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Sun Founders' Push For Open Source Education
theodp writes "Unfortunately for textbook publishers, Scott McNealy has some extra time on his hands since Oracle acquired Sun and put him out of a job. The Sun co-founder has turned his attention to the problem of math textbooks, the price of which keeps rising while the core information inside of them stays the same. 'Ten plus 10 has been 20 for a long time,' McNealy quips. 'We are spending $8 billion to $15 billion per year on textbooks' in the US, he adds. 'It seems to me we could put that all online for free.' McNealy's Curriki is an online hub for free textbooks and other course material. Others hoping to bring elements of the Open Source model to the school textbook world include Vinod Khosla (who co-founded Sun with McNealy), whose wife Neeru heads up the CK-12 Foundation, which has already developed nine of the core textbooks for high school."
$8-15 billion wants to be free?
WALSTIB!
Some of Benjamin Crowell's work, of which I am a fan.
Nullius in verba
Downloaded it directly and reading it on my iPad.
Looks nice, and very readable... will be nice to refresh my knowledge.
The effort to reduce cost of schooling in general is admirable and book publishers are a leech on society so I hope McNealy and Khosla are successful.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Does anyone know of any pre-1923 (i.e. out of copyright) series of educational books for early education that could serve as the foundation for some "open source" textbooks?
Perhaps Google's book scanning project will be digitizing some relevant books, or is there some other on-line resource? Ideally it would be the original books that would be scanned, to preclude any argument of copyright being held by re-publishers via minor changes.
Surely for basic education technology won't have made much of a significant difference in content (I'm a big fan of old-school education at basic levels - calculators are to be used AFTER you learn the basics, not instead of)
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
The reception to this effort will be especially positive after the Higher Education Opportunity Act goes into effect (requiring a list of changes for a new edition of a textbook showing how it differs from the older edition). As it currently stands, the author could change a few equations, and add a couple graphs, and call it a new edition.
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That would make it much harder for me, as an educator, to require my students to use a textbook written by one of my colleagues, who just happens to require his students to use the textbook I wrote (because, of course, it would be unethical to require your students to purchase your own textbook.
Once we have that tidy arrangement going, we merely have to make minor changes to the texts (new pictures - you know, the important stuff), and then obsolete the previous editions.
Mr. McNealy, you already got your payday - why are you trying to prevent me from getting mine?
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
The whole textbook business is one of the biggest scams in education, and it only gets worse in college. New editions are churned out for the college market simply to ensure a fresh revenue stream for all involved. I think in 95% of math, science, lit, and history courses, you could go to Dover Publishers (the people that basically make their living reprinting stuff in the public domain), get the books in paperback, and actually get better textbooks in the end. I have a weird hobby of collecting pre-1950 textbooks, and frankly I think kids learned "more" back then from their textbooks than they do today. Obviously, some knowledge has been added here and there, but I've got an 8th grade science textbook that does a much better job imparting the principles of physics and chemistry to kids because of the practical examples used.
I have to disagree with McNealy's push to go all-online though. There's no substitute for having a physical book at times. We just need to get off of the "new textbook" gravy-train.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
knowledge should be free to all to better mankind devobtch
Well, it does now only have 8 planets orbiting around it. Of course there's going to be an identity crisis involved.
To be fair, I've heard stuff about open-source textbooks for a while. This isn't really a "Scott McNealy and his friends" idea, more of a "Scott McNeally showed up to put some weight behind his version of an idea that other people have already been working hard to do."
http://www.google.com/search?q=open+source+textbooks
I also thought that the 10 + 10 = 20 example was a bit simplistic, since textbooks get updated frequently. Although, to be fair, if people can create open-source textbooks, it's a benefit to society - that means $8 billion to $15 billion per year that stays in the pockets of society or state governments to be used elsewhere. Although I suppose there's still printing costs.
From the article:
"At first, Sun fought the open-source set, and then it joined the party by making the source code to its most valuable software available to anyone. Too little, too late. Sun’s sales continued to decline, making it vulnerable to a takeover."
