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In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

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Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#101

Post by mltony »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #89
mltony wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on this? Like a link to a concrete project/discussion? I am visually impaired too and I did my own research on this topic a while ago. It appears that in the past decade or two there have been a few attempts to improve accessibility of Latex generated PDFs, but none of them seems to have accomplished the goal and pretty much all of them are dead projects now. I would be happy if there's an ongoing…

I second this and would also like to add a request to clarify what it is that would even be possible in this space, because I have no idea beyond “have hidden MathSpeak text behind the mathematics notation”, which is probably both too vague and too specific to be useful. Even more damningly, I actually have no idea what it is the accessibility users do , because I’m sure I wouldn’t understand half of the maths notati…

Just having raw Tex code for the formula would be already immensely helpful. Right now we're in the situation that the information about formulas is lost for screenreader users. Once there's raw Tex formula, then screenreader developers, myself included, can come up with many different ways to present formulas in more convenient form. But again, so far, the raw tex code of the formulas is lost, and apparently it seems to be either incredibly hard to embed it into PDFs or something - judging by so little progress in this direction over the last decade.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#102

Post by chris_wot »

WalterBright wrote: post #79
chris_wot wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps every classroom is filled with unique individuals with differing learning needs?

How can they develop unique lesson plans the summer before they know which students they get?

Or perhaps every classroom has a unique teacher who has an individual teaching style?

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#104

Post by mkingston »

WalterBright wrote: post #82
mkingston wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curriculum change is relatively frequent in some places. Different classes take to different material at different paces. Different resources are available to different schools and different classrooms (think science experiments). In the UK there are online platforms for purchasing and selling lesson plans. My partner has saved much time purchasing lesson plans from these platforms. They are available. Teachers aren'…

> funds aren't made specifically available for purchase of lesson plans You mean no teachers set up a github repository where they give away lesson plans just to be helpful? Teachers are unable to pool their resources and help each other? "Hey Mr Hand, I'm teaching science for the first time next year. Can I use your lesson plans?" "Sure, Ms Halsey!" Besides, teachers complain a lot about spending all their time devi…

It's probably a bit late to bother replying to this, but hey, here goes anyway.

Believe it or not, I wasn't arguing against you. My main point was to agree with you, and to inform: markets exist for lessons. The prices are quite reasonable. Some are free. I hear free lessons are typically lower quality.

I also (indirectly) pointed out that lessons are necessarily different from one another. What I've observed is that some work needs to be done even when plans are obtained from another party. Though, from what I've seen, much less. Purchasing lesson plans is a big time-saver.

Perhaps next time someone complains to you about spending too long lesson planning, you should propose they purchase some lesson plans, and see what they say. To me, that's the interesting question. Do they know these are available? Do they find the cost reasonable? Are they opposed to purchasing these lessons in principle, because they already spend their own money for the benefit of their students?

> They might do cost-benefit check on whether they might be way ahead taking a second job, using part of the wages to buy plans, and spend the rest on a vacation.

This statement is completely ludicrous to me. Humans should be given the resources they require to perform their jobs effectively. You might be strictly correct that individual teachers might be better off taking another job and buying these resources. But I think you should direct your ire at the employer of the teachers if you acknowledge that this is a problem. Consider the analogous statement:

> [Programmers] might do cost-benefit check on whether they might be way ahead taking a second job, using part of the wages to buy existing libraries, and spend the rest on a vacation.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#105

Post by voldacar »

WalterBright wrote: post #20
dehrmann wrote: post #9

I have no idea how commercial textbooks for anything up to specialized, college-level classes are viable. You'd think that enough states (and countries) would put the work into the Wikibooks calculus book so it meets their standards and just use that.

I don't get it, either. I laugh when schools complain their textbooks are "old and outdated". So what? Has there been a revolution in algebra I didn't hear about? I also laugh when teachers say they expend all this effort making "lesson plans". There are 3.7 million teachers just in the U.S. You'd think they could share them?

The amount of churn in (American) math education is bizarre. New hip curricula, textbooks, etc every few years, and yet the average high school graduate cannot prove the pythagorean theorem.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#106

Post by Breza »

WalterBright wrote: post #20
dehrmann wrote: post #9

I have no idea how commercial textbooks for anything up to specialized, college-level classes are viable. You'd think that enough states (and countries) would put the work into the Wikibooks calculus book so it meets their standards and just use that.

I don't get it, either. I laugh when schools complain their textbooks are "old and outdated". So what? Has there been a revolution in algebra I didn't hear about? I also laugh when teachers say they expend all this effort making "lesson plans". There are 3.7 million teachers just in the U.S. You'd think they could share them?

Agreed! My copies of Calculus Made Easy and Calculus & Statistics are wonderful references even though they were written before I was born.
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