Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Not-Quite-Science Forum K-12 Free Study Guides

CK-12 study guides are written by fellow high school students. If you are facing problems with Algebra I, Geometry, Probability and Statistics, Biology, Chemistry, or Physics, these study guides will be helpful for you. www.ck12.org/flexbook/studyguides/

I'm not sure, but I think these are available on the Kindle from Amazon (also free). I haven't reviewed any them yet, but it's worth looking at. If anyone else has experience and opinions with this series, please share.

I think this is more appropriate for NQS, but it's more appropriate than some of the other stuff - and potentially more useful.

Also, I'm not a big fan of advertising, but this is free stuff. Maybe we could make this a thread about free education in general.

Thanks TFF, looks like some good stuff there. All I need now is some suggestions for finding time to do the reading.

I like the idea of a free education thread.

Recently got my wife a Kindle Fire which she loves, but I use it a lot more than she does. I've finished "Around the World in 80 days" and "The Island of Doctor Moreau." Currently reading "Up from Slavery" and "A Universe from Nothing." The first three are free books over Amazon - the last a pay book.

Also, I downloaded other free books, as well as free apps for chess, mahjongg, and sudoku. However, I had heard of "Words for Friends" and knew that my oldest daughter was playing it from her android smart phone.

I'm playing it - not bad, almost identical to Scrabble (tm). But I think it would be good if one could look up the meaning of a word within the program - or if it popped up a definition as a word is played. (And there are other improvements I could recommend.)

Also, I'm thinking back to school when sometimes the teachers would give us games to play - like find how many words you can make from the letters of some word without using any letter more times than it appears in the start word. For example, if the start word is "WORDSMITH" we can find
WORDS, SMITH, HIT, THIS, SWORD, WORTS, ORTS, ROTS, WORMS, WORTH, OMITS, TROD, RODS, SHOT, HOTS, WHIT, WHID, WRIT, WITH, MOTHS, THROWS, etc.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to allow students to play words with friends during study halls or even during class in some cases. 1) all assignments finished, 2) special assignment (say, getting extra points for playing relevant words), 3) general vocab building.

It seems like this tech could be handy - for some students, allowing teachers to focus on the kids who really need it, IF they put some thought in up front to how it would be integrated into an activity. (That was one of the problems when computers were first put into the classroom - it was great for people were really into it, but it wasn't very helpful for the non-math students.)

I wonder how open zynga (the company that makes WWF) would be to making mods to help it be more useful to teachers. (Or if teachers would think the idea worth pursuing.)

The school where I tutor gives new students netbooks which is handy.

Throughout my youngest's HS sojourn it was agonizing to watch her trundle off to school buried under an overflowing backpack, a bag of swimgear, a bag of extra books, and usually an armful of a project or cookies or what have you. For some few classes she had the choice of a hard-bound book or CD. Really - I was always worried about both my girls' backs - but especially the tiny younger girl.

I suspect we will eventually go the way of completely having a cloud device (like iPad, kindle or other android), but there are issues.

There are advantages:
1) Same advantages as a netbook, but even more convenient.
2) Battery life is good and getting better.
3) Support utilities accessible (like blackboard).
4) Educational utilities (calculator apps, word processing,etc)
5) No need for any books now.
6) Cost is cheap, but not THAT cheap -- still coming down.
7) Keeping stuff in the cloud is *really* handy.

Disadvantages:
1) If you do forget (or break) your device, others are not likely to loan one to you.
2) Targets of theft.
3) preventing book theft is a problem.
4) buy-in is not cheap, but could reduce paper, shipping and storage costs.

MANY other plusses and minuses - this is just a flavor of them.

Biggest issue is there needs to be curriculum development around this functionality - which requires teachers, etc. to buy into it and make the effort to see how it can fit into what needs to be done. Teachers still have a crucial role - and in some sense the essence of that role is preserved - but the way that essence is manifested will radically change.

There are a number of things that are almost immediately useful. A small sampling would include:

http://freerice.com
http://www.travelpod.com/traveler-iq
http://www.theproblemsite.com/games.asp
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~moursund/Books/Games/Games.pdf
http://www.coolmath-games.com/0-series-geography-map-snaps.html
http://www.coolmath-games.com/0-geography-venture-capital/index.html
http://eulerproject.net
http://mathschallenge.net/

There are lots of video things that could be useful, if teachers made the effort to actually build a curriculum.

Khan Academy is outstanding of course, as is MIT's Open Courseware, but there are also courses and materials spread across the web on various topics. And there are some amazing videos put out by Yale, et. al.

My oldest who is brilliant at math had trouble with linear algebra her first semester at college. This is normally a trivial course, but for some reason it's notoriously difficult at her school. For the first time in her life she was making Cs and Ds in a math course. She quit going to class and instead took classes through MITs Open courseware - but then took her normal tests at her regular college and her grades jumped back up to what she was accustomed to.

Here's some miscellaneous stuff for illustrative purposes:
Harvard CS http://cs50.tv/2007/fall/

Anatomy at Berkeley: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9WtBRNydso

Thermodynamics at Yale: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb8LqNlHeLY

Special Relativity at Stanford: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAurgxtOdxY (taught by Leonard Susskind!)

The OP mentioned www.ck12.org/flexbook/studyguides/

I'm quite interested in any review(s) anyone cares to make of these materials.

Great! You have tried these guides. Yes, I think these are only available as PDF’s, but this site also has some good books for devices like iPads, Kindle and Android
http://www.ck12.org/flexbook/books/epub/