Save On College Expenses by Downloading Free Textbooks
September 7, 2013
After paying tuition, dorm fees, moving expenses, and for a meal plan, college students can expect to pay an extra six hundred or more on textbooks. Purchasing college textbooks has always had the feel of a racketeering group, where only the book publisher, bookstore, and occasionally the professor who assigns his book to make a couple extra dollars profit. The student is always left out in the cold with barely a few bucks for reselling their books back at a quarter of the price.
Textbooks are also a bother in their physical format, but thankfully there are alternatives in the digital age. Students can buy cheaper digital versions through Amazon and other textbook Web sites, but the savvy student is aware of free resources out there. Lifehacker tells us about, “Download Free, Open Source Textbooks From OpenStax College.” Rice University’s OpenStax College is where many students will be able to find their textbooks:
“This nonprofit initiative is supported by philanthropic foundations and the peer-reviewed textbooks are provided to over 200 universities and colleges, as well as individual students. Currently about a dozen textbooks are available, covering mostly the sciences, but history, economics, and other subjects are coming soon.”
The books are downloadable in EPUB or PDF formats and available to read on mobile devices. The selections are small at the moment, but expect it to grow. The article also points to other free textbook Web resources.
Whitney Grace, September 07, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Elsevier Partners with Ukraine Ministry
August 25, 2013
Earlier this year, Elsevier demonstrated their increased willingness to embrace open access to academic information with their purchase of Mendeley. Now, the leading publisher of scholarly journals is helping to boost information access in the Ukraine. Yahoo Finance reports on this move in, “Elsevier Announces its Cooperation with the Ukranian Ministry of Education and Science to Extend Access to Scientific Information.” The press release informs us:
“Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced its cooperation with the Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science in order to provide access to Elsevier’s scientific databases for sixty Ukrainian research institutions.
A Declaration of Intent for Cooperation has been signed by the Ministry of Education and Science and Elsevier. The agreement includes access to Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. The Ukrainian Ministry also intends to license ScienceDirect, Elsevier’s full-text platform for research literature and Elsevier’s SciVal research management solutions, which provide insights into research performance.”
Ukraine’s First Deputy Minister of Education and Science, Yevhen Sulima, expects the increased access will significantly boost Ukrainian research, in both quality and impact. For their part, the folks at Elsevier say they are pleased to be the first international publisher to work with the Ukrainian research community on this level. Not incidentally, the company’s sales director also hopes the deal will improve his company’s already considerable global ranking.
With over 2,000 journals and nearly 20,000 books under its belt, Elsevier is an undisputed leader in academic publishing. Based in Amsterdam, the company has been around for a very, very long time. Though launched as a modern publishing company as recently as 1880, the company takes its name from a publishing house founded in 1580 by the Dutch family, House of Elzevir.
Cynthia Murrell, August 25, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
The Way to Fail in San Jose
August 19, 2013
When reading the San Francisco Gate’s article, “San Jose State Suspends Online Courses” our immediate reaction was “ouch!” Many public universities in the US offer online courses as an alternative to traditional face-to-face education. San Jose University offered five online classes and more than half of the enrolled students failed them. In response, the university suspended classes for the time being to reevaluate. This does not mean San Jose University will stop offering online courses; it will just stop classes from Udacity. The failing classes were part of the “Massive Open Online Courses” strategy that incorporated major public universities to increase their online class offerings. These five failures set the plan back, but it is not deemed a waste:
“Despite the high failure rate, Sebastian Thrun, a researcher at Stanford University and Google Inc. who launched Udacity said valuable data and experience were gained from the effort, which will help improve future classes. ‘We are experimenting and learning. That to me is a positive,’ Thrun said. The school and Udacity plan to look into providing more information about the syllabus at the beginning of the class, so students are better informed about the requirements before committing. Officials also want to look at whether the online semester should be longer than traditional school terms to provide students with more flexibility.”
Most of the students in these classes were non-traditional students, working a job and little college experience, which is probably why they failed. It was a learning experience for both students and the university. Both are learning from their mistakes.
Whitney Grace, August 19, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
English Major? You Are Hot and May Not Know It
July 24, 2013
I get quite a few laughs when I point out that my degree is in medieval Latin poetry. Hey, what can I say? The computer science departments at my undergraduate university did not want anyone using the precious mainframe to index Latin anything. The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Dr. William Gillis had a different view. So I know zero about poetry but I could in the early 1960s generate concordances and indexes. The rest, of course, is history. Halliburton Nuclear, Booz, Allen & Hamilton (now Snowdonized), and a couple of big companies into electronic information.
