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Free Textbooks and Lecture Notes
21st Century Learning Products
Books
and
Video
Lectures
Academic Earth
-- many video lectures from the
world's top scholars on many subjects
Accounting
Books--
an extensive collect
Accounting for Managers
has many concise booklets
with exercises
Accounting
Practice Sets
-- one designed for a
pencil and two designed for software.
Accounting Test Review Notes is
a 48 page, seven
tests reviews of Accounting I and II.
Accounting Tests with Answers help you prepare for tests.
Active Free Stuff
has a developing education
section.
Aussie Educator Textbooks--
has an extensive collection of
textbooks and portals
Bibliomania--
reference books, literature notes, study guides,
articles, interviews...
Bookboon.com-- concise free textbooks contain advertising
Book
Summaries--
5-8
page summaries of current
political science books
Business Courses
are from major universities.
Business
& Economics Video Lectures
Business e-books
tend to be applications
oriented.
Business Textbook Internet Library--
many business areas
Capitalistic
Democracy
Chaos Science Revealed! Order "Chaos", on DVD!
Choosing a Major/Career
Classics Sixty-one of the greatest
classic and growing.
College Courses Video Lectures
go over important concepts "Quickly"
Community College
Consortium Open Educational Resources Open Content
Computers Books For Business
Computer Education Libraries
have free software, tutoring, and books.
"Cosmology: History and Nature of Our Universe", on DVD,
Xplore the Mysteries of
Creative
Commons-- click on Find CC
Licensed Work, enter the subject area
Curriculums,
Individualized
Debt,
The Big Secret Behind U.S. Federal
Dieting
has an interesting
approach.
Digital Book Index
has 130 000 title records, 90
000 of these books are free.
Economic Textbooks has
books for economics majors and professions.
Economics
Test Review Notes
Educating the Class of 2030
Education
Libraries cover economic
implications of education,
improvements, reforms
Education's Bottom Line
Education, U.S. vs. Germany and Britain, Our Biggest Value Added
Competitors is a subject I became
interested in when I semi retired in 1989. It lead me to Individualized
Curriculum Will Grow Better Students at a Lower Cost.
Education,
Curriculums
Educational
Audio/Video Libraries cove
academic subjects
Effective Reasoning, How to Make Your Point! Order "Argumentation: The Study of Effective"
English
Video Lectures-TOFEL
English
as a Second Language
has extensive help.
English
Video Lectures will
help you learn English.
Excel
Statistics Lab Manual is written in
Excel. Use aprilblackie to unlock
Excel, Quick Statistics Course Using Microsoft
TM
has free books, homework, and tests.
Flat World
Knowledge
has free textbooks with advertising.
Free Book Center
has many computer and mathematic books.
Free High School Textbooks
Free Non-business Textbooks
from Anthropology to Software and Sociology and beyond.
Free Online Books
links to major collections plus subject collections.
freeonlinebookstore.org
has an extensive, well organized collection.
Freeload Press
has free college textbooks
paid for with advertising.
Get
Free pdf books is extensive.
Globusz
has great business books on
other subjects.
Global Text Project--
click on the Books
tab.
Grade Saver Online Study
Guides: extensive, grouped alphabetically for easier access.
Health Care Cost Statistics
are not pretty.
HippoCampus
has audio/video lectures on Algebra,
American Government, Biology, Calculus, Environmental
Science, Physics, Religion, and U.S. History
History Using Quick
Notes
concise info on history,
politics, understanding today
iLumina
has sharable undergraduate
teaching materials for chem, bio, physics,
math, CS.
Iran,
A Concise 20th Century History of Iran
Iraq,
A Concise 20th Century History of
Islamic
Fundamentalism
Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (US) provides
content of popular courses.
Lecture Fox
has physics, chemistry, computer science, mathematics,
and the faculty mix.
Light and Matter
open source physics textbooks
Managers, Accounting for
has many concise booklets
with exercises
Math Texts
from Professor Mark Dubin, at the University of
Colorado
Math,
Interactive, where
you learn math by playing with it.
