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text book project
The goal is to create a free downloadable college text book on computer programming. No cost to any student ever.
There are two kinds of help being asked for here:
(1) Professors — please provide feedback on how to make this project work for your classes. Send feedback, suggestion, and criticisms to: Milo, PO Bx 1361, Tustin, California, 92781, USA. Sorry, but I can ’t afford e-mail at this time.
(2) General public — please pledge to donate just $10 a month to help make this project possible. If more than 100 indiviudals (or businesses) pledge just $10 a month each, then the costs of the project can be covered.
basic questions
The obvious questions:
- What is the project?
- Is the project worthwhile?
- Can I perform the project?
- Am I the lowest cost method?
- How can you help?
goal
The goal is to create a free downloadable college text book on computer programming. No cost to any student ever.
While the book is still being written, the material is immediatelyt useful because it can be used by professors as supplemental materials, either as on-line links or as reprinted material handed out in class.
usefulness
According to the Los Angeles Times college text books average $120 each (late 2006) and the major book publishers are still jacking up the prices. According to the LA Times, many poor students are barred from higher education (even though they have financial aid or a scholarship) because they simply can’t afford the price of text books, which can be more than a thousand dollars a semester/quarter.
For-profit book publishing corporations use numerous malicious tricks to keep pushing up the price of text books and reduce the use of recycled used text books. Their racist purpose in engaging in these activities is to price text books out of the range of poor people so as to keep the mostly minority poor students from having the same equal access to education as rich white children.
The major book publishers put out new (more expensive) editions of text books every three years. It just happens to be that three years is the amount of time for a text book to saturate the used text book market and cut into sales of new books. The book publishers claim that this is mere coincidence with the timing of their new editions and that they only publish new editions when they need to make improvements on the existing text. They claim it is mere coincidence that these “necessary” improvements happen to exactly match the sales cycle for every text book they publish!
The audience is huge. Almost every college or university requires all students to take at least one computer programming class. For many majors (such as engineering, computer science, mathematics, and most sciences) there is an additional requirement of two to four programming classes.
According to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data (Ocotober 2008), there are 13,245,000 full time college and university students (all ages) in the U.S. and 5,387,000 part time students. This does not include either trade school students or high school advanced palacement students.
In addition to the obvious English speaking foreign nations (Australia, Bahamas, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Jamaica, Liberia, New Zealand, Scotland), many nations in the world require students to learn English in the equivalent of elementary and secondary schools, and many computer science classes in the world’s two largest nations (China and India) are taught in English. Indonesia, the largest Muslim population nation in the world, uses English for many computer science college classes.
According to Answers.com there were more than 150.7 million college students world wide in 2007.
While not all college students will have a computer programming class every year, some will have more than one. Additionally, there will be some significant number of professors who will use other text books.
This is a huge audience.
And the need is great.
In 2007 the average cost per college text book was $140, and computer science text books tend to be more expensive than average.
There are many students who are dropping out of school simply because they can’t afford the text books. In some cases this includes students on scholarships.
And many students are switching to a less expensive major because they can’t the cost of the books in the major that best fits their abilities.
This is a huige world wide problem.
And while this one book is only one small part of the solution, it is the equivalent of billions of dollars of charity (if someone were to purchase a for-profit computer programming text book and distribute it for free to every student on the planet).
This is a completely non-trivial task with large scale global benefit.
Message to Professors
If you are at an accredited college, university, or other school in the U.S. or Canada, you have permission to use any of these materials in your own “mash-up”, as hand-outs, or as a whole book (and you can change the order, delete stuff, add stuff, and mdify stuff) as long as it is for your own classroom use. I do need you to include the copyright notice on anything you use.
I do not know the accreditation rules for other nations, so am limiting the above permission in other nations to government schools, colleges, and universities in any nation. Write a letter and ask if you are at a non-government school in another nation. I do need you to include the copyright notice on anything you use.
Also, accredited schools, colleges, and universities in the U.S. and Canada and government schools in any other nation may print this book (with modifications) and provide it to students either free or at actual printing costs. I do need you to include the copyright notice (including website URL) on anything you use.
I also ask that you provide a copy of any variant versions of this book you create (you can send a CD-R to Milo, PO Box 1361, Tustin, CA, 92781, USA).
Feel free to donate additional materials (you will be credited for your contributions).
