4 ms·

Schwarzenegger pushes for open source, online math and science textbooks.

37 points by vaksel 17y ago

Slzr 17y ago
online math?
TomOfTTB 17y ago
Again this is an example of people who have no idea what is actually going on in schools trying to make policy without consulting those who do know what goes on in schools. The problem with e-books in schools below the College level is the readers get broken. High School age and below kids tend to be careless. They throw their back packs down, play keep away with them, etc... So traditional e-book readers don't work. That said, as someone responsible for the IT needs of a school, I've been experimenting with one of these: http://www.peeweepc.com/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=70&idcategory=2 http://www.peeweepc.com/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=70&#3... The Ruggedized nature and tablet mode seem to make it possible (again I'm still experimenting and am a little nervous about the hinge at this point). So don't get me wrong, I think a solution exists. But the Governor just wants an immediate cheap solution and that's not the way e-books are going to happen.
- Adlai 17y ago
  I don't think he wants traditional E-books. What I imagine when I hear the phrase "open-source online textbooks", I think of websites where you can navigate through chapters, appendices, etc -- similar to how some texts are already available online (i.e. Peter Seibel's Practical Common Lisp, available not as an e-book but as a website, at http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ )
  - TomOfTTB 17y ago
    Well the problem with that is you still need textbooks in the classroom. If he wants to replace actual textbooks he needs to find a way to put them in the classrom. That's going to require a reader (There are actual studies, lots of them in fact, that show students learn more when they can follow along in a textbook so you couldn't solve the problem with a projector for example)
    - boryas 17y ago
      I don't know about those studies, but as a student I hated having to lug textbooks around but was lucky enough that my high school rarely if ever made it a requirement. The school and its students are doing well regardless. Maybe they could be doing even better, but at least they have light backpacks :) With regards to the Governor's plan, this seems like a really good idea in general, and at least a sign that our Governor is willing to reform education in a meaningful (i.e. not by commissioning book committees of the type that Feynman derided) way.
    - Adlai 17y ago
      You could have computers for each student in the classroom, but I imagine that would be quite expensive. I don't see the problem with a projector. The teacher can control what material is displayed, and can thus choose to display relevant material for the current lesson. Yes, this relies on the teacher knowing what they're doing, but the entire school system does anyways. If a student wants to have their own reference in class, it would be cheaper and more educational for the student to take notes on whatever topics they found interesting or wanted to have on paper. I'd be interested to look at those studies, though.
      - TomOfTTB 17y ago
        I'll try to find a few online and post them here when I have more time. But the gist is that there's a cognitive advantage to reading which in turn means reading along causes the material to be absorbed better. I've tried to think back to my own experience to verify the findings but I can't think of any definitive examples for or against
- pmorici 17y ago
  seems like a good opportunity to teach kids to be responsible.
  - TomOfTTB 17y ago
    Good in theory, bad in practice. The kids need to have text books by law. The School can't really do anything to punish them (except maybe detention). So in the end you spend a lot of money trying to get kids to stop acting the way kids naturally act.
  - andrewf 17y ago
    s/kids/users/. This is basically telling users that they have to alter their existing behavior to work around flaws in your implementation. You end up with users who are grumpy and/or uncompliant. "Be responsible" is easy to throw out there when the users happen to be children, but it won't magically make them stop acting like kids.
- jsz0 17y ago
  Textbooks aren't invincible either. A rugged education oriented e-book reader may end up costing less than replacing textbooks on a regular basis as they become damaged and outdated.
  - whatusername 17y ago
    hang on - I just realised something? Are the textbooks purchased/owned by the school? As-in - they can be handed down to next years class? That's fantastic.
  - blhack 17y ago
    My biggest disappointment, when I got my kindle, was how flimsy the thing feels... I was dreaming about a device that was going to travel with me everywhere I went (the way my old palm pilots, which are what I used to use for ebooks, did)...
- gaius 17y ago
  Again this is an example of people who have no idea what is actually going on in schools trying to make policy without consulting those who do know what goes on in schools I hear this argument all the time from people who want to silence debate on education but the fact is: we all went to school. We are all as qualified as anyone else to comment on it.
  - dinkumthinkum 17y ago
    That's like saying "We've all been to the doctor's office, therefore we are all qualified to discuss how diagnose and treat Guillain-Barré syndrome."
- yungchin 17y ago
