Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts Online

in Literature | September 15th, 2010

Togeth­er, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty and King’s Col­lege Lon­don are lead­ing a three year effort to unite in one dig­i­tal archive the sur­viv­ing man­u­scripts of Jane Austen’s fic­tion. Since 1845, these texts have been dis­persed among libraries and pri­vate col­lec­tions. Now, they’re get­ting back togeth­er, at least vir­tu­al­ly. When fin­ished, the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion will include every man­u­script Austen pro­duced, start­ing dur­ing her youth (around 11 years old) and end­ing with her death at age 41. You can start review­ing some of the first man­u­scripts brought online here, and get more back­ground on the project here. Good find by Kot­tke.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jane Austen’s Fight Club

Dominic West (aka Jim­my McNul­ty) Reads Jane Austen

Paradise Lost

in Film | September 15th, 2010

It’s one part Bam­bi, nine parts Looney Tunes, and runs just under three min­utes. Dil­la, as the film is called, was cre­at­ed by four stu­dents at the Rin­gling Col­lege of Art and Design in Sara­so­ta, Flori­da. It was appar­ent­ly their senior project com­plet­ed ear­li­er this year. Nice work Mike, Stan­ley, Dominic and Mikey …

China’s Open Courses & Other Tech Dispatches from Asia

in Education | September 14th, 2010

Back in 2003, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment launched its answer to MIT’s Open­Course­Ware project. The “Nation­al Qual­i­ty Course Plan” scoured Chi­na’s vast uni­ver­si­ty sys­tem and select­ed 3,000 best-of-breed cours­es in var­i­ous sub­ject areas. Then, mil­lions of dol­lars were ear­marked to put lec­tures and relat­ed course mate­ri­als online, with the hope that oth­er pro­fes­sors could draw inspi­ra­tion from these resources. But, things did­n’t go so well. Appar­ent­ly rough­ly 50% of these mate­ri­als nev­er made their way online. And the mate­ri­als that did were rarely updat­ed. (More on that here.) Will the project get renewed? Jeff Young, a reporter for The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion, went to Chi­na to find out. His report (read it here) is part of a month long series of dis­patch­es that takes you inside Asi­a’s wired class­rooms and high-tech research labs. You can read Jef­f’s dai­ly posts from Sin­ga­pore, Chi­na, South Korea, and India through­out this entire month.

Update: One of our read­ers wrote a the­sis on Chi­na’s open­course­ware ini­tia­tive and offers much more detail on what went right, and what went wrong. You can down­load Stian Håk­lev’s the­sis (for free) here, and be sure to check out Stian’s oth­er brain­child, Peer2Peer Uni­ver­si­ty, oth­er­wise known more sim­ply as P2PU.

William S. Burroughs Reviews a Led Zeppelin Concert for Crawdaddy! Magazine (1975)

in Literature, Music | September 13th, 2010

Craw­dad­dy! It was the first US mag­a­zine of rock music crit­i­cism, pre­ced­ing both Rolling Stone and Creem. Paul Williams, then a stu­dent at Swarth­more Col­lege, first launched the mag­a­zine in 1966. And by the 1970s, Craw­dad­dy! hit its stride, pub­lish­ing exclu­sive con­tri­bu­tions by John Lennon, Joseph Heller, and Studs Terkel, to name a few. On one occa­sion, the self-described “first mag­a­zine to take rock and roll seri­ous­ly” sent William S. Bur­roughs, the great beat writer, to a Led Zep­pelin con­cert. He came back in June 1975 with a rather off­beat con­cert review. There’s a strange inno­cence, even naivete, to the whole piece (though we know bet­ter than to con­fuse Bur­roughs him­self with inno­cence). We give you an excerpt right below, and the rest here.

So there we sat, I decline earplugs; I am used to loud drum and horn music from Moroc­co, and it always has, if skill­ful­ly per­formed, an exhil­a­rat­ing and ener­giz­ing effect on me. As the per­for­mance got under­way I expe­ri­enced this musi­cal exhil­a­ra­tion, which was all the more pleas­ant for being eas­i­ly con­trolled, and I knew then that noth­ing bad was going to hap­pen. This was a safe and friend­ly area–but at the same time high­ly charged. There was a pal­pa­ble inter­change of ener­gy between the per­form­ers and the audi­ence which was nev­er fran­tic or jagged. The spe­cial effects were han­dled well and not over­done.

A few spe­cial effects are much bet­ter than too many. I can see the laser beams cut­ting dry ice smoke, which drew an appre­cia­tive cheer from the audi­ence. Jim­my Page’s num­ber with the bro­ken gui­tar strings came across with a real impact, as did John Bonham’s drum solo and the lyrics deliv­ered with unfail­ing vital­i­ty by Robert Plant. The per­form­ers were doing their best, and it was very good. The last num­ber, “Stair­way to Heav­en”, where the audi­ence lit match­es and there was a scat­ter­ing of sparklers here and there, found the audi­ence well-behaved and joy­ous, cre­at­ing the atmos­phere of a high school Christ­mas play. All in all a good show; nei­ther low nor insipid. Leav­ing the con­cert hall was like get­ting off a jet plane.