Imagine my thrill when I read the most amazingly wild and crazy article in the San Francisco Chronicle (July 14, 2013) on page E8 with the reassuring, almost baby-blanket comfortable title, “English Majors, Once Disdained, Back in Demand.” You may be able to find a version of this write up at http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx. No promises, however. I am following in the footsteps of universities which are craw fishing away from the notion that someone with a degree in law or art history will be able to find a job after graduating.
In my opinion, the main point of the essay is that English majors can look beyond standing in line for SNAP cards and unemployment benefits. English majors have the ability to “construct stories.” The passage which made me a true believer about the value of an English major was:
When so0meone spends four years reading, writing about and talking about complicated, nuanced texts, a kind of interpretive stacking occurs that enables a student (or an employee) to navigate the noise surrounding a document and pay attention both to what it’s saying and (perhaps more important) to what it’s doing.
If you are an English major, you already know this. I frequently reflect on the Elizabethiad, an epic written in Latin hexameters by William Alabaster, to curry favor with Queen Elizabeth. The fellow needed some Latin oomph since he was flitting back and forth to Spain and putting himself in a position where his “true faith” was easily questioned.
The closing paragraph of the write up is interesting as well. The author, a university professor, noted:
Of course, English isn’t for everyone, and it won’t guarantee you a job upon graduation, like a major in accounting might. But with people switching jobs every few years now, I can think of no degree more versatile or more interesting. I also believe that studying English makes you a smarter reader of the world. And as the world becomes more saturated with information, literacy (in all its forms) is the most employable skill around.
Great point. However, with rising illiteracy in the US, and the emergence of smart software which removes the need to type words to locate videos, I think that the meaning of “English major” may have to be revised. Don’t write it in cursive, however.
Stephen E Arnold, July 24, 2013
Sponsored by Xenky
Search System Tutorial Simplifies Deep Learning
June 21, 2013
In the Wikipedia UFLDL Tutorial, you can learn the basics of Unsupervised Feature Learning and Deep Learning. Of course the tutorial is meant for those who already have some understanding of machine learning (if you need and even more basic approach, you can visit the Machine Learning Course to catch up on supervised learning, logistics regression and gradient descent). The tutorial covers Sparse Autoencoder, Vectorized implementation, Preprocessing: PCA and Whitening as well as Softmax Regression and Building Deep Networks. One exercise for Self-Taught Learning states,
“In this exercise, we will use the self-taught learning paradigm with the sparse autoencoder and softmax classifier to build a classifier for handwritten digits.You will be building upon your code from the earlier exercises. First, you will train your sparse autoencoder on an “unlabeled” training dataset of handwritten digits. This produces feature that are pen stroke-like…These features will then be used as inputs to the softmax classifier that you wrote in the previous exercise.”
The tutorial walks you through each step with a number of examples and exercises, turning what might be fairly expected to be a complicated process into a veritable textbook- streamlined, straightforward and easy to understand. It turns out search systems can be very simple when automated and partially automated learning are implemented.
Chelsea Kerwin, June 21, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Furthering Free and Online Education
June 5, 2013
The Washington Post reports on a hot topic in education these days: online education. No, this recent article does not simply feature a rundown of online education courses, it delves into the next step: free online text books. The headline reads: “Coursera to Offer Students Free Online Textbooks, with Conditions.”
Coursera, of course, is one of the online providers offering free educational courses online. Textbooks are a logical next step. The have struck a partnership with several publishers to enable students to use certain textbooks for free while they take the courses. Publishers include Cengage Learning, Macmillan Higher Education, Oxford University Press, SAGE and Wiley will be available through e-readers provided by Chegg.
The article states:
“Koller said the agreement will help instructors who felt restricted in what they could require students to read. She also said it will help publishers market full versions of their books to those interested in buying them. Coursera, based in Mountain View, Calif., launched in April 2012, and the company has more than 3 million registered users. Along with edX and Udacity, it is one of the most prominent MOOC providers in a fast-emerging market. Cynthia L. Selfe, an English professor at Ohio State University, said the textbook agreement will benefit thousands who are taking a MOOC on Coursera that she teaches with a group of faculty.”
Does this article suggest that there are more challenges for traditional publishers or is this an opportunity for companies trying to grow and running out of options? The jump from $500 million to $1 billion is a big job.
