Posted on 08/01/2010 2:48:35 PM PDT by proxy_user
INFURIATING Scott G. McNealy has never been easier. Just bring up math textbooks.
Mr. McNealy, the fiery co-founder and former chief executive of Sun Microsystems, shuns basic math textbooks as bloated monstrosities: their price keeps rising while the core information inside of them stays the same.
“Ten plus 10 has been 20 for a long time,” Mr. McNealy says.
Early this year, Oracle, the database software maker, acquired Sun for $7.4 billion, leaving Mr. McNealy without a job. He has since decided to aim his energy and some money at Curriki, an online hub for free textbooks and other course material that he spearheaded six years ago.
“We are spending $8 billion to $15 billion per year on textbooks” in the United States, Mr. McNealy says. “It seems to me we could put that all online for free.”
The nonprofit Curriki fits into an ever-expanding list of organizations that seek to bring the blunt force of Internet economics to bear on the education market. Even the traditional textbook publishers agree that the days of tweaking a few pages in a book just to sell a new edition are coming to an end.
“Today, we are engaged in a very different dialogue with our customers,” says Wendy Colby, a senior vice president of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. “Our customers are asking us to look at different ways to experiment and to look at different value-based pricing models.”
Mr. McNealy had his own encounter with value-based pricing models while running Sun. The company had thrived as a result of its specialized, pricey technology. And then, in what seemed liked a flash, Sun’s business came undone as a wave of cheaper computers and free, open-source software proved good enough to handle many tasks once done by Sun computers.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This ping list is for articles of interest to homeschoolers. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping List. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added or removed from either list, or both.
The keyword for the FREE REPUBLIC HOMESCHOOLERS’ FORUM is frhf.
Might I suggest a gander at The Teaching Company?
Most state colleges that get fixed tuition from their legislatures make lots on textbook sales. The school will mark up books as much as 200% to make up for revenue they can’t get from tuition fees. Electronic textbooks are far off as the teacher unions and of course printing unions are all against it.
I will still ALWAYS prefer actual, physical books. Although I remember when I was in college about 18 years ago, my textbooks were outrageous - unless I was lucky enough to find a used one, and those were still pretty steep in price.
Reading on the computer and such can be hard on one’s eyes. Not to mention the distraction that would be present on the computer itself..
And sometimes, computers crash. Mines did right before my final in sociology.
Check out Robison Curriculum.
Yes. Or they co-author or consult on the writing of a new math text.
It is quite the racket.
As I like to rant upon more than one occasion, there has been nothing new discovered in mathematics below the MS level in the last 100 years. Any math text from the last 100 years that has been successfully used in grade or high school teaching will suffice for the next 100+ years.
I’ve long been infuriated with the “methods” crowd that keeps wanting to change texts to comport with the latest educational “methods” fads that sweep through the schools. A lot of grade school math is taught with repetition and drills - what the methods people like to call “drill and kill.”
Well, as I tell them, if I had to even think about basic computational math as an engineer, I’d be dead meat. So yes, I believe in drill and kill. Kids should be able to rattle off the multiplication table up to 15x15 without blinking an eye, IMO. They should be able to whip out long division easily. We could alter how much geometry proofs are needed, but every kid should have a couple years of algebra as well as a full course in basic math, including business math, before they graduate from high school. None of this math has changed in the last 100 years. We should find a text, agree on it and just use it in all schools at that grade level, and keep using it year after year.
A good rant, indeed!
>>We should find a text, agree on it and just use it in all schools at that grade level, and keep using it year after year.
We should do no such thing.
We should kill every primary K-12 education establishment about the county level (state and Federal DOEds), and even the county level programs in large counties. Institute a voucher system, and then let the local school districts decide what textbooks to use. And then sink or swim based on those choices.
As constructive criticism, however:
1) The website has a remarkably amateur look and feel coming from the founder of Sun Microsystems.
2) Has he never hear of e-Books? What is the material only available in MS Word and Powerpoint formats rather than also being available in ePub or even PDF formats? I know he wants to make the content easily modified by teachers, but many will just use it as is.
Found an interesting program today for my youngest all on line
http://homeschool.kineticbooks.com/index.php
Tiredoftaxes, perhaps you could repost the Homeschoolers Forum thread again.
It’s the time of year for it and some people have alerted me that they’ve found some sources for free curriculum.
It might be very useful for people just starting off again, or looking for something new.
Sorry, I fell way behind. We had no working computer this summer until now. Marking your message for follow-up asap.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.