textbooks

A few weeks ago, I read an article in Wired talking about an amazing new project led by E.O. Wilson: an all-digital, not-for-profit textbook called Life on Earth. It looks amazing, and it's going to be offered to K-12 schools for free. Neil Patterson, director of Life on Earth with 50 years of science textbook publishing experience to his name, said the format could revolutionize science education for students. "Motion and film are powerful ways of teaching," Patterson said. "We're trying to exploit the human brain, like videogames do, and it's not a small matter to use technology now…

I am teaching physical science this semester. It appears that I will be teaching it again this summer. Ideally, I would like to switch to something like Physics and Everyday Thinking for large lecture courses. A course like this is being developed, but it isn't quite finished. Also, the current version includes chemistry and physics. I really need something different (we offer physical science 101 is physics and 102 is chemistry). The current course is pretty traditional. Your basic physical science stuff. It has the following content. Forces and Motion Newton's Laws Projectile motion…

In the past couple of weeks, we have had two different publishers 'pitch' their online homework system. First, they are fine people and interesting products, but I just don't think this is going to work. Online Books I think the publisher's plan is to have a textbook, and offer extra stuff to go with it (including an ebook). However, for all the ones I have seen, there are problems with the ebooks. You can't keep them forever. It depends on the terms of the service, and maybe this is long enough. The terms seem to vary from 1 year to 5 years. If you are in certain fields (physic or…

I finally got around to reading my backed-up RSS feeds, and had the chance to peruse these, well, demented 1970s biology textbook illustrations uncovered by Crooked Timber. I mean, what? No - what??! Crooked Timber calls it a "Groovy Prog Rock Wannabe Biology Text." I don't know what to say, except that I went to Artomatic yesterday, which had something like a thousand artists, and this psychedelica is far trippier than anything I saw there. Whoa, man. For the record, if I had, as a child, learned to associate biology with angry disembodied leopard heads flying towards me on Frisbees of fire…

After talking about textbooks, commenter Kevin posed the question: which would cost more, printing out a free book or reusing a purchased textbook. Great question. How about some quick estimation (some of this stuff I have no clue about). First, how much do high school textbooks cost? Probably the most popular is Glencoe Physics: Principles and Problems. Amazon lists this for $95.55 (which I will call "about a hundred dollars"). How much do schools pay for this? I have no clue. I imagine if a whole state adopts it, they can get some deal. Maybe they could get it for $50 a copy. How…

The NYTimes Editorial Board wrote at piece lamenting the high prices of college textbooks and praising Congressional action to limit them: College students and their families are rightly outraged about the bankrupting costs of textbooks that have nearly tripled since the 1980s, mainly because of marginally useful CD-ROMs and other supplements. A bill pending in Congress would require publishers to sell "unbundled" versions of the books -- minus the pricey add-ons. Even more important, it would require publishers to reveal book prices in marketing material so that professors could choose less-…

There have been a couple of recent posts about textbooks lately. Jim Fiore started it all with a look at the textbook business from the perspective of the authors and students, looking primarily at the problem of money. One sentence really hit me, though: The problem with a large, institutionalized used book market is that it completely cuts out the publisher and the author. In a larger economy, it is called 'stock market'. When you buy stocks, most often you will be buying them from a broker, not directly from the company. In other words, you are entering the used-stocks market. You…

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was.. Oops. Sorry, already been done. Start again. The other day I brought up some thoughts concerning the high cost of college textbooks. In the arena of science and engineering there are issues with the fairly narrow audience and resultant low volume, and some difficulties with the used book market. There is, of course, the issue of the publishers. I am going to risk having my snout slapped by biting the hand that feeds me, but hey, I noticed something the other day that has my head spinning anyway. I teach an introductory course in…

Everyone in academia knows it: textbook publishers abuse the system. Jim Fiore decries the high cost of college textbooks, and I have to agree completely. Basic textbooks at the lower undergraduate levels do not need a new edition every year or two, not even in rapidly changing fields like biology. Churning editions is just a way for the publisher to suck more money out of a captive audience. It makes it difficult for students to sell off their used textbooks, it gives faculty the headache of having to constantly update their assignments, and if you allow your students to use older editions…