Mathematics textbooks online: George Cain,
School of Mathematics, Georgia Inst Tech
MBA Prerequisite Books and Notes--
many business areas
MIT Open Course Ware
Music, Learn the
Language of Music! Order "Understanding the
Fundamentals of Music", DVD, CD, MP3!
National Academies Press,
The
‘Read more than 3 000 books online.
Online Books Internet Library
-- many areas, especially
literature.
Online Medical Textbooks:
has a wide a variety.
Online Science and Math
Textbooks: biochem,
chemistry, aeronautics, medical manuals
Open Book Project
encourages and coordinate collaboration among students teachers
Open College Textbooks
beginning of 2009
Open Course Ware Finder
allows search six open courseware sites
simultaneously.
Open
Culture lists books by subject.
Open Learn
from the UK has
comprehensive materials on business, technology, the
Arts...
Orange Grove Text Plus
from
Oxford Scholarship Online:
monographs in many academic areas and 1,350 Oxford books.
Perseus Digital Library,
The Tufts Univ ‘Perseus
brings a wide range of source materials.
Probability Video Lectures are "Quick" and to the
point.
Probability Tests Taking Tips
Programming Books, Online is extensive
Project Gutenberg
covers both fiction & non-fiction.
Pink Monkey:
study guides, book notes, and
online textbooks for 15 subjects.
Quick Notes Course Outlines-- accounting, economics, statistics, mathematics
Saskatchewan University
(CA)
has general engineering class notes.
Science Texts
an extensive list from Professor Mark Dubin, at the
University of Colorado
Sparknotes
study guides
covering a range of areas
is predominantly
Language based
Statistics Formula Reviews
four concise reviews
Statistics Test Review Notes
two pages per chapter
Statistics Tests with Answers help you prepare for
problem tests.
Statistics
Test Passing Help
has multiple choice and
true/false tests, answers provide.
Statistics Video Lectures
cover the basics quickly.
Sunnis
and Shiites at War
TED talks
has mind-expanding short talks.
Test Prep Internet Library
links to free test preparation materials
Textbook Revolution--
many diverse areas
The Assayer
coves many areas, specializes in
math and science.
Tufts OpenCourseWare
VideoLectures.net
has many subjects, with a focus is on computer
science.
Virtual Learning
Wikibooks open-content textbooks
-- many diverse areas
Web-Books.Com has
over 1,000 free public domain e-book downloads.
Webcast.Berkeley
has current and archived course and recorded
special events.
World Wide School® Library:
Lit, Soc Sci etc. divided into language
sub-directories
Professors Providing Free Internet
Textbook Alternatives
Please
E-mail
antonw@ix.netcom.com with
information
concerning how these
free courses are being used.
Free Courses
21st Century Learning Products
Courses for students and
Course Materials for teachers.
Subject area include
Accounting, Economics, Mathematics,
and Statistics using Excel.Minitab,SPSS,TI-84.
100 Free Online Ivy League Courses
A
Christian Thought Experiment
Academic Earth - Video lectures
from the world's top scholars
Berkeley Webcasts
Carnegie
Mellon Open Learning
Initiative
English
as a Second Language
has extensive material.
English
Video Lectures will
help you learn English.
Johns Hopkins
Kutztown University
specializes in Small Business
Management
MIT
National
Repository of Online Courses--
high school, AP and college courses
Notre Dame
Open Course Ware Consortium
has an extensive list of open
courses by country.
Open University -UK
Quick Notes Course
-- accounting, economics, statistics (Excel, Minitab,
SPSS, TI-84)
Sofia from
Foothill-De Anza CC
with testing material
makes this truly a user friendly
site.
Stanford Courses
Tufts University
Utah University
Utah Open Courseware
Alliance
Yale Open Educational Resources Initiative
University of California's
College Prep Online
(AP and other
courses online)
UC Irvine Courses
Online
University of South
Queens
Please Blog Friends
About This Site Using
The Economics of College
Textbooks
Supply
Publishers create paper books to explain material requested by
teachers. Colleges sell to students at a 33% markup
making a profit or sell bookstore rights to a national chain for instant
profit and less management responsibility.