  I think the important part of the plan is not to put books on computers; it's the open-source part. Whether schools eventually opt for a print version of the text is a matter of preference. It is not the printing that makes textbooks too expensive, it is the lack of competition in the market. With open-sourced texts, everybody can offer a print version.
Adlai 17y ago
I really like the idea. However, there's a brief note in the article which isn't really addressed in detail: students need computer access to use an on-line text. Although computer access is increasing, poorer students wouldn't have the same amount of access (if any) as students from better-off families. I can think of a few ways to lessen this problem. One would be to ensure that public libraries are freely accessible to students, and offer Internet access for students who don't have it at home. Another option would be to allow students to print out, at school, relevant materials from on-line texts. The second solution would be very expensive in the long run, so I'd say that some form of the first solution needs to be put into effect for the Governator's proposal to succeed.
- TomOfTTB 17y ago
  As odd as it sounds schools that service poorer students have more computers in general (at least in California where I live). This is because schools are granted what's called Title 1 funds based on the amount of lower income students who attend. Beyond that the state and federal governments subsidize high speed Internet connections like T3 lines through the E-Rate program It still might be a problem but less because of lower income students and more because there's no way to put a computer on every student's desktop
- vaksel 17y ago
  Computers are more or less a commodity now...I mean you can get one for a few hundred dollars, or a used one off craigslist for 20 bucks, pretty much every household has one nowadays.
  - TomOfTTB 17y ago
    Sadly that's not true. The first study I could find (don't have much time to research right now) shows that only 73% of U.S. households have Internet access: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2006/Internet-Penetration-and-Impact.aspx http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2006/Internet-Penetration...
    - vaksel 17y ago
menloparkbum 17y ago
Sadly, I'm so cynical about anything that has to do with public education and state politics that whenever I read a story like this, the first thing I think of is how much money the vendor mentioned in the article is going to get paid for their shitty enterprise e-textbook software.
johnnybgoode 17y ago
See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=648717 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=648717
TriinT 17y ago
At first, I thought this was a great idea. Then I realized that not everyone has easy access to computers. Poorer kids might be left behind. One can print e-books, but that sometimes ends up costing quite a bit, too. This might sound crazy, but didn't the Soviets solve this problem decades ago? The commies believed that education should be for all, and they had amazing math and physics books which were also really cheap!! And this were GREAT books. Stuff written by Landau & Lifschitz, Arnol'd, Gelfand, etc. These books were translated to Spanish so that the Cubans and other Latin-Americans could read them. They were translated to Portuguese so people in Brazil had access to good books at affordable prices. Why is it that only in the U.S. can't people have access to good books at affordable prices? Is the textbook cartel's lobbying that powerful???
- philwelch 17y ago
  And each book had three chapters about Marxist-Leninist theory at the beginning!
  - TriinT 17y ago
    Not the ones I read. There are a few famous physicists these days whose interest in physics was sparked by the availability of good & cheap Soviet physics books. American books are over-designed. Too many colors and visual noise. Textbooks should go back to basics and provide condensed knowledge at affordable prices.
  - sireat 17y ago
    Actually, the amount of propaganda in Soviet hard-core science books was very small, in fact, math books didn't have any, that I can remember.
- dan_the_welder 17y ago
  I'm starting to think that America is by the Cartels, for the Cartels.
- lkozma 17y ago
  You must be referring to the MIR series of textbooks. Demidovich's Calculus was another classic.
kragen 17y ago
Some of the comments here are about the excessive cost of ebook readers, or the fragility of the devices. But typical college textbooks cost US$100 or more. At that rate, a new EeePC costs 2.5 textbooks, and an OLPC XO would costs even less if they were available for sale. Even if elementary and high school textbooks cost less (down to US$50 maybe? They're still all-glossy four-color-printed quarto-sized hardcovers sewn in signatures, aren't they?) you could afford to buy a new netbook per year per student — assuming you can't make do with a used two-year-old smartphone. That's assuming, of course, that the textbook costs are related to printing the things, not writing them or extracting rents from schools.
jcl 17y ago
Textbook publishing is a juggernaut, and California is one of its big movers. Here's a great article that appeared on HN a month ago explaining the industry's inner workings: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=598523 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=598523

37 points by vaksel 17y ago

Slzr 17y ago

online math?