Uh, what? It's weird to act like Sun's decline was due to the fact that they went "too little, too late" with open-source. Open Source was never going to save Sun no matter when they "switched over".
I hope more math departments start picking up on this trend:
http://linear.ups.edu/opentexts.html
http://www.allometry.com
>> Ten plus 10 has been 20 for a long time,' McNealy quips
Nonetheless, Mississippi is going to complain if a standardized math textbook doesn't include information about Jesus riding a Brontosaurus.
Will they just drop support for an old edition of a book on a whim a la Sun? Or will they do the right thing and not follow in the publishers' footsteps?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
which explains that Coronal Mass Ejection it just spewed at us.
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
It is unbelievably slow, and seems quite broken.
Perhaps McNearly should lobby for a decent textbook on how to use apostrophes.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"Push" is a noun in the headline. That is, it is about a push, by the Sun founders, for open source education.
Also, the editor usually writes the headline, not the submitter.
If you're going to post flamebait, at least try to be correct.
"This algorithm runs in constant time. Come on, 2,147,483,648 is a constant..."
McNealy is (thankfully) singular, so just die in a fire.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Others hoping to bring elements of the Open Source model to the school textbook world include Vinod Khosla (who co-founded Sun with McNealy)
"This algorithm runs in constant time. Come on, 2,147,483,648 is a constant..."
USSR science textbooks. Seriously, they are great (with some obvious exceptions :) ) and they are out of copyright.
For example, Fichtenholz's "Differential and Integral Calculus" is THE best textbook on calculus ever created. It's so clear and written in so beautiful language that I had actually re-read it just for fun. I don't know if there are translations into English, alas.
Landau and Lifshitz's "Course of Theoretical Physics" is the one of the best reference books for the modern physics, and it's available in English. It's out of copyright but its translations might be copyrighted.
I'm certain it's possible to create a decent course on math/physics without much problem. Also, other countries should also have a lot of good material.
It'd be different for the modern fast-moving fields of biology, chemistry, etc. But there's no reason for math/physics books to change every year (or even every decade).
If a school district decides to commission a textbook as a work made for hire, and pays the authors handsomely, and then makes the work free, it can be a win-win. The authors get a guaranteed amount, but they won't collect royalties going forward. The schools don't go broke buying expensive textbooks, and poorer districts can benefit. Textbook writers can be booked again when revisions are made. Of course, it will be possible to identify people that make less money. That's life.
When it comes to college level stuff, mathematics has more free books available online than any other discipline.
Yet, most universities use either James Stewart or one other book for calculus.
Why? I really don't know. I asked a math grad student friend of mine, and he said it ultimately boiled down to politics: Calculus level textbooks are decided by a committee, and the professor teaching it only has some say - and it's hard to convince a committee. As hundreds of students will take calculus every semester, they need the warm and fuzzy feeling an established textbook gives them.
To be fair, the mathematics departments are also perhaps the most likely to use free/cheap textbooks (compared to sciences and engineering). This usually happens for upper division courses, though.
Beetle B.
at least in school (can't speak for higher education). The have softcover booklets, with about 8-10 weeks worth of material. That means they are about 100 pages long, maybe shorter. Plus, they contain the practice problems and you can write in them. I never understood the practice of carry these heavy tomes called textbooks around, especially even after a year, that half of it is never relevant to the course in many instances. You also get to keep the booklets and don't have to go through the nonsense of putting covers on them or otherwise.
As for online books, I always thought wikibooks was a worthy effort:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
But people aren't as eager to write textbooks/practice problems as they are to make articles about their obsession. I wish Wikimedia Foundation made use of their mature efforts like Wikipedia and allowed a single banner ad per page (clearly labeled as sponsor, offer a no-ad subscriber version) and then funnel the money toward immature efforts such as these.
http://www.legco.gov.hk/yr97-98/english/panels/ed/papers/ed1601-3.htm
The Education Department (ED) issues a Recommended Textbook List. If the publishers want to be on that list, they have to reduce the unnecessary revisions. That seems to work extremely well:
>According to the Consumer Council's surveys, unnecessary textbook revisions have been greatly reduced in recent years, dropping from 21% in 1992 (six out of 28 textbooks) to 2% in 1996 (one out of 44 textbooks). From a random selection of revised textbooks in 1997, no unnecessary revision was detected (out of the eight sets of books examined, revisions to two were found necessary and those to the remaining six quite necessary).