Demand
Students need something to study.
Teachers need material to teach and help developing and grading tests
The Used Textbook Market
More than ten years ago an
extensive used textbook industry developed and student participants
saved money.
Publishers Fight Back causing much
higher prices
The used textbook market cut into
publisher profit margins. Their response was more frequent edition
changes. This, they hoped, would make textbooks indispensable. In
courses where homework problems were an integral part of the textbook,
problems were changed making used textbooks less useful. The added
material increase printing cost, and caused numerous mistakes making the
books less useful. Special publisher programs like the
Thomson - Service Plus - Rewards and
ThomsonNOW | Online learning and course management from Thomson
... gave
students an e-book option for about 60% of the cost of paper and allows
teacher to automatically make a syllabus, tests, grades, and students
can check grades. Also, according to the company, material to make
learning easier was provided.
The bottom line
Changes made by publishers increase production cost meaning prices had
to go up at a faster rate to maintain profit margins.
Anecdotal Information gathered over thirty-five
years of teaching and ten years of selling books from the Quick Notes
Learning System series to
about ten college bookstores.
If one hundred students sign up for a class, the bookstore orders about seventy books, returns ten books, buys back 40 books of which 30 look like
new.
From a teacher's standpoint,
the test bank is the most important ingredient.
Publishers make the testing process easier with test banks which can be
taken and graded by a machine. The average professor teaches four classes
per term with a total of 100 to 1,000 students. Final exam are given over a
short period with grades due a few days after the exam period. The Professor,
using the publishers
test bank, selects questions and prints the multiple choice test and
answer sheet. A machine is used to grade the test. Bells and whistles
like a grade distribution and test results by question are interesting, but
superfluous.
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Development Sites with Textbooks
Community College Consortium for
Open Educational Resources,
which was founded by the Foothill-De Anza Community
College District and the League for Innovation in the
Community College.
eduCommons
will help you develop and manage an open
access collection of course materials.
Global Text Project,
originated by Dr. Richard Watson at the
University of Georgia.
OpenTextBook.org
is a registry of textbooks and text
book material that is open in accordance with the
Open Knowledge
Definition (OKD).
FlexBooks
has HS science, math, engineering, and technology textbooks
Wikibooks
- offers over
30,000 open-content textbooks.
The Free Textbook
Project help in creating and sharing
educational materials.
Development
Sites with Useful Materials
The
Orange Grove
CK-12
Foundation
provides learning segments that can be combined into
books.
Connexions,
from
Rice University
"... is a rapidly
growing collection of free scholarly
materials and a powerful set of free
software tools to help, authors
publish and collaborate, instructors
rapidly build and share custom courses,
learners explore the links among
concepts, courses, and disciplines. View
an in-depth introduction to Connexions
in the
TED2006 presentation by
Connexions Founder
Richard Baraniuk."
California Open Source
Textbook Project
(COSTP)
is a collaborative,
public/private undertaking.
It has been created to
address the high cost,
content range, and
consistent shortages of K-12
textbooks in California.
Open Educational Resources Commons
is a teaching
and learning network of shared materials, fro
m
K-12 through college, from algebra to zoology, open to
everyone.
Open of Course
is a multilingual community portal for free
online courses and tutorials.
TED2006
an in-depth introduction to Connexions
presentation by its founder
Richard
Baraniuk.
Open Educational Resources (OER)
Index
Open Education Resource Center
for California provides support for community
college educators.
Support This Site by
Shopping at
amazon.com
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Free Textbooks
Adoption Plan
1) Students, working through an existing student group--student
senate, economics club, business club, would form a committee.
2) Choose a basic course (Accounting,
Economics, Statistics, Botany), where material tested is very
generic.
