Polish Government To Deliver Free Textbooks For All Kids Grades 4-6 80
rekrutacja writes "Today the Polish government started a Digital School pilot program, which includes distributing e-textbooks. This came after a years-long effort by the Open Education Coalition and its members to persuade policy makers, that Open Educational Resources are the future of education. The last few months have been especially eventful, as the free textbooks part of the program was dropped by the Ministry of Education and reinstated again by the Prime Minister Office."
Re:Lulz at Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
These kids are going to be totally left behind by the daily innovations in basic math and Algebra with their static etexts. Why, quite often Algebra Science is stood on its ear by decisions of the courts. Just a few years ago Alabama sought to upset Euclid and legislate that Pi was exactly equal to three [snopes.com]. There's no way these tablets can be kept current with modern jurisprudence.
And then there's the Hubble constant, which we all know gets edited every year to re-explain the observations.
Or maybe you could just not be such a freaking retard. The above text (in case you didn't know) is sarcasm. That I have to call that out makes me want to (not talk to) you all. You may insert into (not talk to) whatever remediation technologies you prefer, as long as they involve acid, ballistic weapons, or a freaking flamethrower.
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For those that didn't follow the link (and perhaps the link poster), from the link:
Origins: This wonderful bit of creative writing began circulating on the Internet in April 1998. Written by Mark Boslough as an April Fool's parody on legislative and school board attacks on evolution in New Mexico, the author took real statements from New Mexican legislators and school board members supporting creationism and recast them into a fictional account detailing how Alabama legislators had passed a law calling for the value of pi to be set to the "Biblical value" of 3.0.
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"The above text (in case you didn't know) is sarcasm."
What part of that got away from you?
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That I have to call that out makes me want to (not talk to) you all.
So you don't want to talke to me? Oh, wait... you just replied.
Seriously though, I took the sarcasm to be about the Hubble constant and not both statements. Either way, by now, your point has been well made.
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Re:Lulz at Slashdot (Score:4, Informative)
Indiana Pi Bill was not fictional. [wikipedia.org]
The Indiana Pi Bill is the popular name for bill #246 of the 1897 sitting of the Indiana General Assembly, one of the most famous attempts to establish scientific truth by legislative fiat. Despite that name, the main result claimed by the bill is a method to square the circle, rather than to establish a certain value for the mathematical constant (pi), the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. However, the bill does contain text that appears to dictate various incorrect values of , such as 3.2 (when 3.1 is closer, with = 3.14159265...).
The bill never became law, due to the intervention of a mathematics professor who happened to be present in the legislature
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There may actually be sound reasons to legislatively set Pi to a rounded constant. One that comes to mind: Many property lines are defined along a circular arc (mine is). Pi is arguably too precise for property law, lest people might argue about a tree impeding a nanometer over their property line. Rounding it would settle those disputes. Of course, such a ruling wouldn't be broadly desirable outside that particular niche... and there are other aspects of property law that attempt to address this, such as s
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The problem is that without rules on how properties are divided, they can be defined in arbitrary ways. Vague definitions are cause for disputes. Overly precise definitions based on constants such Pi are also vague. With Pi, you must, practically, round. If your property is explicitly framed in the context of Pi and your neighbor plans bushes in your yard because he estimated Pi as 22/7... do you bring it to a judge and argue precision?
It is a silly thought experiment with few practical applications. I don'
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Re:Lulz at Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed... I think very few things actually change in the specific fields represented in the K-12 curriculum. As far as I can see, the only potential changes are (some) of the following:
I think you could take a full set of school books from 20 years ago and they'd be almost identical to the ones used today.
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the whole "Lists and a comma before 'and' thing" - for example: it used to be "Jim, John, and Lisa" but apparently it is now supposed to be "Jim, John and Lisa" for... some reason.
As far as I know, English has no such "grammatical rule" - not only this seems to be more about orthography than about grammar, English also doesn't have a governing body the way that, e.g., French does. To claim that there are "rules for grammar" does not seem to make sense, then. And whatever "it is now supposed to be" is supposed to mean, the newest edition of CMoS (section 6.18) still recommends it, while other guides still don't recommend it. I.e., the new anarchy is the same as the old one.
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Towards the end of elementary school for me (so around 1999-2000), this was introduced by my teachers vis-a-vis their English department. It was never brought up in high school as far as I know. Yes, the "rules" for English grammar are very schizophrenic to say the least.