The Bur­roughs piece con­tin­ues here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Delet­ed Scene from Almost Famous: Mom, “Stair­way to Heav­en” is Based on the Lit­er­a­ture of Tolkien

‘Stair­way to Heav­en’: Watch a Mov­ing Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin at The Kennedy Cen­ter

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Hear Led Zeppelin’s Mind-Blow­ing First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

Where to Find Free Textbooks

in Books, e-books | August 22nd, 2010

Life­hack­er just ran a new fea­ture today “Five Best Places to Buy Cheap Text­books.” Cheap is good, no doubt. But free is even bet­ter. So we fig­ured why not take the wraps off of a new Open Cul­ture col­lec­tion: 100+ Free Text­books: A Meta Col­lec­tion.

This new and grow­ing col­lec­tion pulls togeth­er an assort­ment of free text­books avail­able online. The list is most­ly slant­ed toward sci­ence and math (that’s what is out there), and the texts are almost entire­ly writ­ten by col­lege pro­fes­sors or qual­i­fied high school teach­ers. In some instances, these texts were orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in book for­mat, and now the authors have decid­ed to pub­lish them online. In oth­er cas­es, authors join­ing the “open text­book” move­ment (see Flat World Knowl­edge, CK-12, Cur­ri­ki, etc.) have pub­lished their works for the first time in elec­tron­ic for­mat, often under a Cre­ative Com­mons license. We will update the list con­tin­u­al­ly. But if you see good texts miss­ing, please feel free to ping us. You can access 100+ Free Text­books: A Meta Col­lec­tion here, and please for­ward the link to any young stu­dents or life­long learn­ers who might ben­e­fit…

P.S. This col­lec­tion will always appear in the top nav­i­ga­tion of the web site. Just look for “Text­books” in the top nav bar.

Is TED the New Harvard?

in Education, Harvard, TED Talks | August 16th, 2010

Next mon­th’s edi­tion of Fast Com­pa­ny (avail­able online now) brings you a big, glow­ing trib­ute to TED and its TED Talks. It’s a love­fest in print, the kind that sells mag­a­zines. And, along the way, Anya Kamenetz (author of DIY U) makes some big claims for TED. Let me start with this one:

I would go so far as to argue that [TED’s] cre­at­ing a new Har­vard — the first new top-pres­tige edu­ca­tion brand in more than 100 years.

Of course TED does­n’t look like a reg­u­lar Ivy League col­lege. It does­n’t have any build­ings; it does­n’t grant degrees. It does­n’t have singing groups or secret soci­eties, and as far as I know it has­n’t inspired any strange drink­ing games.

Still, if you were start­ing a top uni­ver­si­ty today, what would it look like? You would start by gath­er­ing the very best minds from around the world, from every dis­ci­pline. Since we’re liv­ing in an age of abun­dant, not scarce, infor­ma­tion, you’d curate the lec­tures care­ful­ly, with a focus on the new and orig­i­nal, rather than offer a course on every pos­si­ble top­ic. You’d cre­ate a sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic mod­el by focus­ing on tech­no­log­i­cal rather than phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture, and by get­ting peo­ple of means to pay for a spe­cial­ized expe­ri­ence. You’d also con­struct a robust net­work so peo­ple could access resources when­ev­er and from wher­ev­er they like, and you’d give them the tools to col­lab­o­rate beyond the lec­ture hall. Why not ful­fill the uni­ver­si­ty’s mil­len­ni­um-old mis­sion by shar­ing ideas as freely and as wide­ly as pos­si­ble?

TED, the new Har­vard. The new uni­ver­si­ty. It’s a nice idea … until you think about it for a few moments. Will watch­ing 18 minute lec­tures – ones that bare­ly scratch the sur­face of an expert’s knowl­edge – real­ly teach you much? And when the 18 min­utes are over, will the experts stick around and help you become a crit­i­cal thinker, which is the main under­tak­ing of the mod­ern uni­ver­si­ty after all? (Will they assign the papers where you grap­ple with the dif­fi­cult ideas? Will they make sure your argu­ments are sound? That your writ­ing is lucid? Or will they even expand on their brief lec­tures and teach you some­thing in-depth?) Nope, you’ll get none of that. The experts will give their 18 minute talks, and then they’re gone. Ulti­mate­ly, Kamenetz seems to know she’s over­reach­ing. She even­tu­al­ly cir­cles around to say, “Sure, these talks have their lim­its as an edu­ca­tion­al medi­um. An 18-minute pre­sen­ta­tion, no mat­ter how expert, can’t accom­mo­date any­thing over­ly the­o­ret­i­cal or tech­ni­cal — the for­mat is more con­ge­nial to Freako­nom­ics than eco­nom­ics.” And so the whole ini­tial, catchy premise falls apart. (Mau­ra John­ston right­ly makes this point too, among oth­er good ones, in her must-read reac­tion to the “breath­less” Fast Com­pa­ny arti­cle.)