Megan Feil, June 05, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
The New Hacker Class
May 27, 2013
It might sound like enrolling in Hacker School teaches you how to be a criminal coder, but rather it is an intensive program that lasts three months, four days a week for eight hours a day. The goal is for its students to learn how to be a better programmer akin to an old-fashioned training trips. According to the school’s blog, “Peter Norvig And Eight Others Are Hacker School Residents.” For those who unfamiliar with Google, Peter Norvig is the Director of Research at Google and his residency bespeaks about his dedication to helping students learn new tricks of the trade. Residents spend one or two weeks with the Hacker School and share their experience/knowledge with the students.
“We want to make Hacker School the best place on earth to become a great programmer, and we want Hacker School to be the most productive three months of our students’ lives. That’s why we started our residents program last year to bring the best programmers we can find to Hacker School. Residents come for one or two weeks and work directly with students: They pair program, do code reviews, give short talks, run seminars, and bond with the batch.”
Programs like this are a great addition to a resume, not to mention an amazing networking tool. It also proves that Google is dedicated to teaching the next generation.
Whitney Grace, May 27, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Copy Machine to Grades Papers
May 24, 2013
Copy machines seem slightly outdated as they evoke images of futile technology a la Office Space. But Popular Science represents the antithesis of this and so does the new photocopier discussed in “New Software Teaches Photocopiers How To Grade Papers.” Automated grading machines for multiple choice exams have been around for decades but this takes it to a new level where handwritten answers can be graded by this new Xerox machine.
The software, called Ignite, would keep track of which students are doing poorly and on which questions. At a glance teachers will be able to see who’s struggling and with what concepts.
According to the article:
“The software, called Ignite, needs some pointers first. Teachers enter in the test and an answer key, which Ignite uses not only to figure out which answers are right but also to know where on the page to look for handwritten answers. Teachers also need to tell the software what concepts each question covers. Fourth-graders at one school in Rochester, New York, that has tested the software were impressed. Their teacher, Pat McDonald, named their machine Ziggy and told the Democrat and Chronicle that the kids have written poems about Ziggy.”
We thought IBM’s Watson was fascinating. This steals it’s thunder. The practical application and positive impact this could have on education is enormous.
Megan Feil, May 24, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Excellent Free Resource Introduces Bayesian Methodology
April 10, 2013
So you want to know how Bayesian methods work? We’ve found an excellent source of information in a slideshow titled simply, “Introduction to Bayesian Methods” at SlideShare. Created by Corey Chivers for a guest biostatistics lecture at McGill University, the slides illustrate the concepts clearly. The summary gives an idea of the presentation’s scope:
- The output of a Bayesian analysis is not a single estimate of ?, but rather the entire posterior distribution, which represents our degree of belief about the value of ?.
- To get a posterior distribution, we need to specify our prior belief about ?.
- Complex Bayesian models can be estimated using MCMC.
- The posterior can be used to make both inference about ?, and quantitative predictions with proper accounting of uncertainty.
Chivers notes that these slides are also available here [PDF], while the script to run the examples can be found here. Even if you are already fluent in this methodology, we recommend tucking this slideshow away for reference whenever you need to help someone grasp the Bayesian basics.
Cynthia Murrell, April 10, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Texas County Plans Bookless Library
March 12, 2013
Is this initiative too little too late? We hope not. The blog over at public-sector IT firm GCN informs us, “Bookless Library Foreshadows Next-Gen Students, Learning Technologies.” The post lauds Bexar County, Texas, for its forward-thinking plan to launch a bookless branch. However, it also notes that how they approach the project can make the difference between a crucial resource for study and “just a nice place for a cup of coffee and texting with friends.” Writer Paul McCloskey explains:
“The project, called BiblioTech, would offer about 10,000 titles that patrons could check-out and access remotely via e-readers and mobile devices, as well as about 100 tablets, laptops and desktop computers that will be made available inside the branch. Technical help with computers would be offered to patrons, but reference assistance would be cut.”
He goes on to caution:
“Over the long run, simply offering digital or mobile access to its collection is a pretty old technology model. . . . To maintain a healthy level of patronage, libraries, like schools, will have to keep up with the latest media formats, including social media, intelligent browsing and educational gaming.”
Cutting reference assistants with heartbeats may be the first mistake, he asserts, and I agree. Still, the county is to be commended for changing with the times (even if it seems a bit belated to some of us.) If done well, this could set a good precedent for learning centers in the 21st century.
Cynthia Murrell, March 12, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