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Changes to grammatical rules (the whole "Lists and a comma before 'and' thing" - for example: it used to be "Jim, John, and Lisa" but apparently it is now supposed to be "Jim, John and Lisa" for... some reason. I think it's idiotic as the first one better represents how one would actually say the sentence, though.)
Any such rule would be the style of a particular institution. There is no such rule of English grammar. Partly because ( as K. S. Kyosuke points out) because there's no legislative body for English, but that wouldn't be enough; it would still be considered wrong to, use' arbitrary~ punctuation! all` over [{] the place or fail to put a major stop at the end of a sentence
More significant is that there is absolutely no consensus over the Oxford comma. Some current style guides mandate it, some forbid it, and a
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Indeed - not even on the name [reference.com]
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history class should teach history, not legends
Indeed, teaching history and legends and how the two diverge is critical to an understanding of how to correctly read a religious text.
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* Changes to grammatical rules (the whole "Lists and a comma before 'and' thing" - for example: it used to be "Jim, John, and Lisa" but apparently it is now supposed to be "Jim, John and Lisa" for... some reason. I think it's idiotic as the first one better represents how one would actually say the sentence, though.)
It depends who you ask.
The second comma in your example is called the Oxford Comma, and made big news a while ago as Oxford was considering dropping it from their recommendations of style.
In the US, different standard manuals of style have different recommendations. The Chicago Manual, for instance, recommends using the Oxford comma, whereas the AP Manual does not. (Or maybe it's the other way around. It's been a while since I edited professionally.) I've always preferred it, though had been taught
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That's advanced (Score:5, Informative)
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It works fine.
Re:That's advanced (Score:4, Interesting)
Android tablets are going for under $90 new on ebay (average price for 7" tablet appears to be £55). However combine something like the Raspberry Pi with the plastic eink display by LG that Slashdot was covering a couple of days ago and I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to halve that. Forward-wind into the future where those printable solar cells could be put on the back of the eReader to make them totally self-powered and we have the perfect educational delivery device for developing countries. It takes time to build up a library of good quality content so it makes sense to start now. In a few years when the library catalogue has filled out then technology might have caught up at the same time.
Phillip.
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Good for them! (Score:3)
The article doesn't mention for which e-book reader the textbooks will be available. I hope this is not part of someone's marketing strategy...
Free textbooks in Europe is not new, however. E.g. the Greek state has been giving away dead-tree textbooks for all classes for free since decades now.
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You make far too much rational sense to live on the same planet as I...
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Lovely knee jerk there. Textbooks are incredibly expensive in the free market for reasons that have nothing to do with publishing or pedagogy. Lobbying, marketing, market inefficiencies, and faux pedagogy all come to mind.
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think that free textbooks for kids is what bankrupted Greece then you are being naive. This has been standard practice even before Greece joined the EU and is a direct follow-up of the Greek constitution. Oh, and you might want to look up on how this systems works in Greece before posting further comments.
For the record, I agree with you on taxes and spending. You just have to apply this concept to sections of the budget like "military spending" and "Olympics 2004". And don't get me started on corruption, bad management and the like...
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free textbooks are the norm around europe. there was a recession when I was a kid and we had to use books that were used already, but still, before the highschool equivalent stage the state pays the books, which makes sense since you're required to get schooled anyhow.
Re:Yeah (Score:4, Informative)
I went to school in the United States and I don't remember ever having to pay for textbooks for grades K-12, either. You gave them back at the end of the term, so most classes handed out used books.
When I first saw this story, my initial reaction was, "Oh no, are they making elementary school kids pay for books somewhere?" I can just imagine what it would be like to teach a class in American schools where half the kids don't even have a copy of the book.
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I never had to pay for them either. And yes, we had to give them back, they belonged to the school.
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I never had to pay for them either. And yes, we had to give them back, they belonged to the school.
Yes, but somebody had to pay for them. That somebody was the school, through the taxpayer.
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course someone had to pay for them.
You think that providing an education for your citizenry is a burden on society?
Do you think it would it be more efficient to spend the money on prisons and welfare?
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And I agree about the e-books.
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Yes, but somebody had to pay for them. That somebody was the school, through the taxpayer.
What's your point? That these Polish textbooks are somehow magically free and nobody's had to pay for them? Your post is a non-answer to a question nobody asked.