I have no beef with TED. Quite the con­trary, I’m a big fan of their open lec­tures. (Get the full list here.) And you can’t blame TED when oth­ers read too much into what they do. But, echo­ing points made last week, I do have an issue with com­men­ta­tors reduc­ing edu­ca­tion to watch­ing TV. So a quick request to the “edupunks” and “edupre­neurs” out there. As you’re democ­ra­tiz­ing edu­ca­tion and low­er­ing tuition through tech­nol­o­gy, could you make sure that what­ev­er you’re final­ly offer­ing is an edu­ca­tion in more than mere name? You feel me?

NOTE: Anya Kamenetz, the author of the Fast Com­pa­ny arti­cle, offers a response in the com­ments below. In fair­ness to her, please give them a read. We also have a lit­tle fol­low up.

200 Free Textbooks: A Meta Collection

in | August 13th, 2010

Free text­books (aka open text­books) writ­ten by knowl­edgable schol­ars are a rel­a­tive­ly new phe­nom­e­non. Below, find a meta list of 200 Free Text­books, and check back often for new addi­tions. Also see our online col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Art His­to­ry

• A Text­book of the His­to­ry of Paint­ing by John Charles Van Dyke, Rut­gers

Biol­o­gy

• Anato­my and Phys­i­ol­o­gy — Edit­ed by var­i­ous profs at Open­Stax
• Biol­o­gy — Edit­ed by var­i­ous profs at Open­Stax
• Bio­chem­istry Free For All 1.3 — Kevin, Indi­ra and Tara­lyn
• Bio­chem­istry Free and Easy — Kevin Ahern and Dr. Indi­ra Rajagopal, Ore­gon State
• Botany Online: The Inter­net Hyper­text­book by mul­ti­ple schol­ars.
• Cells: Mol­e­cules and Mech­a­nisms. Pub­lished by the Axolotl Aca­d­e­m­ic Pub­lish­ing Co.
• CK-12 Biol­o­gy I (Grades 9–12) edit­ed by Dou­glas Wilkin, Chair, Dept of Sci­ence, Los Ange­les Uni­fied School Dis­trict
• CK-12 Life Sci­ence (Grades 9–12) edit­ed by Dou­glas Wilkin, Chair, Dept of Sci­ence, Los Ange­les Uni­fied School Dis­trict
• Con­cepts of Biol­o­gy — Edit­ed by var­i­ous profs at Open­Stax
• Fun­da­men­tals of Cell Biol­o­gy — Lau­ren Dal­ton and Robin Young
• Guide to Get­ting into Med School — Kevin Ahern and Dr. Indi­ra Rajagopal, Ore­gon State
• Life on Earth (iBook) — E.O. Wil­son, Har­vard

Busi­ness and Man­age­ment

• Busi­ness Ethics by Jose A. Cruz-Cruz, William Frey, Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico — Mayaguez
• Busi­ness Fun­da­men­tals by the Glob­al Text Project
• Core Con­cepts of Mar­ket­ing by John Bur­nett
• Cor­po­rate Finance by Ivo Welch, UCLA
• CREATE OR PERISH: The Case for Inven­tions and Patents by Robert Rines, MIT
• Elec­tron­ic Com­merce by Mul­ti­ple authors, Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia, Bent­ley Col­lege, and Simon Fras­er Uni­ver­si­ty

• Guide­lines for Improv­ing the Effec­tive­ness of Boards of Direc­tors of Non­prof­it Orga­ni­za­tions by Vic Mur­ray and Yvonne Har­ri­son, SUNY, Albany

Chem­istry

• Chem­istry Vir­tu­al Text­books by Stephen Low­er, Simon Fras­er Uni­ver­si­ty
• CK-12 Chem­istry (Grades 9–12) by mul­ti­ple authors. Cov­ers high school chem­istry cur­ricu­lum in Cal­i­for­nia.
• Con­cept Devel­op­ment Stud­ies in Chem­istry by John S. Hutchin­son, Rice Uni­ver­si­ty
• Con­cepts in Phys­i­cal Chem­istry by Peter Atkins, Oxford
• Organ­ic Chem­istry (with a Bio­log­i­cal Empha­sis) by Tim Soder­berg, Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta, Mor­ris
• Vir­tu­al Text­book of Organ­ic Chem­istry. Pre­sent­ed by Michi­gan State

Clas­sics

• Cicero, On Pompey’s Com­mand (De Impe­rio), 27–49. Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocab­u­lary, Com­men­tary, and Trans­la­tion, by Ingo Gilden­hard, Louise Hodg­son, et al, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty.
• Tac­i­tus, Annals, 15.20­-23, 33­-45. Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocab­u­lary, and Com­men­tary, by Math­ew Owen and Ingo Gilden­hard, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty
• Vir­gil, Aeneid, 4.1–299. Latin Text, Study Ques­tions, Com­men­tary and Inter­pre­ta­tive Essays by Ingo Gilden­hard, by Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty
• Cicero, Against Ver­res, 2.1.53–86. Latin Text with Intro­duc­tion, Study Ques­tions, Com­men­tary and Eng­lish Trans­la­tion, by Ingo Gilden­hard, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty

