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Brown Signs California Bill For Free Textbooks
bcrowell writes "California Governor Jerry Brown has signed SB 1052 and 1053, authored by state senator Darrell Steinberg, to create free textbooks for 50 core lower-division college courses. SB 1052 creates a California Open Education Resources Council, made up of faculty from the UC, Cal State, and community college systems. The council is supposed to pick 50 core courses. They are then to establish a 'competitive request-for-proposal process in which faculty members, publishers, and other interested parties would apply for funds to produce, in 2013, 50 high-quality, affordable, digital open source textbooks and related materials, meeting specified requirements.' The bill doesn't become operative unless the legislature funds it — a questionable process in California's current political situation. The books could be either newly produced (which seems unlikely, given the 1-year time frame stated) or existing ones that the state would buy or have free access to. Unlike former Gov. Schwarzenegger's failed K-12 free textbook program, this one specifically defines what it means by 'open source,' rather than using the term as a feel-good phrase; books have to be under a CC-BY (or CC-BY-SA?) license, in XML format. They're supposed to be modularized and conform to state and W3C accessibility guidelines. Faculty would not be required to use the free books."
"Faculty would not be required to use the free books"
With this one phrase, the entire idea is rendered useless. Why bother with free textbooks for college level classes if no college will offer classes that use them for coursework? The state will pay for the development, sure... like California can really pay for anything else...
It doesn't become active until the legislature funds it? How free is that? Perhaps some experts on the subjects in question could volunteer time to write intro level textbooks (with the idea of writing advanced books for sale)? That would be "free". Seriously, the use of the word free is much abused lately, much like spending cuts have long since meant less increases in spending.
How long until the textbook industry sues California for unfair competition?
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It will be a one-time cost for writing or converting the books, and a small yearly cost of updating them, instead of a yearly high cost for buying them from Texas. It is going to save quite a lot of money, but I'm sure the Book Mafia will successfully lobby this out of existence.
They could use the books already on Wikibooks ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page ) as a starting point.
I wonder if the open-source books they will produce will break away from the paper textbook paradigm (linear text+static images)? The one I am writing ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Space_Transport_and_Engineering_Methods ) is heavily hyperlinked, I've included a spreadsheet and expect to include other media, am working on a resource library ( http://www.mediafire.com/?y1ko8gj5rouob ), and the concept of "class projects" (design studies) which become part of the book.
I have never understood this business. Not much has changed in say basic trig or geometry in 100 years. In that time basic subject textbooks should have been whittled down to two or three that are simply the best. But somehow there is different textbooks in nearly every school system in North America; yet a school system in SoCal should be able to use the same textbook as in Maine. The textbook companies have somehow convinced every schoolboard that they should tailor the books to match their exact curriculum. This gives the schoolboards a warm and fuzzy feeling while they set up approval commities, training sessions, etc for the new books. Yet these books add up to a huge percentage of the budget.
My two daughters have nearly useless textbooks year after year which their teachers just don't use. They will have questions like: "Write down all the ways 10 numbered marbles can be put into 5 lettered bags." Holy crap do these people even have a basic understanding of math.
It is not just ebooks that can replace these dinosaurs but cool online videos.
Bye bye massively commissioned textbook sales people.
At least it should be cheaper and available sooner than the no-longer-bullet train we're supposedly getting in the next 30 years. Aw, who am I kidding?
Anyway, I'm currently attending a California city college, and I've attended state university before. In my experience, many professors (especially at the city college level, where average incomes are lower) are concerned about textbook prices. They put them in the library reserve for students to use, they allow you to use previous editions, and they'll even look for cheaper alternatives. My current professors also claim they do not receive commission for textbook sales, and that the school essentially breaks even on textbook sales once you consider the costs of running the bookstore.
In the past, many of my computer science courses had complimentary eBooks available online. This year, two of my classes have eBook versions available via CourseSmart which, while cheaper than physical textbooks, can't be used on dedicated eReaders (currently computer, iOS, and Android, with Android devices being limited somehow). They also have the issue of essentially being rentals instead of outright purchases--but still, it's better than nothing.
Finally, two professors I had a while back decided that the existing course books were too expensive, so they wrote their own books and sold them for $10 and $30. Yeah, they obviously get a commission there, but that's better than paying $150.
I imagine there are other schools that are much worse than my personal experiences, but it isn't all bad.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Frankly, elementary school lessons don't change that much from one year to the next. The current textbooks my child uses are incredibly simple, and they contain pretty timeless lessons. If someone was to take a textbook from 50 or 70 years ago that was out of copyright, they could easily make it available to all schools to use, or they could copy relevant sections from many books to make a single "First Grade Math Book" or "Second Grade English Book".
