Open Textbooks

   This is going to be about the open educational resource called the open textbook. I love these resources, because it means that I can get a good quality textbook to complement my studies on sites such as MIT OCW. I have looked at a couple of these textbooks briefly, and find that they have many things that are regularly found in the $200 textbooks we all happily buy. These are great resources to have around.

   It has always been a bit of a burden having to buy textbooks to go with the course I am taking online not for credit. I really appreciate these classes for the material that they have, but textbooks really are a good resource to have as a complement. These textbooks cost lots of money and it is nice to see that there are affordable solutions popping up.

    These open textbooks have examples, exercises, pictures, and links to further learning. The examples look just as good of quality as examples in the big paid textbooks. There is many exercises that can be done for practice. The pictures are nice to look at as they give a good visual link to the material. The links to further learning are the most interesting thing for me as I anticipate that they will give a good wide variety of interesting sources.

I am very excited to explore these resources and I hope you are as well.

Here are some links where you will find these resources:

https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/#

https://open.bccampus.ca/find-open-textbooks/

http://www.oerconsortium.org/discipline-specific/

Highlights for High School

    Yesterday was the first time I have explored the Highlights for High School part of MIT OCW. As a nerd who spends half my waking hours watching lecture videos and doing practice problems I love MIT's site, but I never looked at the high school part of it. I thought I would look and I was pleasantly surprised.

    It has introductory stuff and stuff that would be seen in high school, but it also has some more difficult stuff for students who are curious about it. This difficult stuff also gives a good introduction to university level classes and can prepare students for university. There is an exam prep section in these subjects biology, calculus, chemistry, and physics. There is also other subjects with different resources.

   When you go to a subject's home page you will find some good resources. There are links to MIT introduction courses that are on OCW, for students to explore. One of the most interesting resources is the high school courses developed by MIT students. I looked a couple of these courses and some of them look interesting, so I will likely be going through some of the material myself. There are lots of good resources for high school students on this site, and I wish I had a chance to explore them when I was in high school.

Below is the Highlights for High School site

https://ocw.mit.edu/high-school/

Quantum Mechanics MIT Lecture "Bell's Poor Inequality"

    Yesterday I watched a lecture on Quantum Mechanics. This lecture was entitled the experimental facts of life. The lecture talked about certain facts that have been obtained through experiments and are useful in quantum mechanics. One of them was what is called Bell's Poor Inequality.

    Bell's Poor Inequality is a seemingly simple equation that uses 3 binary properties in the equation. When you work through it all you get that it has to be right in all instances. What the professor said at the end of the video is that it is untrue in the quantum world. This is unbelievable for me, and I can not wait till I watch the next lecture in the series to find out how this can be true.

Below is a link to the lecture. Just so you know the part I am talking about is at the end of the lecture

The lecture