Com­put­er Sci­ence & Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems

• A Byte of Python, by Swa­roop C H
• A First Course in Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er Engi­neer­ing by Louis Scharf, Col­orado State
• Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Foun­da­tions of Com­pu­ta­tion­al Agents by David Poole and Alan Mack­worth, Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia
• Bits, Sig­nals, and Pack­ets: An Intro­duc­tion to Dig­i­tal Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Net­works by Hari Bal­akr­ish­nan, Christo­pher Ter­man, and George Vergh­ese, MIT
• Code Like a Python­ista: Idiomat­ic Python, by David Goodger
• Com­pu­ta­tion­al Geom­e­try by Nicholas M. Patrikalakis, Takashi Maekawa, MIT
• Dive into Python 3, by Mark Pil­grim
• Foun­da­tions of Com­put­er Sci­ence by Al Aho (Colum­bia) and Jeff Ull­man (Stan­ford)
• How to Design Pro­grams: An Intro­duc­tion to Com­put­ing and Pro­gram­ming, Mul­ti­ple Authors
• High Per­for­mance Com­put­ing by Charles Sev­er­ance, Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan
• How to Think Like a Com­put­er Sci­en­tist: C ++ ( PDF) by Allen B. Downey, Olin Col­lege
• How to Think Like a Com­put­er Sci­en­tist: Java by Allen B. Downey, Olin Col­lege
• How to Think Like a Com­put­er Sci­en­tist: Python by Allen B. Downey, Olin Col­lege
• How to Think Like a Com­put­er Sci­en­tist: Learn­ing with Python 3 by Peter Went­worth, Jef­frey Elkn­er, Allen B. Downey, and Chris Mey­ers.
• Imple­ment­ing a One Address CPU in Logisim by Charles W. Kann III, Get­tys­burg Col­lege
• Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and the Net­worked Econ­o­my by Patrick McK­e­own, Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia
• Infor­ma­tion The­o­ry, Infer­ence, and Learn­ing Algo­rithms by David MacK­ay, Cam­bridge
• Intro­duc­tion To MIPS Assem­bly Lan­guage Pro­gram­ming by Charles W. Kann III, Get­tys­burg Col­lege
• Neur­al Net­works and Deep Learn­ing, by Michael Nielsen, Research Fel­low at the Recurse Cen­ter
• Pat­terns for Begin­ning Pro­gram­mers (with Exam­ples in Java), by David Bern­stein, James Madi­son Uni­ver­si­ty
• Phi­los­o­phy of Com­put­er Sci­ence by William J. Rapa­port, Uni­ver­si­ty at Buf­fa­lo, The State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York
• Prin­ci­ples of Com­put­er Sys­tem Design: An Intro­duc­tion (Part 1 and Part II) by Jerome Saltzer and M. Frans Kaashoek.
• Prin­ci­ples of Pro­gram­ming Lan­guages by Grad Stu­dents, Johns Hop­kins
• Pro­gram­ming Lan­guages: Appli­ca­tion and Inter­pre­ta­tion by Dr. Shri­ram Krish­na­murthi, Brown Uni­ver­si­ty.
• Pro­log and Nat­ur­al-Lan­guage Analy­sis by Fer­nan­do C. N. Pereira and Stu­art M. Shieber, U Penn & Har­vard
• Python for Infor­mat­ics: Explor­ing Infor­ma­tion by Charles Sev­er­ance, Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan
• Struc­ture and Inter­pre­ta­tion of Com­put­er Pro­grams by Jer­ry Suss­man & Julie Suss­man
• Teach Your­self Word­Per­fect Mac by John Rethorst
• The Prince­ton Bit­coin Text­book by Arvind Narayanan (Prince­ton) and col­leagues

Earth Sci­ence

• CK-12 Earth Sci­ence for Mid­dle School by mul­ti­ple authors.
• Intro­duc­tion to Phys­i­cal Oceanog­ra­phy by Dr. Robert Stew­art, Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty

Eco­nom­ics & Finance

• Prin­ci­ples of Macro­eco­nom­ics by Lib­by Rit­ten­berg and Tim­o­thy Tre­garthen, Col­orado Col­lege

Edu­ca­tion

• Edu­ca­tion­al Psy­chol­o­gy by Kevin Seifert and Rose­mary Sut­ton, Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­i­to­ba and Cleve­land State

Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing

• Dig­i­tal Cir­cuit Projects: An Overview of Dig­i­tal Cir­cuits Through Imple­ment­ing Inte­grat­ed Cir­cuits by Charles W. Kann, Get­tys­burg Col­lege
• Elec­tro­mag­net­ics and Appli­ca­tions by David Staelin, MIT
• Electro­mechan­i­cal Dynam­ics by Her­bert H. Wood­son and James R. Melch­er, MIT
• Fun­da­men­tals of Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing I by Don John­son, Rice Uni­ver­si­ty
• Intro­duc­tion to Nano­elec­tron­ics by Marc Bal­do, MIT
• Intro­duc­tion to Phys­i­cal Elec­tron­ics by William Wil­son, Rice Uni­ver­si­ty
• Intro­duc­tion to Sta­t­ics and Dynam­ics by Andy Ruina and Rudra Prat­ap, Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty
• Lessons In Elec­tric Cir­cuits by  Tony R. Kuphaldt, Belling­ham Tech­ni­cal Col­lege
• Oper­a­tional Ampli­fiers: The­o­ry and Prac­tice by James K. Roberge, MIT
• Sig­nals, Sys­tems and Infer­ence by MIT
• Sig­nals and Sys­tems, by Alan Oppen­heim and Alan Will­sky, MIT
• Sys­tem Design for Uncer­tain­ty, by Michael S. Tri­antafyl­lou, MIT
• The Art of Insight in Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing: Mas­ter­ing Com­plex­i­ty, by Prof. San­joy Maha­jan

Engi­neer­ing

• Analy­sis of Struc­tur­al Mem­ber Sys­tems by Jerome Con­nor, MIT
• Engi­neer­ing: An Intro­duc­tion for High School (9–12) by mul­ti­ple authors
• Maneu­ver­ing and Con­trol of Sur­face and Under­wa­ter Vehi­cles, by Michael S. Tri­antafyl­lou, MIT
• Mechan­ics of Mate­ri­als by MIT

His­to­ry

• US His­to­ry Learn­er Eng­lish (ESL) by The Learn­er Eng­lish Series
• U.S. His­to­ry since 1877 by James Ross-Naz­zal, Hous­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege

Lan­guages

• Deutsch im Blick by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas
• Ger­man for Read­ing Knowl­edge by Howard Mar­tin, revised and expand­ed as an open online text­book by Alan Ng, Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son
• Hin­di: An Active Intro­duc­tion by DN Shar­ma & James Stone, For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute
• Learn­ing Chi­nese: A Foun­da­tion Course in Man­darin by Julian Wheat­ley, MIT
• My Kore­an 1 and 2 by Young‑A Cho, In-Jung Cho, Monash Uni­ver­si­ty (Aus­tralia)
• Español I (free for iPad) by David Nance, ADE Dis­tance Learn­ing Cen­ter
• French: Famil­iar­iza­tion and Short-Term Train­ing by For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute
• Span­ish: Famil­iar­iza­tion and Short Term Train­ing by For­eign Ser­vice Insti­tute

Law

• Open Intel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Case­book by James Boyle and Jen­nifer Jenk­ins, Duke

Lin­guis­tics

• How Lan­guage Works: The Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence of Lin­guis­tics by Mike Gasser, Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty

