, is to allow the unregulated invisible hand of the free market to solve everything. The magic of the markets can do it all, as long as they are unfettered by big government socialists! This project is Economic Terrorism!!
This is unfair government competition in an otherwise productive and creative industry. Just look at the high quality and low costs of textbooks and courses currently on offer! Just look at the amount of engineers graduating from our universities! The free market has brought us prosperity, happiness and profit and can bring us so much more if only the government would cut more taxes and ... ....what?... they what?...when?...how much?..... ........
Pay No Attention The Trillion Dollar Nationalization Project Behind The Curtain. The Market Will Continue To Solve All. This Is Simply A Temporary Accounting Measure. I Repeat. The Magic Of The Market Is Absolute!
May the Maths Be with you!
And the Lord sayeth on the 2nd day, "Let there be suffient mass for nuclear fusion," and Lo! did the bountiful Earth swoop in from Heaven to orbit the newly formed sun.
Ahh, a definitive open source physics textbook so comic book writers can stop having Superman lift a mountain which under the small surface area he can cover, regardless of how strong, would simply crumble around him or the pressure at his hands would be so great the rock would go molten and he would effectively melt through the mountain he was trying to hold up.
Perhaps ships blowing up in space will finally be silent the WAY GOD INTENTED THEM TO BLOW UP!
Perhaps Cyclop's eye beams will finally push him back with equal force that they shoot with and maybe the death star's super cannon will no longer be a laser but some particle stream of sub-atomic explosives that penetrate the planet and rapidly conver the conventional matter it comes in contact with into some exotic and unstable form of matter that goes boom. BIG BADDA BOOM!
Perhaps with a good solid physics text book people will learn to wear their seat belts, realize that driving a motor cycle isn't as safe as driving a car, and learn that the LHC cannot destroy the universe...
This all, of course, is completely dependant that:
A: People are literate (yes there is a difference between knowing how to read and being literate)
B: People writing the book can write
C: People start actually taking physic courses
D: Pay attention in said courses
E: Have a teacher that actually teaches rather then babysit like 99% of teachers in North America (YEAH THAT MEANS YOU TOO CANADA AND MEXICO. GUATEMALA -> PANAMA IS OFF THE HOOK... FOR NOW...)
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
1. TFA states that this is for K-12, NOT college...so all the 'screw the Univ. for making me pay $200 for a textbook comments' are misguided
2. I like this idea as well, but let's not forget that an open textbook than anyone can edit about SCIENCE is bound to attract hordes of Intelligent Design trolls...imagine it...every church in Virginian tells its members to go home Sunday afternoon and edit the wiki-text book about evolution...this is big, big trouble
3. I'd rather see this opened to a pool of teachers, professors, scientists, etc that have been vetted for their qualifications.
Thank you Dave Raggett
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/about/about/index.htm
I fail to see how making something "open source" will prevent it from being accredited. It may cost money, but the FOSS world has raised money before, while having their primary product remain open source.
In the late 1960s, I was taught high-school physics from the PSSC (Physical Science Study Committee) Physics textbook. The curriculum and textbook were put together by an NSF-convened panel. All the curriculum materials (textbook, supplementary readings, teacher's guides, experimental equipment) were made freely available. I still have two copies of the textbook produced by different publishers and with different covers but identical inside.
Although it was demonstrably superior to other physics curricula, the PSSC program was ultimately a failure because publishers, who couldn't make much money selling the PSSC textbook due to competition, eventually dropped the book and pushed hard to get their proprietary, therefore more heavily marked-up, textbooks adopted by school boards.
-Tom Duff
Having lived in Lynchburg for a number of years, there are plenty of folks there who would demand removal of all sorts of things such as the true age of the universe if they had any input at all into the process. If instead it was written by experts, they'd be complaining to their representative about the state spending money on teaching atheism.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Physics without calculus is a bit pointless.
Woh! Step down from your high horse. There is plenty to learn about basic physics that doesn't involve calculus. You must simply make the correct assumptions. All the calculus is doing is explaining why the algebra works under some assumptions and not others. Even in four years of engineering school, I rarely used calculus.
Keep in mind that a derivative can be expressed as a simple difference (subtraction) and an integral can be expressed as a simple summation.
For example, Newton's second law only requires calculus if the acceleration of the system is changing. For practical classroom purposes, acceleration due to gravity is constant. No calculus required. (sort of)
High school physics is teaching that the world can be described by math. The math that they will learn in physics without calculus will greatly help them understand calculus in the future. High school students don't need proofs, they need application. Application keeps kids interested.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I got preview of some content for the text-book:
A lot of high-level college textbooks have chapters written by different people. Typically by experts in the subjects covered in those chapters. This is why high-level textbooks are referred to by the names of their editors, not so much the authors.
