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I don't really want to see textbooks change that much, at least the good ones that is in any aspect other than cost. I have only used one electronic textbook a
by bugs 17y ago
I don't really want to see textbooks change that much, at least the good ones that is in any aspect other than cost.
I have only used one electronic textbook and I found that paper books are much easier to use in every way except for cost. Searching a electronic textbook might be okay but I find indexes are very easy to use most of the time and the rest of the time you aren't looking for the right thing.
On the subject of having facebook to help understand concepts I always find that interaction on a face to face basis for learning is much quicker and if you go to a large enough college it is relatively easy to find people in your class out in the common area for help.
Some of my best books, like the Hibbeler books on statics, dynamics, and mechanics of materials (http://www.pearsonhighered.com/hibbeler/ http://www.pearsonhighered.com/hibbeler/), are very good and were well worth the money I paid for them.
One thing that I hate about textbooks is that certain publishers have cornered the market, at least in the engineering and math departments, and many schools offer horrible textbooks that only the students notice because they are the ones learning for the first time. A prime example of this is the publisher Wiley, I have had books from this publisher from differential equations all the way up to fluid dynamics that were just awful for anything other than problems and basic concepts.
Edit: I have had a couple classes that were rather amazing on the textbook stance, especially for engineering, that the teacher had a large enough collection of notes and slides that they were able to make a rather cheap textbook available to students on campus for around 20 dollars, those books always seem to provide good information and good quality that maybe a 9 dollar digital textbook could work in that sense.
- Sukotto 17y agothe teacher had a large enough collection of notes and slides that they were able to make a rather cheap textbook available to students on campus for around 20 dollars The original article links to Seth Godin's blog which advocates something very close to that. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/textbook-rant.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/textbook-ran...
- jasonlbaptiste 17y agothis is what I think could be the answer/an alternative answer. I have a basic theory: "Anything you want to learn is accessible online via existing content or smart people you can connect with. Someone just needs to organize it all" The answer I usually get is something like, well, yeah Google, but that's a pretty primary way to go about it. If you want to learn RoR for the first time, you might pick up a book, but you'll probably scour the net utilizing different sites. So why not organize the content that already exists into a more structured manner that slightly resembles chapter ie- programming 101 go here, setting up apache go here, learning about sessions go here, interacting with MySQL go here, etc.
- bugs 17y agoThis (using the internet) is usually limited to things like programming and lower level classes though, I can see an entire software engineering curriculum being laid out with minimal references and books but I cannot see any such thing for degrees in math, science (such as physics), engineering (mechanical, electrical, civil), and so on. Some things just need that extra bit that an established textbook can bring.
- jasonlbaptiste 17y agoI've been trying to see if that's true or not. I still think any topic has enough information/resources out there. When you say things like math+science, are you referring to very advanced topics or simpler topics (or both) ie- algebra, high school chemistry,etc.
- bugs 17y agoMath is easy to find (to an extent): http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/ http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/ Other subjects are a bit more difficult and scattered, for physics hyperphysics does well But I am indeed talking about advanced topics which are available in abundance for computer science and programming on the internet but when it comes down to it that is the extent which the internet provides (except maybe graduate papers, but that is usually too high a level to matter) Say for example you wanted to learn thermodynamics with only the internet and a teacher. You can gain a large amount of theoretical knowledge from the teacher but without a book it will be hard for you to find examples on when/how to use integral and differential energy and entropy balances (Thermo might be a subject just on the boundary of finding information on the internet and having to buy a book).