3) The appropriate department would be asked to work with the
committee in choosing an appropriate free textbook and tying the
syllabus to the free textbook. In courses with extensive
reading, the department would tie the reading list to one or two of
the free
sources. Where tests consist of problems, the department would
choose a free textbook that has similar problems. Perhaps a
faculty member could use their sabbatical to develop materials.
4)
Open Textbook Adoption
by Judy Baker provides five steps for teachers
wanting to adopt open textbooks.
5) Have the department create a
department wide testing and grading mechanism. Once this is
accomplished, teachers will not be dependent on publishers for
this material and free e-textbooks can replace costly paper
textbooks.
6) Schools should develop a
Tech-based,
Activity-driven
educational system
centered on student activity rather than lectures.
Open Textbook Testimonial,
Erik Christensen of South Florida Community College.
Professors Providing Free Internet
Textbook Alternatives For Their Students |
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Improving Free/Open
Textbooks
1)
Internet sites collecting materials
should perform a rationing function separating interesting subject matter from actual textbooks.
For example Connexions correctly calls its material a collection
of small "knowledge chunks". Too many sites do not separate textbooks
from chunks.
2) Sites too often go for quantity rather than quality.
3) Someone must develop easy to use testing materials currently provided
by publishers. For examples
Sofia course material provides tests
along with course notes and is ready to go while Wikibooks is developing
some interesting material but no testing material is provided.
4)
Studies show that students complain about costs
but are slow to move to alternatives. A way must be found to use student
inputs in the development of
free Internet based textbooks.
5)
Educational Ideas From
Economists
Please
E-mail us with suggestions on
rectifying this problem. Put Student Acceptance in the Subject
box.
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Please
Please
E-mail
antonw@ix.netcom.com with suggestions
Over 200,000 book titles for your iPad. As low as $0.99/book! 
Interesting Free Textbook Ideas
Ohio State eases book-buying pain
by putting selected books on line for
their own students.
The problem with this system is it
lowers demand which will cause
publishers to increase price to maintain
margins.
socialbib
- If you are a college student (, you
should try to get your textbooks for free. It is a great
site that is free to join if you are a currently
enrolled student.
World Public Library
Other Free Textbooks Advocates
TeleRead--
Advocating A Well-Stocked National Digital Library
Free Curricula Center
produces and distributes university-level curricula that
can be copied freely and modified cooperatively.
Open
Knowledge Foundation--
Protecting and Promoting Open Knowledge
in a Digital Age
Support This Site by
Shopping at
amazon.com
Interesting Reading
A
Christian Thought Experiment
A Christmas Story
The Economics of Open Content Symposium - WGBH
Forum Network
UT to Offer Free Electronic Textbooks
'Name
Your Price' Textbooks Hit The Web
New Study Outlines 12 Reasons for Soaring College Costs
from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP)
Southeastern offers Textbook Reserve Program
Creative Commons Blog
Global Text Project Blog
TeleRead Blog
Are Copyrights a Textbook Scam:
Alternatives to Financing Textbook Production in the 21st Century
from the Center for Economic and Policy Research
“Textbook Prices Too Much, So UVSC
Professor Eliminates Their Use,”
A
Newly Emerging Infrastructure to Support Free
Textbooks...
10 Tips: Be book smart when buying college texts
Inside Higher Ed Online Texts for CC Students
Top 100
Open Courseware Projects
Facts Regarding Textbook Renting Programs
Independence Hall Association Launches Free, Online American History
Over 200,000 book titles for your iPad. As low as $0.99/book!
Please
E-mail us with comments and
suggestions.
Please
Support This Site by
Shopping at
amazon.com
Thanks!
Walter
Antoniotti
Please visit our other sites
Curriculums,
Individualized
Real-world, Tech-based,
Activity Driven,
Question-based,
Project-oriented
Curriculums
Economics and Reform Internet Library
Education
Economics and Reform Internet Library
Education Improvement Internet Library
Interesting Thoughts Concerning Education From The
Expert
Interesting
Thoughts Concerning Society.
These sites have been prepared by
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I'm
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