Again this is an example of people who have no idea what is actually going on in schools trying to make policy without consulting those who do know what goes on in schools. The problem with e-books in schools below the College level is the readers get broken. High School age and below kids tend to be careless. They throw their back packs down, play keep away with them, etc... So traditional e-book readers don't work. That said, as someone responsible for the IT needs of a school, I've been experimenting with one of these: http://www.peeweepc.com/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=70&idcategory=2 http://www.peeweepc.com/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=70&#3... The Ruggedized nature and tablet mode seem to make it possible (again I'm still experimenting and am a little nervous about the hinge at this point). So don't get me wrong, I think a solution exists. But the Governor just wants an immediate cheap solution and that's not the way e-books are going to happen.

Adlai 17y ago
I don't think he wants traditional E-books. What I imagine when I hear the phrase "open-source online textbooks", I think of websites where you can navigate through chapters, appendices, etc -- similar to how some texts are already available online (i.e. Peter Seibel's Practical Common Lisp, available not as an e-book but as a website, at http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ )
- TomOfTTB 17y ago
  Well the problem with that is you still need textbooks in the classroom. If he wants to replace actual textbooks he needs to find a way to put them in the classrom. That's going to require a reader (There are actual studies, lots of them in fact, that show students learn more when they can follow along in a textbook so you couldn't solve the problem with a projector for example)
  - boryas 17y ago
    I don't know about those studies, but as a student I hated having to lug textbooks around but was lucky enough that my high school rarely if ever made it a requirement. The school and its students are doing well regardless. Maybe they could be doing even better, but at least they have light backpacks :) With regards to the Governor's plan, this seems like a really good idea in general, and at least a sign that our Governor is willing to reform education in a meaningful (i.e. not by commissioning book committees of the type that Feynman derided) way.
  - Adlai 17y ago
    You could have computers for each student in the classroom, but I imagine that would be quite expensive. I don't see the problem with a projector. The teacher can control what material is displayed, and can thus choose to display relevant material for the current lesson. Yes, this relies on the teacher knowing what they're doing, but the entire school system does anyways. If a student wants to have their own reference in class, it would be cheaper and more educational for the student to take notes on whatever topics they found interesting or wanted to have on paper. I'd be interested to look at those studies, though.
    - TomOfTTB 17y ago
      I'll try to find a few online and post them here when I have more time. But the gist is that there's a cognitive advantage to reading which in turn means reading along causes the material to be absorbed better. I've tried to think back to my own experience to verify the findings but I can't think of any definitive examples for or against
pmorici 17y ago
seems like a good opportunity to teach kids to be responsible.
- TomOfTTB 17y ago
  Good in theory, bad in practice. The kids need to have text books by law. The School can't really do anything to punish them (except maybe detention). So in the end you spend a lot of money trying to get kids to stop acting the way kids naturally act.
- andrewf 17y ago
  s/kids/users/. This is basically telling users that they have to alter their existing behavior to work around flaws in your implementation. You end up with users who are grumpy and/or uncompliant. "Be responsible" is easy to throw out there when the users happen to be children, but it won't magically make them stop acting like kids.
jsz0 17y ago
Textbooks aren't invincible either. A rugged education oriented e-book reader may end up costing less than replacing textbooks on a regular basis as they become damaged and outdated.
- whatusername 17y ago
  hang on - I just realised something? Are the textbooks purchased/owned by the school? As-in - they can be handed down to next years class? That's fantastic.
- blhack 17y ago
  My biggest disappointment, when I got my kindle, was how flimsy the thing feels... I was dreaming about a device that was going to travel with me everywhere I went (the way my old palm pilots, which are what I used to use for ebooks, did)...
gaius 17y ago
Again this is an example of people who have no idea what is actually going on in schools trying to make policy without consulting those who do know what goes on in schools I hear this argument all the time from people who want to silence debate on education but the fact is: we all went to school. We are all as qualified as anyone else to comment on it.
- dinkumthinkum 17y ago
  That's like saying "We've all been to the doctor's office, therefore we are all qualified to discuss how diagnose and treat Guillain-Barré syndrome."
yungchin 17y ago
I think the important part of the plan is not to put books on computers; it's the open-source part. Whether schools eventually opt for a print version of the text is a matter of preference. It is not the printing that makes textbooks too expensive, it is the lack of competition in the market. With open-sourced texts, everybody can offer a print version.