Math­e­mat­ics

• Abstract Alge­bra: The Basic Grad­u­ate Year by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Abstract Alge­bra: The­o­ry and Appli­ca­tions by Thomas W. Jud­son, Stephen F. Austin State Uni­ver­si­ty
• Advanced Alge­bra II by Ken­ny Felder,  Raleigh Char­ter High School
• Advanced Cal­cu­lus by Stern­berg Shlo­mo and Lynn Loomis, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty
• Alge­bra 1 (Grades 9 & 10) by Andrew and Anne Gloag, High Tech High in San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia
• Alge­bra and Analy­sis for Com­put­er Sci­ence by Jean Gal­li­er, Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia.
• Applied Prob­a­bil­i­ty by Paul Pfeif­fer, Rice Uni­ver­si­ty
• Basic Analy­sis by Jiří Lebl, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois at Urbana-Cham­paign
• Basic Con­cepts of Math­e­mat­ics by Elias Zakon, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Wind­sor
• Basic Prob­a­bil­i­ty The­o­ry by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Basic Prob­a­bil­i­ty and Sta­tis­tics by Bren­da Meery, high school math­e­mat­ics teacher in Glace Bay, Nova Sco­tia
• Book of Proof by Dr. Richard Ham­mack, Vir­ginia Com­mon­wealth Uni­ver­si­ty
• Cal­cu­lus for Begin­ners and Artists by MIT
• Cal­cu­lus Online Text­book, by Gilbert Strang, MIT
• Cal­cu­lus (PDF) by David Guichard, Whit­man Col­lege.
• Cal­cu­lus (PDF) by Gilbert Strang, MIT
• Cal­cu­lus 1 by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Cal­cu­lus 2 by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Cal­cu­lus 3 by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Cal­cu­lus with Appli­ca­tions, by Daniel Kleit­man, MIT
• CK-12 Geom­e­try (Grades 10–12) by mul­ti­ple authors. Cov­ers Cal­i­for­nia cur­ricu­lum.
• CK-12 Sin­gle Vari­able Cal­cu­lus (Grades 11–12) by Mul­ti­ple authors. Cov­ers Cal­i­for­nia cur­ricu­lum.
• CK-12 Trigonom­e­try — Sec­ond Edi­tion (Grades 10–12) by mul­ti­ple authors. Cov­ers Cal­i­for­nia cur­ricu­lum.
• Col­lab­o­ra­tive Sta­tis­tics by Bar­bara Illowsky, Ph.D and Susan Dean, De Anza Col­lege
• Col­lege Alge­bra by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Com­plex Analy­sis by George Cain, Geor­gia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy
• Com­plex Vari­ables by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Com­pu­ta­tion­al Geom­e­try by Nicholas M. Patrikalakis, Takashi Maekawa, MIT
• A Com­pu­ta­tion­al Intro­duc­tion to Num­ber The­o­ry and Alge­bra by Vic­tor Shoup, NYU
• A Course In Alge­bra­ic Num­ber The­o­ry by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• A Course In Com­mu­ta­tive Alge­bra by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Design of Com­par­a­tive Exper­i­ments by R. A. Bai­ley, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don
• Dif­fer­ence Equa­tions to Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions: An Intro­duc­tion to Cal­cu­lus by Dan Sloughter, Fur­man Uni­ver­si­ty
• Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Dis­crete Math­e­mat­ics: An Open Intro­duc­tion by Oscar Levin, Uni­ver­si­ty of North­ern Col­orado
• Dynam­i­cal Sys­tems by S. Stern­berg, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty
• Elec­tron­ic Sta­tis­tics Text­book by T. Hill & P. Lewic­ki.
• Ele­men­tary Abstract Alge­bra by W. Edwin Clark, Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Flori­da
• Ele­men­tary Cal­cu­lus: An Infin­i­tes­i­mal Approach by H. Jerome Keisler, Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son
• Ele­men­tary Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions (PDF) by William F. Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• Ele­men­tary Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions with Bound­ary Val­ue Prob­lems (PDF) by William F. Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• Stu­dent Solu­tions Man­u­al for Ele­men­tary Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions and Ele­men­tary Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions with Bound­ary Val­ue Prob­lems (PDF) by William F. Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• Ele­men­tary Lin­ear Alge­bra by Kei­th Matthews, Uni­ver­si­ty of Queens­land
• Ele­men­tary Num­ber The­o­ry by W. Edwin Clark, Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Flori­da
• Ele­ments of Abstract and Lin­ear Alge­bra by Edwin H. Con­nell, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mia­mi
• First Course in Com­plex Analy­sis by Matthias Beck, Ger­ald March­esi, and Den­nis Pix­ton, SUNY — Bing­ham­ton
• First Course in Lin­ear Alge­bra by Dr. Robert Beez­er, Uni­ver­si­ty of Puget Sound
• Func­tions Defined by Improp­er Inte­grals (PDF) by William F. Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• Gen­er­at­ing­Func­tionol­o­gy by Her­bert Wilf, Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia
• Intro­duc­tion to Matrix Alge­bra by Autar K Kaw, Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da
• Intro­duc­tion to Prob­a­bil­i­ty (PDF) by Charles Grin­stead & J. Lau­rie Snell, Swarth­more & Dart­mouth Col­leges
• Intro­duc­tion to Prob­a­bil­i­ty, Sta­tis­tics, and Ran­dom Process­es by Hos­sein Pishro-Nik, UMass Amherst
• Intro­duc­tion to Real Analy­sis (PDF) by William F. Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• Intro­duc­tion to Social Net­work Meth­ods by Robert A. Han­ne­man and Mark Rid­dle, UC River­side
• Intro­duc­tion to Sta­tis­ti­cal Thought by Michael Lavine, UMASS
• Intro­duc­to­ry Sta­tis­tics: Con­cepts, Mod­els, and Appli­ca­tions by David W. Stock­burg­er, Mis­souri State
• Intro­duc­tion to the The­o­ry of Num­bers by Leo Moser, McGill
• Lec­tures on Prob­a­bil­i­ty, Sta­tis­tics and Econo­met­rics by Mar­co Tabo­ga, Econ­o­mist, Bank of Italy
• Lec­tures on Sta­tis­tics by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Lin­ear Alge­bra (PDF) by Jim Hef­fer­on, Saint Michael’s Col­lege
• Lin­ear Alge­bra by Paul Dawkins, Lamar Uni­ver­si­ty
• Math Alive by Ingrid Daubechies, Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty
• Math in Soci­ety by David Lip­mann, Pierce Col­lege
• Math, Numer­ics, and Pro­gram­ming (for Mechan­i­cal Engi­neers) by Masayu­ki Yano, MIT
• Math­e­mat­i­cal Meth­ods of Engi­neer­ing Analy­sis (PDF) by Erhan Çin­lar and Robert J. Van­der­bei, Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty
• Mul­ti­vari­able Cal­cu­lus by George Cain & James Herod, Geor­gia Tech
• Proofs and Con­cepts: The Fun­da­men­tals of Abstract Math­e­mat­ics by Dave Witte Mor­ris and Joy Mor­ris, Uni­ver­si­ty of Leth­bridge
• Real Vari­ables with Basic Met­ric Space Topol­o­gy by Robert B. Ash, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois
• Sta­tis­tics by Philip B. Stark, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia — UC Berke­ley
• A Sum­ma­ry of Cal­cu­lus by Karl Heinz Dover­mann, Uni­ver­si­ty of Hawaii
• The Book “A=B” by Marko Petkovsek, Her­bert Wilf and Doron Zeil­berg­er, Univ. of Penn­syl­va­nia and Rut­gers
• The Method of Lagrange Mul­ti­pli­ers (PDF) by William Trench, Trin­i­ty Uni­ver­si­ty
• The Cal­cu­lus of Func­tions of Sev­er­al Vari­ables by Dan Sloughter, Fur­man Uni­ver­si­ty
• Yet Anoth­er Cal­cu­lus Text by Dan Sloughter, Fur­man Uni­ver­si­ty

