9 ms·

Two things which should be basic human rights and absolutely free, are: communication and education. But people wish to earn $$ off of them. And then they wond

by u48998 16y ago

Two things which should be basic human rights and absolutely free, are: communication and education. But people wish to earn $$ off of them. And then they wonder why the world is in such a messed up state. Kudos to Khan Academy and Bill Gates for patronizing and liberating the education.

btipling 16y ago
I guess you expect publishers to print and give away textbooks for free too?
- frak_your_couch 16y ago
  Well, I'd love and welcome a good high-quality open source textbook movement that happens to also be high quality. It's the quality issue that's the major problem at the moment, I'd say. I've LOVE to see, for instance, Math textbooks written like they wrote "Real World Haskell" in wiki format with a single (or a small,finite set of) editor(s) ensuring that content and quality is up-to-snuff. I think that there really should be minimal educational infrastructure provided for free or very low cost.
  - ph0rque 16y ago
    Have you heard of OERCommons (http://www.oercommons.org/ http://www.oercommons.org/)? They sound like what you describe.
    - frak_your_couch 16y ago
      I have not, thanks for the tip. I looked at a book or so, but didn't see an easy away to comment on individual paragraphs like in "Real World Haskell", but maybe more of the interface opens up if you log in. ANyway, thanks for the tip!
      - pixcavator 16y ago
        My site is a wiki similar to what you describe, http://inperc.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Courses http://inperc.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Courses. I would like to allow comments but afraid of spam. Maybe one day.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Quality isn't the issue for most subjects. There are plenty of free and cheap textbooks with perfectly fine quality. For example, when I took thermodynamics in college (in 2001), I used a thermo book from the early 70's which cost me $8 on eBay (as opposed to the modern version which cost $100). I also skipped purchasing many books entirely, and just used free materials online, including this newfangled site called wikipedia. Agency costs and are the issue. The people assigning books don't have to pay the cost of using them, so they have no incentive to select based on price. Further, it's very difficult for students to use substitutes - if the professor assigns problems 1-10 from the book, it doesn't matter how good the material in your cheaper substitute is. If you want to crack this nut, focus on problem sets, not textbooks.
    - frak_your_couch 16y ago
      Well, I do disagree on the quality aspect. I'd like to see a high quality Calc I and II textbook that's free, coherent, and not aimed at MIT students. My wife is a faculty member and if you can find me one, I'll pass it along (they're constantly looking for one). It's just hard to not choose Stewart..it's a solid textbook for a broad range of students, but it's expensive as shit. A lot of professors are getting that this (if they don't, I make damned sure I mention it when we socialize with them) is a barrier for a lot of students. Anyway, you're absolutely 100% correct about problem sets. Good problem sets go a VERY long way to making a good textbook.
      - smanek 16y ago
        http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/ http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/ seems good (after 30 seconds of googling, and 5 minutes of skimming).
      - ghshephard 16y ago
        It's been 15 years since I took Calculus I and II, but looking over: http://www.khanacademy.org/#Calculus http://www.khanacademy.org/#Calculus Is there _anything_ in Stewart that isn't covered as well by Khan? You also get advantage of the video tutorial on the topic. I'm waiting for that point in time when we reach a tipping point and Higher Education Institutions don't just delegate everything to Khan for a lot of their topics. My Calculus Course (151) at SFU took place in Images Theater at 8:30 in the morning and had 450 Students listening to a lecture on Calculus. The ratio was approximately: 1/8 of the students were bored. 1/8 of the students were lost, 1/8 of the students were attentive, 1/8 of the students were asleep, and 1/2 of the students didn't show up. (8:30 AM!) I see little need for Stewart in the Face of Khan's Video Collection on Calculus + a bit of wikipedia (Seriously - check out their section on Derivatives and compare it to Stewart) I will agree with you on the Problem Sets - and perhaps that's the missing ingredient in Khan - He needs to more fully flesh out his test bank - but http://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard http://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard is moving ahead nicely. (And, in my mind, is far superior to any static test bank)
- u48998 16y ago
  I expect basic education to stay within the realm of government and free. Public giving up education to private/corporate sector is a recipe for disaster. How technology can help government improve the quality, and how technology can keep the education free for the masses, is another thing.
  - mcn 16y ago