You read the whole of the article? LOL @ ur phale, n00b.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
True, but that still doesn't make your comment correct, as he is not the only founder involved. So perhaps instead of inviting him to die in a fire you could, ya know, just admit your mistake.
(Admittedly, the headline is probably acceptable only by accident.)
Fail. From TFBCA: "Scott McNealy [and, according to some cunt called "Anonymous Coward", the invisible bastard man and an entire legion of undetectable phantom asshats who are not mentioned anyflappingwhere] has some extra time on his hands since Oracle acquired Sun and put him out of a job. The Sun co-founder[<-- look, no "s" you twerp] has turned his attention to the problem of math textbooks"
Singular for the win.
And you could just eat donkey bollock curry on a bed of shit-smeared samphire. Which do you think is more likely?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
hasn't he heard of wikibooks.org?
As in other communication media, in some countries, school teachers have a main interest in recommending certain powerful brands.
But the interest is not related to the content, but to bonus that would pay them some extra cash.
Rwe obliged 2 save our future by choosing:O3 hole-greenhouse effect instead of accepting everydays gossip-nonsense chat?
The headline of the article has a totally random trailing apostrophe after "founders". Why?
It should be pointed out that at least for the HS high school market, the math content of the textbook is only one aspect upon which sales are based.
Most importantly, in most states and provinces, there is an approval process for textbooks that measures dozens if not hundreds of parameters including binding quality, use of names in examples (should reflect diverse population), male/female ratios in illustrations, avoidance of culturally specific contexts in problems, etc.
It can easily cost tens, if not over a hundred thousand to get approval in big states like Texas. They must also conform to the local curriculum, often must include teacher's editions, study guides, etc.
This means that it is almost unknown for identical textbooks to be usable for two large states (although one can produce different editions for different markets). However, all of this requires serious money, which is awfully hard for open-source textbook to achieve.
I find this to be a common failing of open source projects when they reach the real world. These projects provide what should be the meat of the requirements, but misse the 'dances through hoops' part. While theoretically the customer could do just the hoop-jumping for a vastly cheaper price, the reality is often that the customer prefers to pay full price for the complete package, rather than getting 80% of the package for free...
If McNealy does for OS textbooks what he did for Sun then I think the textbook publishers can sleep well.
How does "the textbook is the computer" sound ?
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
In France, where I received most of my undergrad education in CS, each teacher writes his own course outline, reference material, practicals, etc. (we call them "polycopiés") and it is distributed to every student at the beginning of the term (costs for printing are included in our (low) tuition). Sometimes the teachers recommend that we read a couple books, but everything that we strictly need for the course is in these "polycopiés". They are often shared by teachers within the departments, who update it every year. It's pretty much what happens in every university/field there. Why doesn't the US do that?
...in case the value of pi ever changes!
We're talking about high school mathematics here, meaning school boards not teachers pick the textbooks. I'll humor you however by explaining the university situation :
There are basic university courses like calculous where students buy oodls of books. Those books however are written by professors at small lower tier collages who aren't well connected with the research community.. probably not even well connected with the mathematics education community.
You see, it's actually the publishers who make all the big money off issuing new editions by rearranging the exercises, so they need some stooge lacking normal levels of self respect.. and they easily make up for his lack of prestige thorough more advertising.
You might see a respected professor write say a linear algebra textbook, but usually he does so for largely "pedagogical exploration", which usually means the book kinda sucks.
There are also advanced university courses taught using books written by academics you actually know. There is however an usually some hierarchy for the quality of such books once you've narrowed down the course material, leaving almost no wiggle room for choosing friend's books.
For example, Sipser is basically always the best choice for teaching an introductory course on the theory of computation, others need not apply.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
In fact, these programs are focusing on high school textbooks, not university textbooks, i.e. they'll mostly serve to help poor school districts, although some counties may reduce property taxes, or give local politicians more hookers & booze.