Music

• Beyond Slonim­sky: Melod­ic Pat­terns for Gui­tar — by Rich Cochrane (Find alter­nate ver­sion here)
• Music Fun­da­men­tals 1: Pitch and Major Scales and Keys — by Ter­ry B. Ewell, Tow­son Uni­ver­si­ty
• Music Fun­da­men­tals 3: Minor Scales and Keys — by Ter­ry B. Ewell, Tow­son Uni­ver­si­ty
• Music Fun­da­men­tals 5: Tri­ads, Chords, Intro­duc­tion to Roman Numer­als by Ter­ry B. Ewell, Tow­son Uni­ver­si­ty
• Scale and Arpeg­gio Resources: A Gui­tar Ency­clo­pe­dia by Rich Cochrane (Find alter­nate ver­sion here)
• Sound Rea­son­ing (Intro­duc­to­ry Music course) by Antho­ny Brandt, Rice Uni­ver­si­ty
• Under­stand­ing Basic Music The­o­ry, Edit­ed by Cather­ine Schmidt-Jones

Phi­los­o­phy

• Ani­mals and Ethics 101: Think­ing Crit­i­cal­ly About Ani­mal Rights by Nathan Nobis, More­house Col­lege
• A Mod­ern For­mal Log­ic Primer by Paul Teller, UC Davis
• Argu­ments: Deduc­tive Log­ic Exer­cis­es, by H. Pospe­sel and D. Marans, UC Davis
• forall x: An Intro­duc­tion to For­mal Log­ic by PD Mag­nus, Uni­ver­si­ty at Albany, State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York
• foral­lx: Cam­bridge by P.D. Mag­nus; mod­i­fied for Cam­bridge by Tim But­ton
• Metathe­o­ry for truth-func­tion­al log­ic by Tim But­ton, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty

Physics

• Age of Ein­stein, by Frank W. K. Firk, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty.
• Cal­cu­lus-Based Physics by Jef­frey W. Schnick, Saint Anselm Col­lege
• Col­lege Physics (intro­duc­to­ry, alge­bra-based, two-semes­ter col­lege physics book) by Open­Stax
• Con­cep­tu­al Physics by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Con­ser­va­tion Laws by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Essen­tial Physics 1, Frank W.K. Firk, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty
• Fields by War­ren Siegel, SUNY
• Gen­er­al Rel­a­tiv­i­ty by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Intro­duc­tion to Groups, Invari­ants & Par­ti­cles, by Frank W. K. Firk, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty
• Intro­duc­tion to Sta­t­ics and Dynam­ics by Andy Ruina and Rudra Prat­ap, Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty
• Intro­duc­tion to String Field The­o­ry by War­ren Siegel, SUNY
• Moun­tain Motion by Dr. Christoph Schiller PhD, trained at Uni­ver­sité Libre de Brux­elles
• Optics by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Pro­gram­ming Lan­guages: Appli­ca­tion and Inter­pre­ta­tion by Dr. Shri­ram Krish­na­murthi, Brown Uni­ver­si­ty
• Sim­ple Nature: An Intro­duc­tion to Physics for Engi­neer­ing and Phys­i­cal Sci­ence Stu­dents by Ben Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Super­space: One Thou­sand and One Lessons in Super­sym­me­try by War­ren Siegel. Jim Gates, Marc Gris­aru, and Mar­tin Rocek, SUNY, McGill, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land
• The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics by Richard Feyn­man, Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands
• The Light and Mat­ter Series (Six texts) by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• Vibra­tions and Waves by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• The Mod­ern Rev­o­lu­tion in Physics by Ben­jamin Crow­ell, Fuller­ton Col­lege
• The Peo­ple’s Physics Book by James H. Dann, UC San­ta Cruz
• 21st Cen­tu­ry Physics Flex­book: A Com­pi­la­tion of Con­tem­po­rary and Emerg­ing Tech­nolo­gies, by the Sec­re­taries of Edu­ca­tion and Tech­nol­o­gy and the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion in the state of Vir­ginia

Psy­chol­o­gy

• Edu­ca­tion­al Psy­chol­o­gy by Kevin Seifert and Rose­mary Sut­ton, Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­i­to­ba and Cleve­land State

Soci­ol­o­gy 

• Amer­i­can Soci­ety: How It Actu­al­ly Works by By Erik Olin Wright & Joel Rogers, Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin
• Intro­duc­tion to Soci­ol­o­gy by mul­ti­ple pro­fes­sors

Sys­tem The­o­ry 

• Intro­duc­tion to the Mod­el­ing and Analy­sis of Com­plex Sys­tems by Hiro­ki Saya­ma, Bing­ham­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, State Uni­ver­si­ty of New York.