    I don't think that the goal here is to degrade public education; one of the main attractions with this incubator is that it has connections to get your product into public schools.
  - jtheory 16y ago
    To provide a good education, public school systems need all kinds of supplies, products, books, services, etc. that don't make sense to produce in-house. This is where the private sector comes in -- though it's hard for small companies (who can often give the schools the best value for their money) to build relationships with schools, get through the red tape (getting onto vendor lists, going through bid systems, etc.), so often the schools are getting lower-quality supplies/services for more money. ...so wouldn't it be nice if there were some group that would help new education-focused companies to get their innovations into the (free) public schools? I hope this makes more sense now.
- u48998 16y ago
  I should also add. Technology is driven by people so it matters how they use it to the advantage of all and not just some. When technology helps people, we generally mean to say that people are helping people. I am not being altruistic here but there are things which should be free and available to all equally and education is one of that.
- mahdireilly 16y ago
  Honestly, that is not a ridiculous idea. If we remove the standardized testing, the community developed textbook would explode. In many of my college classes I spend more time using wikipedia than my textbook. Furthermore, I know many teachers who have written widely used (assigned reading in over 1k classes) who want their books to be available for a greatly reduced price if not all together for free. Unfortunately the publishers ban this and the writers must relent since the only way to get their book known is if it comes from a major publisher. They justify this mostly based on promotion costs, but this is not even close to their profit margins. Books are expensive because there is little competition, particularly with k-12 schools, largely based on political lobbying. Of course, we aren't likely to dissolve lobbyists anytime soon; but the idea of socially conscious startups is to dream big.
rewind 16y ago
Right... because Bill Gates didn't make billions from the education market. You go build a company around giving things to the education market for free and I'll build a company around selling things to the education market, and we'll see whose company is better off in five years and whose customers are better off in five years.
- mahdireilly 16y ago
  Bill Gates did make quite a bit in the education market. Find one school that does not use MS Office. Also, Apple was, and still is, notorious for donating or offering heavily discounted products to teachers and schools. Why? They would get familiar with and used to using their products and purchase them in the future. It also gives them great publicity. Many other companies do this as well. My campus computer store sells software at 90% discounts for the same reason. Sometimes giving things away is where the smart money is at.
maxharris 16y ago
You can't have an absolute right to something that requires someone else to provide a service for you (remember that rights are inalienable, so you have them no matter how much money you have.) Such an obligation would essentially make the provider a slave to some extent (this effect can be very small for a given person, but the principle is the same: if you have to do something you don't need or want to do otherwise, and you're not even getting paid to do it, what does that make you?) Rights only make sense when they're defined as legal prohibitions on action. Rights come from our nature as human beings; without the protection that they provide, we wouldn't be able to do all the things that we need to do to flourish (a concept that includes more than just biological survival).
- gte910h 16y ago
  >You can't have an absolute right to something that requires someone else to provide a service for you Like a lawyer? Pretty sure I have a right to one of them when charged with a crime. I understand to go with the clean logic of Ayn Rand's definitely of rights and everything, but that doesn't mean it fits all situations of the word right. Positive rights have some traction and serve a useful purpose too, even though they do in fact require some taxation/other forms of forced payments to provide them.
  - maxharris 16y ago
    The 'right' to an attorney should mean that the government cannot prevent you from attempting to obtain an attorney to represent you. (edit: added the italicized words) Edit: Don't many public defenders think of their jobs as a form of partial charity? Edit 2: Is it a violation of rights that these public defenders aren't the best lawyers available? I don't think so, and the onus is on people that accept positive rights to show that it is. Edit 3: You know, I'm not exactly sure that this is Rand's answer at all (I couldn't find it in the cursory glances I took at a couple of books). But it does at least reflect what I think about the right to an attorney, and I think it holds up pretty well!
    - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
huherto 16y ago
Quality education must accessible to everybody. It might, but it doesn't have to be free. What we currently have in many parts of the world is free education of poor quality. That needs to be fixed.