Doing so would eliminate a HUGE amount of the cost of school. When you see how much a school spends on textbooks, you'll be bowled over. The latest textbooks I've seen have basically one sentence of text per page, accompanied with huge, two page spread art pictures - totally worthless and a waste of space. Even "See Spot Run" had more than one sentence per page.
Stop our schools from spending money on stuff that doesn't matter. The textbooks aren't going to make our kids smart. Time with a teacher will.
Maybe I'm old school, but I'd rather study from a textbook than a screen. Maybe someone could invent a portable device where I can read books where the text resembles electronic ink? And there can be an electronic marketplace where you can buy these books! Hopefully this post can kindle a few ideas..
When my wife was taking math classes a few years ago, one of her professors had written his own text book and gave it away for free as a pdf to anyone, including other schools and teachers, who wanted it. He thought it was such a waste for the students to be forced to buy a $120 book they use once and then get $18 back for it, then see it resold for $86.
They don't even need to lobby it, most professors simply won't switch to them for any of their classes. Publishers offer far too many incentives that make the professors job easier while also helping to tie them down to that publisher.
"Yes, since it's 'open source' we will probably be able to convert the books, but how many people are going to know how to do that?"
There need be only one!
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Of simply have a computer randomly generate them with the answers included..
They most probably mean DocBook XML. In the XML you only express data - chapters, articles, paragraphs, titles, images... No formatting. And then using the same XML you can generate HTML, PDF, ePub, MOBI, htmlhelp, etc...
unless the prof requires the new edition, that switches the order of chapters 9 and 10, makes minor changes in the constants in the word problems throughout the book so the answers are different, and adds 10 more bucks to the price over last year's edition.
Have you seen the fnords?
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This is ridiculous.
I moved to California a year ago to be with my wife will she attends grad school and I have been appalled at the insanity that regularly occurs in this state as compared to anywhere the East coast.
1) Freely available educational material is fantastic.
2) Having the government pay for freely available educational material that will not necessarily be used by the college courses they are intended for is bad.
3) Forcing professors to use the state-sponsored books would be even worse. The Government can't get anything right, so I certainly wouldn't want some bureaucrat deciding what books were going to be used in a course I was taking.
4) This state doesn't need to spend any more money on anything. Period. They need to get their spending under control before trying to enhance things. 10%+ sales tax? Very bad! And I can hardly wait to see my income taxes for the past year.
Summary:
This is a terrible idea. The CA state government needs to start thinking about NOT defaulting rather than blowing money on ridiculous schemes with no payoff.
There are already some freely available texts anyway, from programs pioneered by top universities. Why not incentivize things like that rather than trying to take more under the government umbrella?
As one might expect Slashdot users to know (well, maybe not) "free" is often used to refer to certain liberal licensing terms ("libre") rather than free-of-charge ("gratis").
Although -- no doubt much to Richard Stallman's chagrin -- the law itself actually uses the term "open source" rather than "free".
There is nothing random about the problems selected in the books. They are carefully arranged to ensure that you see the various permutations that are possible to encounter. If it were as easy as randomly generating book material, it would have been done long ago. Furthermore, calculus, I think, would not be one of 50 "core" subjects to be covered.
So what's a poor textbook company supposed to do now? Oh, I know, pay teachers to choose my textbooks and ignore the free ones!
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Free open source California textbooks unavailable for download due to bogus DMCA takedown notices from Pearson, Cengage Learning, and Macmillan.
You obviously don't think things through. Tea party?
First of all, the State of California buys an awful lot of those expensive textbooks, and would reap the savings almost immediately.
Secondly, if it makes education less expensive, it will likely lead to more educated people. People who can afford to pay taxes and your social security.
While I do agree that requiring faculty to use the free books is dangerous, take a look at it from the professor's point of view. One of my professors in my paralegal program freely spoke to us about the process of choosing textbooks. He basically said that the majority of textbooks out there on a given topic are the same. Occasionally, there'll be a standout book but his general thought was that no book was perfect - that is, books that cover one area of the subject well tend to lack in other areas. Thus, when he chooses a textbook for a course, the "teacher perks" end up being about as large a factor as the actual content of the book itself... things like question bank, supplemental materials, online materials and support, etc. Thus, if there are going to be free textbooks, there'll have to be adequate corresponding teacher support materials to go along with it... b/c, let's face it, the majority of college professors are used to having access to test banks and whatnot. Without this, I don't think teachers would have an incentive to adopt, no matter what the cost.
Most professors don't write their own textbooks. A few do.
I think that in my entire time in college and graduate school, I only had two professors with their own books. One of these was a workbook and was cheap.
My wife is a college professor and constantly whinges about the high cost of textbooks. She would love to have free textbooks (and so would everyone in her department... none of them have written textbooks.
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