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...
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]
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!
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:
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.
Physicists just can't agree on even the most basic aspects of their science.
And who are you to make such a (ridiculous) claim?