by u48998 16y ago

btipling 16y ago

I guess you expect publishers to print and give away textbooks for free too?

frak_your_couch 16y ago
Well, I'd love and welcome a good high-quality open source textbook movement that happens to also be high quality. It's the quality issue that's the major problem at the moment, I'd say. I've LOVE to see, for instance, Math textbooks written like they wrote "Real World Haskell" in wiki format with a single (or a small,finite set of) editor(s) ensuring that content and quality is up-to-snuff. I think that there really should be minimal educational infrastructure provided for free or very low cost.
- ph0rque 16y ago
  Have you heard of OERCommons (http://www.oercommons.org/ http://www.oercommons.org/)? They sound like what you describe.
  - frak_your_couch 16y ago
    I have not, thanks for the tip. I looked at a book or so, but didn't see an easy away to comment on individual paragraphs like in "Real World Haskell", but maybe more of the interface opens up if you log in. ANyway, thanks for the tip!
    - pixcavator 16y ago
      My site is a wiki similar to what you describe, http://inperc.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Courses http://inperc.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Courses. I would like to allow comments but afraid of spam. Maybe one day.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Quality isn't the issue for most subjects. There are plenty of free and cheap textbooks with perfectly fine quality. For example, when I took thermodynamics in college (in 2001), I used a thermo book from the early 70's which cost me $8 on eBay (as opposed to the modern version which cost $100). I also skipped purchasing many books entirely, and just used free materials online, including this newfangled site called wikipedia. Agency costs and are the issue. The people assigning books don't have to pay the cost of using them, so they have no incentive to select based on price. Further, it's very difficult for students to use substitutes - if the professor assigns problems 1-10 from the book, it doesn't matter how good the material in your cheaper substitute is. If you want to crack this nut, focus on problem sets, not textbooks.
  - frak_your_couch 16y ago
    Well, I do disagree on the quality aspect. I'd like to see a high quality Calc I and II textbook that's free, coherent, and not aimed at MIT students. My wife is a faculty member and if you can find me one, I'll pass it along (they're constantly looking for one). It's just hard to not choose Stewart..it's a solid textbook for a broad range of students, but it's expensive as shit. A lot of professors are getting that this (if they don't, I make damned sure I mention it when we socialize with them) is a barrier for a lot of students. Anyway, you're absolutely 100% correct about problem sets. Good problem sets go a VERY long way to making a good textbook.
    - smanek 16y ago
      http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/ http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/ seems good (after 30 seconds of googling, and 5 minutes of skimming).
    - ghshephard 16y ago
      It's been 15 years since I took Calculus I and II, but looking over: http://www.khanacademy.org/#Calculus http://www.khanacademy.org/#Calculus Is there _anything_ in Stewart that isn't covered as well by Khan? You also get advantage of the video tutorial on the topic. I'm waiting for that point in time when we reach a tipping point and Higher Education Institutions don't just delegate everything to Khan for a lot of their topics. My Calculus Course (151) at SFU took place in Images Theater at 8:30 in the morning and had 450 Students listening to a lecture on Calculus. The ratio was approximately: 1/8 of the students were bored. 1/8 of the students were lost, 1/8 of the students were attentive, 1/8 of the students were asleep, and 1/2 of the students didn't show up. (8:30 AM!) I see little need for Stewart in the Face of Khan's Video Collection on Calculus + a bit of wikipedia (Seriously - check out their section on Derivatives and compare it to Stewart) I will agree with you on the Problem Sets - and perhaps that's the missing ingredient in Khan - He needs to more fully flesh out his test bank - but http://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard http://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard is moving ahead nicely. (And, in my mind, is far superior to any static test bank)
u48998 16y ago
I expect basic education to stay within the realm of government and free. Public giving up education to private/corporate sector is a recipe for disaster. How technology can help government improve the quality, and how technology can keep the education free for the masses, is another thing.
- mcn 16y ago
  I don't think that the goal here is to degrade public education; one of the main attractions with this incubator is that it has connections to get your product into public schools.
- jtheory 16y ago
  To provide a good education, public school systems need all kinds of supplies, products, books, services, etc. that don't make sense to produce in-house. This is where the private sector comes in -- though it's hard for small companies (who can often give the schools the best value for their money) to build relationships with schools, get through the red tape (getting onto vendor lists, going through bid systems, etc.), so often the schools are getting lower-quality supplies/services for more money. ...so wouldn't it be nice if there were some group that would help new education-focused companies to get their innovations into the (free) public schools? I hope this makes more sense now.
u48998 16y ago
I should also add. Technology is driven by people so it matters how they use it to the advantage of all and not just some. When technology helps people, we generally mean to say that people are helping people. I am not being altruistic here but there are things which should be free and available to all equally and education is one of that.
mahdireilly 16y ago
Honestly, that is not a ridiculous idea. If we remove the standardized testing, the community developed textbook would explode. In many of my college classes I spend more time using wikipedia than my textbook. Furthermore, I know many teachers who have written widely used (assigned reading in over 1k classes) who want their books to be available for a greatly reduced price if not all together for free. Unfortunately the publishers ban this and the writers must relent since the only way to get their book known is if it comes from a major publisher. They justify this mostly based on promotion costs, but this is not even close to their profit margins. Books are expensive because there is little competition, particularly with k-12 schools, largely based on political lobbying. Of course, we aren't likely to dissolve lobbyists anytime soon; but the idea of socially conscious startups is to dream big.

