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In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

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Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#51

Post by miki123211 »

lightveil wrote: post #23
miki123211 wrote: post #21

Many books/websites let you view the Latex code, despite not technically being open source. If a website uses MathJax, you can change the renderer to "plain source" by opening the context menu on any math equation. "Paul's Math notes"[1] is a good example, and a really great free website for college-level math. If you're a screen reader user, the context menu may not open for reasons unknown. Try routing your mouse t…

Yup, I have been using this extensively. Paul's notes are something I forgot to mention-I referred to them almost daily, back when I was taking the equivalent of Calculus 1, and they're still very useful now that I'm taking differential equations. Unfortunately, this doesn't quite work on OpenStax-I can't get LaTeX, all I can get is MathML, and that's not very easy to read. There's a way to navigate the math (using s…

Try playing with Mathjax's own accessibility settings. Not sure how well that works on Openstax, will work well if they're using Mathjax 3, badly otherwise.

Alternatively play with MathPlayer's settings (in the control panel), some of the other reading modes work better in certain contexts.

If you can, also try VoiceOver on the Mac, it has its own math support, which works pretty well.

We seem to be in similar situations, if you want to share tips or something, my hn username at gmail dot com.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#52

Post by mhh__ »

WalterBright wrote: post #46
mhh__ wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a bunch of EM textbooks from the 40s and 50s on my bookshelves, the field has changed quite a lot i.e. I understand what they are saying, but the mathematical formalism is very obtuse and the applications are often irrelevant outside of the very basics. The Feynman lectures were recorded prior to the standard model for example, still excellent but hopelessly out of date as an introduction to undergraduate phys…

My high school didn't teach EM, nothing remotely that advanced.

I thought you meant all textbooks, my bad. If this is just about high school then I mostly agree wrt to the amount of waste.

I think the solution would have to come down from the top however, in the UK at least the way our exams are marked means using an old textbook could be a fairly dangerous affair without an astute teacher (due to the ridiculously anal markschemes and philistine syllabus, this does bite people)

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#53

Post by gjvnq »

bluenose69 wrote: post #5

I had a student with limited vision in a class once, who had a reader. Luckily, I had written the course notes (basically a textbook) in latex. I consulted with the student and saw how the reader worked. All was fine, but it was slow because it said e.g. "backslash begin open brace equation close brace", so I made a perlscript to remove backslash and braces (and a few other things) and then it all worked really well.…

Basic scripting is such a powerful tool, it's sad that so few people know how to use it.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#54

Post by WalterBright »

mhh__ wrote: post #52
WalterBright wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My high school didn't teach EM, nothing remotely that advanced.

I thought you meant all textbooks, my bad. If this is just about high school then I mostly agree wrt to the amount of waste. I think the solution would have to come down from the top however, in the UK at least the way our exams are marked means using an old textbook could be a fairly dangerous affair without an astute teacher (due to the ridiculously anal markschemes and philistine syllabus, this does bite people)

Most undergraduate textbooks are still fine. Though I agree that some topics change fast, like electronics beyond basic circuit analysis. Certainly comp-sci :-) Wow has that changed.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#55

Post by kwhitefoot »

nicoburns wrote: post #35
anigbrowl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other countries textbooks are cheap because (as you say) the subject matter is more or less agreed-upon so there are just a few different textbooks largely distinguished by the quality of the writing and presentation. In the US students are treated as a captive audience and publishers work hard to get professors and education authorities to specify particular books, which are then sold at a very high mark-up. The…

Yeah. I'm not quite sure how it works in the US, but here in the UK we have strong student unions that often have a good relationship with the university whose students they represent. I think any professor attempting this would get shut down pretty quickly.

The word union is anathema to many in the US.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#56

Post by WalterBright »

coryrc wrote: post #49
WalterBright wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that textbooks fall apart and need replacement. I'm just talking about the complaints that they are outdated. The complaint I constantly hear from teachers is they work their fingers to the bone preparing lesson plans. I ask why are they making them from scratch, why not share? and don't get a response. > Every state, district, individual school might have its own rules about what can and must be taught,…

The teachers I know do reuse their lesson plans when they teach the same class. One of the biggest values of seniority is being able to teach the same class every year. Why they don't standardize has everything to do with the kind of people who become teachers and what they want to be doing with their time.

> The teachers I know do reuse their lesson plans when they teach the same class.

Of course they do. I knew I was being buffaloed.

Though the point stands that why don't they share lesson plans? Why do we need 3.7 million unique lesson plans? There ought to be plenty of off-the-shelf plans to use.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#57

Post by WalterBright »

coryrc wrote: post #47
WalterBright wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You're absolutely correct on your second point. But for the first point, as poor as research in education is, there have been improvements in educational methods. I read some examples about the Common Core mathematics pedagogy, prepared to be as angry as Feynman, but they were actually teaching kids how to do arithmetic the way I do (which is way better than New Math or brute force methods): 99x5 is 500-5 not 5+(4+5)…

There have certainly been changes in educational methods, but I doubt there are improvements. Math achievement has been flat for the last 50 years. The "new math" and "look-say" methods were largely invented to drive new textbook sales.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#58

Post by kwhitefoot »

coryrc wrote: post #47
WalterBright wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You're absolutely correct on your second point. But for the first point, as poor as research in education is, there have been improvements in educational methods. I read some examples about the Common Core mathematics pedagogy, prepared to be as angry as Feynman, but they were actually teaching kids how to do arithmetic the way I do (which is way better than New Math or brute force methods): 99x5 is 500-5 not 5+(4+5)…

I learnt arithmetic in the early sixties. 99x5 would be 9x5x10+9x5 = 450+45 = 495

Perhaps it helped that we all knew the 12 times tables.

Is there some new magical way of doing long multiplication that is more effective and easier to understand?

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#59

Post by kwhitefoot »

detaro wrote: post #36
WalterBright wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see. Science? Nope. History? Nope. Exercise? Nope. Reading? Nope. Writing? Nope. Foreign languages? Nope. Current events? Yup. Just bring a newspaper to class.

> History? Modern perspective on it is constantly evolving, especially on more recent bits, and there's plenty topics I'd rather have my kids being taught with a perspective from this century (E.g. to take my local German perspective, events surrounding WW2 and post-war development). Also, plenty things that happened while you were alive are History now. (remember, kids finishing high school now weren't born when 9/1…

> Languages: Languages change (German literally added a letter in the past decade, new words are created, how people speak changes, ...).

If one learned German from a forty year old textbook the only problem related to that that you would experience in Germany would be that some people would think you were speaking rather more formally than expected. Learning it from an up to date text book isn't going to make you noticeably better at communicating with actual Germans in real life, that takes actual immersion in the language as it is really spoken.

And the German language authorities might well have added a new letter or changed the spelling of the word spagetti but that doesn't mean that every German has.

Textbooks are of very limited use in the real world.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#60

Post by coryrc »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #58
coryrc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely correct on your second point. But for the first point, as poor as research in education is, there have been improvements in educational methods. I read some examples about the Common Core mathematics pedagogy, prepared to be as angry as Feynman, but they were actually teaching kids how to do arithmetic the way I do (which is way better than New Math or brute force methods): 99x5 is 500-5 not 5+(4+5)…

I learnt arithmetic in the early sixties. 99x5 would be 9x5x10+9x5 = 450+45 = 495 Perhaps it helped that we all knew the 12 times tables. Is there some new magical way of doing long multiplication that is more effective and easier to understand?

999999*5 is far easier as 5000000-5 than 45+450+4500+...

Are you really arguing that the latter is faster and more effective to do in your head?

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