And please provide feedback on any recommendations, suggestions, complaints, corections, etc. to improve the quality of this free text book for your class use.
ability
Although I have barely gotten started, there is enough written to evaluate whether or not I know computer programming and whether or not I can write about the topic.
I am an experienced assembly language programmer. I have worked with numerous different processors, including super computers, mainframes, minicomputers, microprocessors, and even worked with microcode.
I have programmed in Ada, AppleScript, BASIC, C, C++, COBOL, Forth, FORTRAN, Java, JavaScript, Lisp, Logo, Pascal, Perl, PHP, PL/I, PostScript, SmallTalk, SQL, and UNIX shell script.
I also have a background in writing, including having been a newspaper copy editor. The copy editor is the person who corrects professional writers’ English.
You do not have to take my word on my abilities. You can evaulate the materials already available. And you can consider the fact that other materials already on the wbesite have been used by professors in more than 300 colleges and universities aroudn the world (that was as of 2003, when I stopped counting).
There is enough material written that you can confirm for yourself the usefulness of the project and the quality of my writing.
costs
While this one book is only one small part of the solution, it is the equivalent of billions of dollars of charity (if someone were to purchase a for-profit computer programming text book and distribute it for free to every student on the planet).
You will not find another person on the planet who can get this work done for a lower cost than I can.
You may be so accustomed to thinking of the internet as free that you may not realize that there are actual costs involved in creating educational materials on the web.
While many professors post excellent materials for free on the internet, the cost is actually being paid for by their schools. The schools are paying for the internet connection, the computer, the indoor office space (with a locik), compilers, paper, and all the other support necessary for the “free” work.
I don’t have the support of a college or university. I am an unemployed person who is about to become homeless. I really want to do this work and am willing to go through extreme hardship to complete the task, but there are things that I simply can’t afford that are essential for success.
My church does not have the money for this project but is willing to coordinate a donation program.
sponsorship
If you think this is a worthy project, please help.
You do not need to pledge exactly $10 a month. That is a recommendation based on the idea that most rich and even some middle class people can afford to donate $10 a month.
Feel free to donate more if you can.
If you think this is an exceedingly valuable project and want to help and can afford to pledge $10 a month, please contact Pr Ntr Kmt at 949-566-0001.
$10 pledges
If you think this is a worthy project, please help.
Because there aren’t any business persons who see any value in helping humanity through this project, as it will only help about 150 million college students a year world wide and there is no way to make any profit off a non-profit activity, I am attempting to put together the funding with small pledges of $10 a month. I figure that even the biggest corporations can afford $10 a month and that many individuals, particularly billionaires, might be able to afford just $10 a month.
If you think this is an exceedingly valuable project and want to help and can afford to pledge $10 a month, please contact Pr Ntr Kmt at 949-566-0001.
help the computer programming text book project
To support the entire project:
If you have a business or organization that can support the entire cost of this project (estimated less than $50,000 a year), please contact Pr Ntr Kmt (my church)
If you think this is a worthy project, please help.
While this text book is free, and will always remain so, I have to pay to live.
I know that the general attitude about anything on the internet is that it should be absolutely free and that the people who create the stuff shouldn’t be paid. It is the same principle as the refusal to pay musicians for their work.
But the simple truth is that there are costs. The computer I am currently using is so old and broken that it can’t even connect for sending and receiving e-mail. And I am currently writing example code without access to any compilers to test if the code is correct. I can’t even afford a place indoors to put a computer (I am about to be homeless and lose my current location).
And it isn’t like I’m not trying to help. This book is absolutely free anyway. I do actually want to help the poor get the same access to as high a quality education as the rich can afford.
I’m asking for a little help.
Can you spare a few dollars? If so, please pledge $10 a month; contact Pr Ntr Kmt at 949-566-0001.
Milo
PO Box 1361
Tustin, California 92781
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HTML file
Because I no longer have the computer and software to make PDFs, the book is available as an HTML file, which you can convert into a PDF.
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free computer programming text book projectBuilding a free downloadable text book on computer programming for university, college, community college, and high school classes in computer programming. If you like the idea of this project, free downloadable college text book on computer programming. |
This web site handcrafted on Macintosh 
computers using Tom Bender’s Tex-Edit Plus 
and served using FreeBSD 
.
†UNIX used as a generic term unless specifically used as a trademark (such as in the phrase “UNIX certified”). UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Ltd.
Names and logos of various OSs are trademarks of their respective owners.
Copyright © 2010 Milo
Created: October 3, 2010
Last Updated: November 9, 2010
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