Could This Change Higher Ed?

I first heard about the OpenStax College project a few months back, when Apple made news with its book-publishing app. Some reporter (wish I could credit him/her) mentioned that the OpenStax project was already working towards making FREE, yes, FREE college e-texts available. So I looked into the project and signed on for updates.
And now, the OpenStax Introduction to Sociololgy text is available for download. It comes in a PDF, epub, or “Web View” format. PDFs can be printed or read on a computer (and on many e-readers, including the Kindle); epub files are open-source ebook files (think Nook, NOT Kindle). “Web View” simply means reading the textbook online, with color images and linked footnotes and references.
So what makes OpenStax digital texts different? Mostly, the fact that they’re free. Rice University in Houston is the main driver behind OpenStax College; the Rice imprimatur will carry weight. The texts (there is currently a complete College Physics book as well) are “peer-reviewed” and “meet most scope and sequence requirements.” The available formats ought to cover any tablet/e-reader on the market.
The vision behind OpenStax is to cut the cost of a college education—a worthy goal, of course. I finished two college courses in the fall semester of 2011, and the texts for those classes ran over $240. That’s not unusual for college textbooks. But what if free, or low-cost, books really can catch on? How would they change self-study, and distance-learning, and continuing education? If you could download a quality text—not a study guide, not notes, but a full textbook—that cost you nothing, would you be more likely to resume/enroll in college? How would it affect your children’s education? Would you prep them if you had the chance? If enough free texts covering enough subjects became available, would community colleges expand their offerings? Would employers do more to fund post-secondary education for their workers?
Online schooling already has begun to change the way people are educated. Could OpenStax texts take online colleges to a higher level?
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Never Again, Dell

Do I like Dell? Uh-uh. Nope. Sorry, I don't.

Do I like Dell people?

Well, the guy who came to my house to fix my wife's laptop was pretty nice. He took my conversation on Linux and Macs in stride. Pointed out the advantages (and there are some) of Windows and mentioned that Macs are pricey. But then, he wasn't fixing the iMac. He was fixing the Dell XPS, which the iMac had made obsolete for my wife.

Of course, Dell had already made it obsolete for my wife by making it a poor product. She'd long coveted a Mac anyway. She works as a graphic designer, uses a Mac at work, and had been using a Mac in her college classes for the last year. The XPS, when we had bought it, was going to be her go-to graphics laptop. We'd outfitted it with the best discrete graphics card we could afford. It had HDMI and a TV card and it was a pretty nice system for $1500 and change. REALLY nice, for the year we bought it (2008). It was the first year Dell put out the XPS, which was meant to capitalize on the Alienware line that Dell had just picked up.

Four years later, here's the summary:

• Hard drive replaced twice;
• Motherboard replaced;
• Power cord is loose on the connector;
• System has not charged the battery or recognized the ANY adapter for a year and a half (this includes both the OEM battery & adapter and non-OEM replacements)

And when she decided to upgrade to Windows 7, with the laptop just over a year old, Dell provided no support, no updated drivers, no Knowledge Base articles. The Dell website did not list the XPS as able to be upgraded. This was a 1-year-old model, for goodness' sake, that clearly had the hardware to run 7.

My family has owned 3 Dells, because my workplace qualifies for Dell's employee-purchase plan and I can buy a Dell interest-free with installments taken right out of my paycheck for a year. We loved the first one, a desktop that is now 8 years old and which my oldest daughter could still fire up if she weren't so in love with her MacBook. The XPS was the second; well, you know about that. The third is almost a year old--a desktop, purchased with my artist-in-waiting daughter in mind. It's already showing signs of being . . . balky. I'm not sure how much of that is rough usage and how much is the product. Because of our experience with the XPS, I'm having a hard time giving Dell the benefit of the doubt. But it's got a 4-year warranty and I'm pretty sure I'm soon gonna see the little guy who had such a pleasant conversation with me on Macs and Ubuntu.

Tux, the Linux penguin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yeah, that'll be nice. Thanks, Dell.

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