rewind 16y ago

Right... because Bill Gates didn't make billions from the education market. You go build a company around giving things to the education market for free and I'll build a company around selling things to the education market, and we'll see whose company is better off in five years and whose customers are better off in five years.

mahdireilly 16y ago
Bill Gates did make quite a bit in the education market. Find one school that does not use MS Office. Also, Apple was, and still is, notorious for donating or offering heavily discounted products to teachers and schools. Why? They would get familiar with and used to using their products and purchase them in the future. It also gives them great publicity. Many other companies do this as well. My campus computer store sells software at 90% discounts for the same reason. Sometimes giving things away is where the smart money is at.

maxharris 16y ago

You can't have an absolute right to something that requires someone else to provide a service for you (remember that rights are inalienable, so you have them no matter how much money you have.) Such an obligation would essentially make the provider a slave to some extent (this effect can be very small for a given person, but the principle is the same: if you have to do something you don't need or want to do otherwise, and you're not even getting paid to do it, what does that make you?) Rights only make sense when they're defined as legal prohibitions on action. Rights come from our nature as human beings; without the protection that they provide, we wouldn't be able to do all the things that we need to do to flourish (a concept that includes more than just biological survival).

gte910h 16y ago
>You can't have an absolute right to something that requires someone else to provide a service for you Like a lawyer? Pretty sure I have a right to one of them when charged with a crime. I understand to go with the clean logic of Ayn Rand's definitely of rights and everything, but that doesn't mean it fits all situations of the word right. Positive rights have some traction and serve a useful purpose too, even though they do in fact require some taxation/other forms of forced payments to provide them.
- maxharris 16y ago
  The 'right' to an attorney should mean that the government cannot prevent you from attempting to obtain an attorney to represent you. (edit: added the italicized words) Edit: Don't many public defenders think of their jobs as a form of partial charity? Edit 2: Is it a violation of rights that these public defenders aren't the best lawyers available? I don't think so, and the onus is on people that accept positive rights to show that it is. Edit 3: You know, I'm not exactly sure that this is Rand's answer at all (I couldn't find it in the cursory glances I took at a couple of books). But it does at least reflect what I think about the right to an attorney, and I think it holds up pretty well!
  - JoachimSchipper 16y ago

huherto 16y ago

Quality education must accessible to everybody. It might, but it doesn't have to be free. What we currently have in many parts of the world is free education of poor quality. That needs to be fixed.