bcrowell - Slashdot User

Submission + - Brown Signs California Bill for Free Textbooks (latimes.com)

Submitted by bcrowell on Friday September 28, 2012 @10:03AM

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.

Submission + - California State Senator Proposes Open-Source Text (ca.gov)

Submitted by bcrowell on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @07:11PM

bcrowell writes: Although former Governor Schwarzenegger's free digital textbook initiative for K-12 education was a failure, state senator Darrell Steinberg has a new idea for the state-subsidized publication of college textbooks (details in the PDF links at the bottom). Newspaper editorials seem positive.[1], [2].

It will be interesting to see if this works any better at the college level than it did for K-12, where textbook selection has traditionally been very bureaucratic. This is also different from Schwarzenegger's FDTI because Steinberg proposes spending state money to help create the books. The K-12 version suffered from legal uncertainty about the Williams case, which requires equal access to books for all students — many of whom might not have computers at home. At the symposium where the results of the FDTI's first round were announced, it became apparent that the only businesses interested in participating actively were not the publishers but computer manufacturers like Dell and Apple, who wanted to sell lots of hardware to schools.

Submission + - Preventing networked gizmos in exams? 2

Submitted by bcrowell on Monday September 13, 2010 @01:34AM

bcrowell writes: I'm a college physics professor. My students all want to use calculators during exams, and some of them whose native language isn't English also want to use electronic dictionaries. I had a Korean student who was upset and dropped the course when I told her she couldn't use her iPod during an exam — she said she used it as a dictionary. It gets tough for me to distinguish networked devices (iPhone? iTouch?) from non-networked ones (calculator? electronic dictionary? iPod?). I give open-notes exams, so it's not memory that's an issue, it's networking. Currently our classrooms have poor wireless receptivity (no wifi, possible cell, depending on your carrier), but as of spring 2011 we will have wifi everywhere. What's the best way to handle this? I'd prefer not to make them all buy the same overpriced graphing calculator. I'm thinking of buying 30 el-cheapo four-function calculators out of my pocket, but I'm afraid that less adaptable students will be unable to handle the switch from the calculator they know to an unfamiliar (but simpler) one.

Submission + - Open-Source College Textbooks Gaining Mindshare (latimes.com)

Submitted by

bcrowell

on Monday August 18, 2008 @11:56PM

bcrowell writes: "The LA Times has a front-page article about how open-source college textbooks starting to gain traction. One author says, "I couldn't continue assigning idiotic books that are starting to break $200," and describes attempts by commercial publishers to bribe faculty to use their books. The Cal State system has started a Digital Marketplace to help faculty find out about their options for free and non-free digital textbooks, and the student group PIRG has collected 1200 faculty signatures on a statement of support for open textbooks."

Submission + - Competition in the Free Textbook Market (lightandmatter.com)

Submitted by

bcrowell

on Saturday April 26, 2008 @01:28PM

bcrowell writes: "A New York times editorial has a plug for Flat World Knowledge, a startup that will offer college textbooks inexpensively (~$30) in print, and free as PDFs. They plan to make their profits from add-ons like podcast study guides and mobile phone flashcards. Books will be CC-BY-NC licensed. Mashups and customizations are encouraged, but the NC license is incompatible with strong copyleft licenses such as the GFDL used by Wikipedia. Other companies trying to find a workable business model for free textbooks include Ink Textbooks (revenue from online homework) and Freeload Press (revenue from ads inside the books). So far, none of these companies seems to have succeeded in building up much of a catalog of books, and it seems more common for authors of free textbooks to take a DIY approach, putting PDFs on their own web pages, and sometimes arranging POD with vanity-press publishers like lulu.com. Lots and lots of web sites exist to help people find free textbooks, and CalPIRG has an active campaign pushing for affordable textbooks."

Submission + - A Review of the $200 Wal-Mart Linux PC (lightandmatter.com)

Submitted by

bcrowell

on Saturday November 24, 2007 @08:30PM

bcrowell writes: "Wal-Mart's new $200 Linux PC has generated a lot of buzz among geeks. Although they're sold out of stores, I bought one for my daughter via mail order, and have written up a review of the system. The hardware seems fine for anyone but a hardcore gamer, but the preinstalled gOS flavor of Ubuntu has a lot of rough edges."

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