There are other programs focussed on university level textbooks. For math and physics, one big obstacle for placing textbooks online is simply that academics don't use version control for their research publications. All the early large OSS projects might have failed too without diff, patch, and cvs.
Imho, the best approach would be developing an online collaborative editing environment based upon git like github, but designed for latex and offering introductory wiki-like features for people who don't know git. There are literally hundreds of unfinished math and physics textbooks lying around academia, but ALL are written in latex, which still beats all other typesetting systems anyways. So you let professors upload their existing unfinished book, they get reenergized by other editors, initially editing in wiki mode, and eventually moving to fully using git.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
With the increase in college tuition and the unwillingness of employees to provide education incentives to their workers, it is getting harder and harder for the middle class to flourish. The Internet is a great source of information, but it is up to the individual to swift thru this information and find what is relevant and accurate. Reputable sources of knowledge are essential if we want to stay competitive and for our middle class to thrive. We need to put our full force behind these types of "Open Source" models of Education. With that in mind, here are a couple of more sources for high-quality/Open Source information: 1. MIT's OpenCourceWare (http://ocw.mit.edu/) 2. Connexions (http://cnx.org/) Please, if you know of any others, post them. George Bernard once said: “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas. Let's keep the river of knowledge flowing freely and without restriction.
http://nyewin.org http://nyexug.com http://nycsqlusergroup.com http://nylug.org
When I was in college a math professor told us that calculus had not changed much since the days of Newton and Leibniz and probably 100 pages of public domain material would more than cover the subject. He said that the 500+ page book that we had paid $100 for was basically a rip-off. I hope he had tenure because speaking the truth like that could be costly.
Which high-quality public domain books are those?
All of the math books for which copyright has expired.
The book makers don't just make books. They screen them, and educate the school boards, so the schools don't waste students' time with crappy, outmoded texts.
New math books simply have "updated", or as I see it "dumbed down", terminology.
If I'm not mistaken the English course (esp. vocabulary) is required as well as math, so why dumb down the math books?
I tried helping out my little brother, a high-school sophomore, with his math homework,
but I couldn't stand wading through the stupefied terminology soup.
Solving an equation has been the same process since Algebra was invented,
yet the textbook referred to combining like terms via adding the coefficients (or multipliers) of like variables as:
Move same lettered variables next to each other then add or subtract the counter numbers of each type of variable.
I also found several typos and mathematical errors in the brand spanking "new and improved" math schoolbook.
There's no reason not to standardize on (reprint) a time tested (proofread) 70 year old Algebra book rather than release
new books with different terminology and poor quality control except to make more money for publishers.
A change in curriculum isn't an excuse since you could just provide the appropriate book containing the desired
info instead of reprint a new collection of the same old info with new terminology.
Oh, wait, you can't get a copyright on a book made by reprinting the same old info unless you change the info somehow...
"Others hoping to bring elements of the Open Source model to the school textbook world[sic] include Vinod Khosla (who co-founded Sun with McNealy)"
You're right about the calculus books being written by mathematicians who are not well-known for their contributions to mathematical scholarship and research. I'm sure that Stewart, Anton/Bivens/Davis, Thomas/Finney, Varberg/Purcell/Rigdon, etc, all had to do some original research in order to get tenure, but nothing that anyone would know of. The one (fairly) recent exception to this that I can remember is Peter Lax, the well-known and outstanding applied mathematician at the NYU Courant Institute who wrote a fantastic first-year calculus book that is far better than any calculus book out today. Sadly it's out of print. I think it could be used today, with no modification.
On the other hand, not all the big-name mathematicians would necessarily make the best authors of a calculus text. For one thing, many of them usually teach graduate-level courses, and may not have taught first-year calculus in decades. The lesser-known profs probably have more experience teaching calculus and have at least some idea of the difficulties involved for students in learning the subject. Still, I would've loved to see a calculus book written by people like Stephen Smale, Michael Atiyah, René Thom, or V.I Arnold.