Adlai 17y ago

I really like the idea. However, there's a brief note in the article which isn't really addressed in detail: students need computer access to use an on-line text. Although computer access is increasing, poorer students wouldn't have the same amount of access (if any) as students from better-off families. I can think of a few ways to lessen this problem. One would be to ensure that public libraries are freely accessible to students, and offer Internet access for students who don't have it at home. Another option would be to allow students to print out, at school, relevant materials from on-line texts. The second solution would be very expensive in the long run, so I'd say that some form of the first solution needs to be put into effect for the Governator's proposal to succeed.

TomOfTTB 17y ago
As odd as it sounds schools that service poorer students have more computers in general (at least in California where I live). This is because schools are granted what's called Title 1 funds based on the amount of lower income students who attend. Beyond that the state and federal governments subsidize high speed Internet connections like T3 lines through the E-Rate program It still might be a problem but less because of lower income students and more because there's no way to put a computer on every student's desktop
vaksel 17y ago
Computers are more or less a commodity now...I mean you can get one for a few hundred dollars, or a used one off craigslist for 20 bucks, pretty much every household has one nowadays.
- TomOfTTB 17y ago
  Sadly that's not true. The first study I could find (don't have much time to research right now) shows that only 73% of U.S. households have Internet access: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2006/Internet-Penetration-and-Impact.aspx http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2006/Internet-Penetration...
  - vaksel 17y ago

menloparkbum 17y ago

Sadly, I'm so cynical about anything that has to do with public education and state politics that whenever I read a story like this, the first thing I think of is how much money the vendor mentioned in the article is going to get paid for their shitty enterprise e-textbook software.

johnnybgoode 17y ago

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=648717 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=648717

TriinT 17y ago

At first, I thought this was a great idea. Then I realized that not everyone has easy access to computers. Poorer kids might be left behind. One can print e-books, but that sometimes ends up costing quite a bit, too. This might sound crazy, but didn't the Soviets solve this problem decades ago? The commies believed that education should be for all, and they had amazing math and physics books which were also really cheap!! And this were GREAT books. Stuff written by Landau & Lifschitz, Arnol'd, Gelfand, etc. These books were translated to Spanish so that the Cubans and other Latin-Americans could read them. They were translated to Portuguese so people in Brazil had access to good books at affordable prices. Why is it that only in the U.S. can't people have access to good books at affordable prices? Is the textbook cartel's lobbying that powerful???

philwelch 17y ago
And each book had three chapters about Marxist-Leninist theory at the beginning!
- TriinT 17y ago
  Not the ones I read. There are a few famous physicists these days whose interest in physics was sparked by the availability of good & cheap Soviet physics books. American books are over-designed. Too many colors and visual noise. Textbooks should go back to basics and provide condensed knowledge at affordable prices.
- sireat 17y ago
  Actually, the amount of propaganda in Soviet hard-core science books was very small, in fact, math books didn't have any, that I can remember.
dan_the_welder 17y ago
I'm starting to think that America is by the Cartels, for the Cartels.
lkozma 17y ago
You must be referring to the MIR series of textbooks. Demidovich's Calculus was another classic.

kragen 17y ago

Some of the comments here are about the excessive cost of ebook readers, or the fragility of the devices. But typical college textbooks cost US$100 or more. At that rate, a new EeePC costs 2.5 textbooks, and an OLPC XO would costs even less if they were available for sale. Even if elementary and high school textbooks cost less (down to US$50 maybe? They're still all-glossy four-color-printed quarto-sized hardcovers sewn in signatures, aren't they?) you could afford to buy a new netbook per year per student — assuming you can't make do with a used two-year-old smartphone. That's assuming, of course, that the textbook costs are related to printing the things, not writing them or extracting rents from schools.

jcl 17y ago

Textbook publishing is a juggernaut, and California is one of its big movers. Here's a great article that appeared on HN a month ago explaining the industry's inner workings: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=598523 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=598523