So, I'm not sure if there is any particular drawback to distributing authorsip for an "open" textbook.
What I do like (other than the creative commons-style licensing) is that it seems there will be much greater oppportunity for community editing. This, if done properly, could result in greater readability and usefulness of the text.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Maybe yours was more focused on physical intuition, but mine was very much conceptual understanding and problem solving. We were expected to understand how closed form solutions were derived - sparing us the necessity of having to memorize them in some cases.
Yes, you can do some stuff without calculus, but calculus is easy, excepting some of the trig crossover and the umpteen billion integration tricks. It really ought to be part of everyone's high school education, if only for its tremendous ability to empower those who wield its principles in the age of the computer.
I also went to an engineering school. I don't ever use calculus and other fancy math in the workplace, but calculus and other fancy math are tremendously useful in understanding many of the modern marvels about us.
As far as summations and differences, this is intuitively true. Vector calculus teaches the intuition for that sort of thing. But without the ability to integrate, you're going to miss out on certain things.
Calculus gives you the power to forget special case solutions and derive as needed in a lot of cases, which is pretty damned awesome.
1. TFA states that this is for K-12, NOT college...so all the 'screw the Univ. for making me pay $200 for a textbook comments' are misguided
The K-12 books are bought with tax money. They're not free.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
an open-source physics text book cannot work. Physicists just can't agree on even the most basic aspects of their science.
You RIAA brain washed dupe.
Theft is "the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's freely-given consent." Your example is theft.
Copyright violation is "the unauthorized use of material that is covered by copyright law, in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works." What CC suggests is most likely copyright violation, but that depends on the terms the book is released under.
THEY ARE NOT THE SAME.
Please stop modding idiocy like this as Insightful. It isn't. You're doing the RIAA's work for them when you allow their twisted definitions to gain mainstream acceptance.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Only this weekend I hear on NPR a professor in California wrote a Chemistry book and released it under CC license. He felt the chem books available were too expensive, generic, and with just pretty pictures.
Not to mention that college level calc may well taught in an arena type hall with 250 students, by a TA or a professor who most likely is going to find such "elementary" math beneath him or her.
Getting calc "out of the way" (at a community college level, in a class of mostly highschoolers who wanted the credit) was the best thing I ever did.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
I think that this is different in that Virginia is limiting the scope of people who are allowed to edit the Physics book for use within their educational system. RFCs (Requests for Contribution) were sent to certain institutions. Even CK-12 has their own group of educators who are constantly proofreading their current book selections.
More than likely, it will be CK-12 who will edit the books to maintain the "cohesive structure, consistency, and progression of complexity" so as to provide a better experience for the students. Places outside of VA should be able to modify the released book as they see fit, thanks to the Creative Commons license, but within VA, if teachers want to use this flexbook, they have to follow the approved version.
Besides, it'll be a while before Virginia will actually replace their textbook in favor of this flexbook, if it even gets that far.
Calculus gives you the power to forget special case solutions and derive as needed in a lot of cases, which is pretty damned awesome.
But it's beyond the scope of a basic physics class. You already know that the laws of physics are true, that the world can be explained by math. Kids in high school don't know that. This is the most important things kids learn in high school physics.
I found this article the other day, I think you should read it.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Pay more taxes so teachers can have better salaries, small classes and less time spend on paperwork and more on teaching.
Oops, you voted for the guy promising you a tax cut before any money has actually been cut and instead of saving what little money there is for a rainy day spend it all and more on tax cut only to then find himself involved in a war with no end.
Good teachers get burned out by the system created by voters who can't see anything but that 300 dollar tax refund.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This won't change any of that. The "commoners" have had access to cheap/free information for decades, but they choose to reject it. It's not as though the theory of evolution is some big secret that no one knows about, for crying out loud. Don't expect people to turn off the television and start thinking just because textbooks are being published under better licenses.
I'm especially fond of your ironic sig line:
"I really want it" does not mean the same as "I need it" or "I deserve it"
You do actually need it to pass.
And since you are essentially paying into an extortion racket, there is no moral dilema in avoiding doing so. All these assholes do is change the sample problems with each book revision. There is no content change worth shelling out another couple hundred dollars each semester.
For example, let's look at an Algebra book. How much new algebra has been written in the last 1000 years? Now how much of that would you expect to see in an introductory text? The answer is zero. None. All introductory Algebra texts cover the exact same thing.
So, the dilema - how do you make a new Algebra book every semester? A publisher makes money by selling books. How to do that? Simple. Change the homework problems. There is no new Algebra information, no new content, so they change the homework.
This is unethical. It's extortion. "Pay us or you don't graduate." So yeah, it's nice to see people solving the problem. Remember, what is legal and what is moral are often times two different things.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.