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California State Senator Proposes Funding Open-Source Textbooks

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Re: California State Senator Proposes Funding Open-Source Textbooks

#41

Post by dreamdu5t »

The solution is stop enforcing this dogma of requiring a specific book for subjects which clearly do not require the latest annual edition of a specific textbook. Teachers would instead recommend books they feel are good to use to pass their course. Without the exclusive book contracts, publishers couldn't easily and blatantly maintain a cartel on textbooks.

The basic economics of why school textbooks are so expensive is dead simple: The teachers and the schools grant publishers a cartel by forcing kids to purchase their specific new editions every year. Why anybody is suprised that prices are so high is beyond me.

Re: California State Senator Proposes Funding Open-Source Textbooks

#42

Post by ams6110 »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #41

The solution is stop enforcing this dogma of requiring a specific book for subjects which clearly do not require the latest annual edition of a specific textbook. Teachers would instead recommend books they feel are good to use to pass their course. Without the exclusive book contracts, publishers couldn't easily and blatantly maintain a cartel on textbooks. The basic economics of why school textbooks are so expensiv…

Teachers would instead recommend books they feel are good to use to pass their course

They do this now. They recommend (require in fact) their OWN books.

Re: California State Senator Proposes Funding Open-Source Textbooks

#43

Post by dreamdu5t »

ams6110 wrote: post #42
dreamdu5t wrote: post #41

The solution is stop enforcing this dogma of requiring a specific book for subjects which clearly do not require the latest annual edition of a specific textbook. Teachers would instead recommend books they feel are good to use to pass their course. Without the exclusive book contracts, publishers couldn't easily and blatantly maintain a cartel on textbooks. The basic economics of why school textbooks are so expensiv…

Teachers would instead recommend books they feel are good to use to pass their course They do this now. They recommend (require in fact) their OWN books.

Teachers do not do this now. They have a specific book or set of books that almost all of the time is required to take the class.

The problem is it's a requirement and they often test directly from the book because it removes effort from teaching to the test.

Re: California State Senator Proposes Funding Open-Source Textbooks

#46

Post by jimhefferon »

breckinloggins wrote: post #6

I think the whole CONCEPT of a "textbook" needs to change: 1. It should be open-source or available on your nearest "App Store" for a REASONABLE price 2. It should be interactive. If I have a history textbook describing a battle, I want to be able to watch the battle unfold (even if it's just a diagram). If I am reading a chemistry textbook, let me play with the molecule. When I need to learn about the D3 group in Ab…

These kinds of ideas are clear to everyone who has thought about the topic. But if I can interject some personal experience ..

I've had an open source text up for more than a decade http://joshua.smcvt.edu/linearalgebra . It is easy to find; if you google "linear algebra" today then it is the third item. But although I have said on the page that I welcome contributions, I have had very few, and those few mostly bug reports-- which I am glad to get but they are not what I imagined I would get when I first put it up. (I will be putting it up soon in a public version control repository but let me note before I get emails that for most of the life of this project the best option really was to offer a .zip of the LaTeX source.)

The text if fine but I could in a minute list many shortcomings. For instance, it could use with a graphic designer, it could use with the skills of a person who can do illustrations, I would be delighted to get ways to interact with Sage, I would be glad to get tests from people who have taught the course, I would be glad to get help with e-readers (I don't own one myself). Etc.

I am currently doing an update that has taken my between-semesters break, and that threatens to spread into next semester. So offering such a thing is a lot of work. Some of it I am qualified to do but some of it I really am not. However, to this point, I have seen very little evidence that others will help so if it is to be done then I have to do it.

In short, more productive than listing the failings of others may be to pick a promising project of interest to you, and contribute a solution.

Re: California State Senator Proposes Funding Open-Source Textbooks

#47

Post by DanBC »

equark wrote: post #26
breckinloggins wrote: post #6

I think the whole CONCEPT of a "textbook" needs to change: 1. It should be open-source or available on your nearest "App Store" for a REASONABLE price 2. It should be interactive. If I have a history textbook describing a battle, I want to be able to watch the battle unfold (even if it's just a diagram). If I am reading a chemistry textbook, let me play with the molecule. When I need to learn about the D3 group in Ab…

I think you're missing the fact that textbooks are written by people. They don't magically appear. Writing a good textbook requires the passion of a single expert author, who must dedicate years of his or her life to write it. There are very few shortcuts. And crowd-sourcing is definitely not one of them. A more innovative approach, I think, would be for the government to buy out leading textbooks at a premium and af…

> * And crowd-sourcing is definitely not one of them.*

I agree, but crowdsourcing would be handy for fixing errors or improving clarity. If a bunch of people highlight a passage that they think is confusing, and give reasons, that gives the author (or others) an opportunity to clarify.

Yes, that is something that teachers could be doing, but why not make the books as good as they could be?

Re: California State Senator Proposes Funding Open-Source Textbooks

#48

Post by Lagged2Death »

gringomorcego wrote: post #15

The state of textbooks is so fucking sad. I still don't get how Bill Gates or another richy-rich hasn't realized how fucking great it would be to pay 100k to an awesome professor for writing a textbook and publishing it under a CC license. If you did that with all subjects, and paid for translations, and made it all digital, it would cost next to nothing in the large scheme and be more beneficial to humanity than the…

I've felt the same way, but it's worth pointing out that this would be possible with low-tech, uncomplicated paper books.

A large school district could surely save a bundle, and improve the quality of its education besides, by paying a qualified individual to write a textbook just for them, then having it printed just for them. And they could give away the text to other interested districts if they wanted, saving the other districts even more money.

This has been true for decades. No internet, no computers or e-readers, and no fancy newfangled CC licenses would be required for such a plan.

Yet it mostly has not happened.

So there must be a reason. This infamous story by Richard Feynman suggests that it's a matter of an entrenched culture of laziness, lobbying, bribery, and in effect regulatory capture:

http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

Re: California State Senator Proposes Funding Open-Source Textbooks

#49

Post by josnyder »

DanBC wrote: post #47
equark wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the fact that textbooks are written by people. They don't magically appear. Writing a good textbook requires the passion of a single expert author, who must dedicate years of his or her life to write it. There are very few shortcuts. And crowd-sourcing is definitely not one of them. A more innovative approach, I think, would be for the government to buy out leading textbooks at a premium and af…

> * And crowd-sourcing is definitely not one of them.* I agree, but crowdsourcing would be handy for fixing errors or improving clarity. If a bunch of people highlight a passage that they think is confusing, and give reasons, that gives the author (or others) an opportunity to clarify. Yes, that is something that teachers could be doing, but why not make the books as good as they could be?

This has been done. Real World Haskell [1] comes to mind.

[1] http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/types-and-functions.ht...

Re: California State Senator Proposes Funding Open-Source Textbooks

#50

Post by DanBC »

robrenaud wrote: post #29
rflrob wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a failure on the part of the publishers to collect all the money they could. There are large fixed costs to produce the first textbook, but relatively low marginal costs to produce the next million. If the publishers had some sort of "budget-impacted schools" program, under which schools that would otherwise share textbooks among students could buy textbooks at a relatively small markup over marginal…

Price discrimination is hard. I've heard of Americans picking up crappily bound but reasonable priced big name texts, like Norvig's AI book, or CLRS's algo book produced for India. 276 RS http://www.dealsandcoupons.in/resources/3986-discount-book-I... The publishers don't want to risk shaking up big profits to sell near cost to the low end. If you sell cheaply to the poor schools, what prevents the poor schools from…

A big green stamp on the side (closed pages) of the book saying "BUDGET BOOK PROGRAMME"?
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