Find more texts in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions

Bill Gates: The Internet Will Displace the Traditional University in 5 Years

in Education, Online Courses | August 11th, 2010

Speak­ing at the Techon­o­my con­fer­ence in Lake Tahoe last week, Bill Gates argued that the cost of col­lege needs to come down, and the only way to accom­plish this is through tech­nol­o­gy and less­en­ing the impor­tance of “place-based” col­leges. That’s how you keep col­lege edu­ca­tion open to all. Dur­ing the talk, he went fur­ther and assert­ed, “Five years from now, on the Web for free, you’ll be able to find the best lec­tures in the world. It will be bet­ter than any sin­gle uni­ver­si­ty.”

To be sure, I don’t dis­pute this par­tic­u­lar point. You can already find hun­dreds of free cours­es online, and that’s part of our rea­son for being. But, as I have fre­quent­ly remind­ed peo­ple, lis­ten­ing to lec­tures does­n’t mean you’re get­ting a round­ed edu­ca­tion. Lec­tures inform you. They’re great in that way. But you get an edu­ca­tion when you cou­ple lec­tures with read­ings, when you chew over ideas in a dis­cus­sion sec­tion, when you ana­lyze the lec­tures and read­ings in crit­i­cal papers, when you take exams that force you to syn­the­size every­thing you’ve learned dur­ing the entire semes­ter, etc. Right now, it is very hard to accom­plish this online. On a rel­a­tive basis, e‑learning tools have evolved strik­ing­ly slow­ly dur­ing the past decade. The wide­ly deployed tools are often still klunky and rudi­men­ta­ry. And it still takes con­sid­er­able time, mon­ey and labor to pro­duce a tru­ly excel­lent online course. (At least that’s what I have found dur­ing my ten years in the space.) Will we make progress here? Yes. Would I wel­come it? Of course. But will we offer a sub­stan­tive and high­ly scal­able online alter­na­tive in five years? Very doubt­ful, unless a cat­a­lyst comes along who can dra­mat­i­cal­ly sweep away the exist­ing major play­ers (who just bog things down) and intro­duce some seri­ous inno­va­tion. Mr. Gates, are you that cat­a­lyst?

via Wired Cam­pus

US Government Opens Tech/Culture

in iPhone, Media, Technology | July 26th, 2010

Today’s rul­ing is bound to get a lot of buzz, but prob­a­bly for the wrong rea­sons. Accord­ing to new rules set forth by The Library of Con­gress (which over­sees the Copy­right Office), iPhone own­ers can now legal­ly “jail­break” their device and down­load soft­ware that Apple/AT&T dis­ap­proves of. That will get the head­lines. But we should­n’t lose sight of this: This far-reach­ing rul­ing goes well beyond the iPhone itself and also allows (among oth­er things) “col­lege pro­fes­sors, film stu­dents and doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers to break copy-pro­tec­tion mea­sures on DVDs so they can embed clips for edu­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es, crit­i­cism, com­men­tary and non­com­mer­cial videos.” (The quot­ed mate­r­i­al comes from the AP, not the rul­ing itself). In short, these new guide­lines give con­sumers greater lat­i­tude to decide how they want to use com­put­ers, gad­gets and media they’ve pur­chased.  And they clear up some legal murk­i­ness that has sur­round­ed these issues, par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in uni­ver­si­ties, for some time. A good day for gov­ern­ment … and the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion, which pushed for these pro­tec­tions.

PS Does this still mean that Apple can void your war­ran­ty if you jail­break your iPhone? I’m not sure whether that goes away or not…

The Civil War & Reconstruction: A Free Course from Yale University

in History | July 14th, 2010

The Civ­il War was a water­shed moment in US his­to­ry, and it fig­ures cen­tral­ly in any Amer­i­can his­to­ry cur­ricu­lum. If you missed this course dur­ing high school or col­lege, not to wor­ry. Now, thanks to Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, you can revis­it this his­tor­i­cal moment with Prof. David Blight, one of the nation’s lead­ing Civ­il War schol­ars. The Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion “explores the caus­es, course, and con­se­quences of the Amer­i­can Civ­il War, from the 1840s to 1877,” look­ing at how the Unit­ed States was trans­formed on mul­ti­ple lev­els: racial­ly, social­ly, polit­i­cal­ly, con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly and moral­ly. You can access the 27 free lec­tures, pre­sent­ed in audio and video, via YouTube, iTunes, and the Yale web site (plus a syl­labus). We also have it on the list of our Free His­to­ry Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!