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07 Nov 2011 10:33

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U.S.: Instead of buying them, Minnesota high school makes own textbooks

  • That’s the cool thing about it. The book is kind of a living document.
  • Minnesota high school statistics teacher Michael Engelhaupt • Discussing how his school, Blaine High School, decided to write their own textbooks, rather than pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for textbooks which would be out-of-date and ill-suited to the school’s state testing. Right now, students can pay $5 to buy a printed-out version, or print from the Web, but eventually they’ll be able to access the material with computers everywhere. And, as things change, they can update the textbooks yearly. The difference in cost to the Anoka-Hennepin school district, by the way, was staggering: It would’ve cost $200,000 to buy textbooks; to get Engelhaupt and his fellow teachers to write them (and to pay for offline versions) cost just $25,000. Not a bad deal. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Sep 2011 14:20

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Biz: S&P parent and textbook maven McGraw-Hill to split in two

  • what McGraw-Hill, a company best-known for two things, school textbooks and credit ratings, will be splitting these incongruent halves into two public companies. They’re the parent company of S&P, whose president recently announced his resignation.
  • why The company has taken heat from a couple of activist shareholders in recent months, on top of the heat S&P has taken for lowering the U.S. credit rating and their role in the financial crisis. The company says this plan was already in the cards, though. Suuuure. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

29 Dec 2010 00:50

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U.S.: Virginia has laughably awful history textbooks, just an FYI

  • mistake A Virginia-oriented history book called “Our Virginia: Past and Present” suggested that African-Americans fought for the South in the Civil War, causing a huge uproar over the claim, which has long been refuted.
  • f*#&-up A study of the history book by professional historians found that there were many obvious facts that were simply wrong in the book and others with the same publisher. The book, by the way, was not written by a historian. Oops. source
  • » A couple random examples: Peer reviewers found that “Our Virginia” and other books from the same textbook publisher said that the U.S. entered World War I a year earlier than it actually did, that Civil War soldiers commonly wore full suits of armor, and that New Orleans began on a U.S. harbor (instead of a Spanish one). It’s a book so good, it makes you feel dumber when reading it.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

23 Sep 2010 10:46

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Politics: Posted without comment: Texas Board of Ed’s stance on Islam

  • The purpose of this resolution is to ensure there is balanced treatment of divergent groups. In the past, the textbooks have had some bias against Christianity.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

20 May 2010 22:12

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U.S.: Texas’ Board of Ed about to pass controversial textbook changes

Fans of politicized textbooks, you’re in luck. Despite protests, Texas’ outsize influence is likely about to set the agenda for classrooms nationwide. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

11 Jun 2009 23:16

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Sports: Yo, Alabama, the NCAA doesn’t look kindly on free textbooks

  • 15 sports were put on probation for three freaking years. Whoa.
  • 21 wins by the football team will be vacated. The Tide isn’t rolling. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

09 Jun 2009 09:38

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U.S.: Cali. Gov. Ahnold: Textbooks are heavy. Let’s get rid of them!

  • That’s one $350 million bill he doesn’t want to pay. Governator Arnold Schwartzenegger, looking for ways to save a little money in a huge deficit, is talking about getting kids out of textbooks and onto the Internet instead. And it’s not because the technology is so great. It’s because books are expensive and he has a $24.3 billion deficit to kill. *Whew.* Good luck duder. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

06 May 2009 11:52

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Tech: The new Kindle DX is everything we expected and … about that

It’s a bigger-screened Kindle, perfect for reading textbooks on. Newspapers, maybe. $489. Not cheap, but interesting. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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