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no imagination necessary, just go to any inner city school. but that's not too bad, the teacher just ends up giving the textbooks to the half that can actually read.
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Well there are many problems - like tax collection, corruption etc. However spending is also one. Especially if you've already lost most of your money through failing collection, corruption etc.
Of course it's desirable that everyone has access to education, but that can't simply be legislated - a way must be found to finance it as well. What Poland is doing there seems a like an excellent approach to achieve that goal. eReaders are in the affordable range already, and will become even cheaper in the futur
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"Perhaps governments should only spend what they are prepared to collect in taxes"
Perhaps it wouldn't be a problem if tax money would just be spend on the common good instead of squandering it in the global casino that is the financial world.
Re:Good for them! (Score:5, Informative)
yeah since they are available as CC-BY with sources that means any reader
from the site with the books http://wolnelektury.pl/
PDF to print
EPUB for an e-book reader
MOBI for Kindle
TXT for advanced usage
and
Source of the book
Source XML file
Book on Editor's Platform
Mix this book
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Yeah, I have to wonder if this was in America... it would be Apple pushing this hard so they can sell an iPad to every student for $500-600/pop and get them addicted to app store crack...
But, since this is Europe, I'm fairly sure it will be an open format that can be used on many different e-readers and tablets and not locked into a single vendor.
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Free textbooks are the norm in Europe, we have a strange system where textbooks that are mass printed for education are cheaper than regular textbooks, and educational systems negotiate a discount and get it ...
Unlike the Free Market system in the USA where the manufacturers make specific books for Education, unsuited to the requirements of the curriculum, massively overcharge for them, and make sure they change from year to year so new ones have to be purchased ...
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You're obviously thinking about university.
K-12 textbooks in the USA are issued by the school, and returned at the end of the year.
CC BY (Score:5, Informative)
from the article (in Polish):
all these resources will be available under CC BY [creativecommons.org], which is compliant with the Definition of Free Cultural Works.
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lock down an e-book reader to the point where you can't even make a fucking annotation and you'll take almost all the play value out, especially if it's a budget-basement one that doesn't even make noises. how aggravating, but probably necessary since kids are easily distracted by flashing lights. (STILL works on me)
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Do their math textbooks (Score:1)
Use Polish notation?
Then they can program with a Lisp.
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Use Polish notation?
Then they can program with a Lisp.
Wouldn 't that be Polith nothathion?
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because requiement to push all idiots (humanists)
I'm not sure you're going to get away with calling all humanists idiots ;-)
Advertisement (Score:1)
'Rekrutacja' guy is in reality Jarosaw Lipszyc, which is also author of wikipedia article about the subject, is mentioned as the guy proposing entire programme to the government and seems to be the 'owner' of the foundation itself. It is official 'charity' foundation registered in Poland, so it is eligible for 1% tax donation - and we still have till 30th of April to decide where 1% of our tax goes to.
April is month where charity organizations in Poland fight for their lives. While I applaud the idea of fre
Re:Advertisement (Score:5, Funny)
That is so true! I feel really bad because now you exposed all my dirty secrets. I lobbied governement all those years to accept this program exactly yesterday, because i want to advertise on Slashdot, and win all those 1% donations. I will use this money for champagne, caviar and orbital trips. I'm also a member of Majestic 12, and work for New World Order, for full disclosure :-)
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Maybe someone from Poland or more familiar with the topic could expand a little
I'm Polish and can give you this expansion -- the road from "announce" to "happen" in this country is a long road which very often leads nowhere.
Bad Summary (Score:2)
Polish Government To Deliver Free Textbooks
Don't elementary schools provide free textbooks, not only in Poland, but pretty much the wold over?
"Polish Elementary Schools switching to e-books" would be more accurate.
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One thing I have understood is... (Score:1)
...if you give it free early on.. it looses its importance.
Online Textbooks (Score:2)
My daughter, sixth grade, can get to a few of her textbooks online right now. It would be nice if they offered them in a non-proprietary format to load them on her Kindle. Sounds like the Polish Government is onto something here.
What is free about them? (Score:1)
My 0.02$ (Score:1)
0.01$ Socialism never works.
0.01$ Polish people I know are very unhappy about their government; they say it the worst one after communism was overthrown; they have also had a lot of bitter remarks about public education. (Actually some people in Poland are on hunger strike now protesting against the removal of history lessons.) So this "free" stuff looks like the goverment is trying to improve their PR.