From: W. Trevor King <wking@drexel.edu>
Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 00:36:24 +0000 (-0400)
Subject: Add open physics text post.
X-Git-Url: http://git.tremily.us/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=155a80e290af046fa4d03ca5df651c28c1c34936;p=blog.git

Add open physics text post.
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+Since I love both teaching and open source development, I suppose it
+was only a matter of time before I attempted a survey of open source
+text books.  Here are my notes on the projects I've come across so
+far:
+
+Light and Matter
+================
+
+The [Light and Matter][LM] series is a set of six texts by Benjamin
+Crowell at Fullerton College in California.  The series is aimed at
+the High School and Biology (i.e. low calc) audience.  The source is
+distributed in [[LaTeX]] and versioned in [[Git]].  I love this guy!
+
+Crowell also runs a book review site [The Assayer][assayer], which
+reviews free books.
+
+Radically Modern Introductory Physics
+=====================================
+
+[Radically Modern Introductory Physics][RMIP] is David J. Raymond's
+modern-physics-based approach to introductory physics.  He posts the
+[[LaTeX]] source, but it does not seem to be version controlled.
+
+Calculus Based Physics
+======================
+
+[Calculus Based Physics][CBP], by Jeffrey W. Schnick at St. Anselm in
+New Hampshire.  It is under the Creative Commons
+Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License, and the sources are free to alter.
+However, there is no official version control, and the sources are in
+MS Word format :(.  On the other hand, I wholeheartedly agree with all
+the objectives Schnick lists in [his motivational note][CBP-why].
+
+Textbook Revolution
+===================
+
+Calculus Based Physics' Schnick linked to [Textbook Revolution][TR],
+which immediately gave off good tech vibes with an IRC node
+(#textbookrevolution).  The site is basically a wiki with a browsable
+list of pointers to open textbooks.  The list isn't huge, but it does
+prominently display copyright information, which makes it easier to
+separate the wheat from the chaff.
+
+College Open Textbooks
+======================
+
+[College Open Textbooks][COT] provides another [registry of open
+textbooks][COT-physics] with clearly listed license information.
+They're funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (of NPR
+underwriting fame).
+
+MERLOT's Open Textbook Initiative
+=================================
+
+The Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
+([MERLOT][]) is a California-based project that assembles educational
+resources.  They have [a large collection of open
+textbooks][MERLOT-physics] in a variety of fields.  The Light and
+Matter series is well represented.  Unfortunately, many of the texts
+seem to be "free as in beer" not "free as in freedom".
+
+Open Access Textbooks
+=====================
+
+[The Open Access Textbooks][OAT] project is run by a number of
+Florida-based groups and funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
+However, I have grave doubts about any open source project that opens
+their [project discussion][OAT-project] with
+
+> Numerous issues that impact open textbook implementation (such as
+> creating sustainable review processes and institutional reward
+> structures) have yet to be resolved. The ability to financially
+> sustain a large scale open textbook effort is also in question.
+
+There are zounds of academics with enough knowledge and invested
+interest in developing an open source textbook.  The resources
+(computers and personal websites) are generally already provided by
+academic institutions.  Just pick a framework (LaTeX, HTML, ...), put
+the whole thing in Git, and start hacking.  The community will take it
+from there.
+
+Anyhow, everything I've read about this project smells like a bunch of
+bureaucrat's churning out sound bytes.
+
+ArXiv
+=====
+
+Finally, there are a number of textbooks on [arXiv][].  For example,
+Siegel's [Introduction to string field theory][string] and [Fields][]
+are posted source and all.  The source will probably be good quality,
+but the licensing information may be unclear.
+
+
+[LM]: http://www.lightandmatter.com/
+[assayer]: http://theassayer.org/
+[RMIP]: http://kestrel.nmt.edu/~raymond/teaching.html
+[CBP]: http://www.anselm.edu/internet/physics/cbphysics/
+[CBP-why]: http://www.anselm.edu/internet/physics/cbphysics/AboutTheBook/WHY.pdf
+[TR]: http://textbookrevolution.org/index.php/Main_Page
+[COT]: http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org/
+[COT-physics]: http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org/opentextbookcontent/open-textbooks-by-subject/physics.html
+[MERLOT]: http://www.merlot.org/
+[MERLOT-physics]: http://www.merlot.org/merlot/materials.htm?category=2736&&materialType=Open%20Textbook&sort.property=overallRating
+[OAT]: http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/
+[OAT-project]: http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/projectInfo.html
+[arXiv]: http://arxiv.org/
+[string]: http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0107094
+[Fields]: http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9912205
+
+
+[[!tag tags/teaching]]