The Ivory Tower Education List

The list contains 3 types of materials; lectures, textbooks, and sites. Lectures consist of video or audio recordings of somebody teaching the subject area in question, and so is closest to what one experiences in a classroom with a teacher. The books I have tried to find such that they match the style of modern schoolbooks, but content is the all-important factor in determining how favorably a text is regarded.

I've made every effort to make sure the provided materials were legal. I believe it is safe to assume the websites and videos were uploaded by their original creator, but this may well not be the case with scanned versions of published books. I have therefore tried to attach explanations for the legality of the textbooks and linked to the sites hosting them, that they may be deemed legit.

Not that I have anything but casual disregard for copyright, mind you, but I assume those of you inclined to break it already know how to do so without my help. Besides, any list littered with such buccaneering could be faced with repercussions and limited by restrictions (such as, for example, rule 2 on this very forum). As an engineering major, my motto is "whatever works."

Besides, part of the reason I am doing this is to show that it is possible to find quality teaching materials that are free not by disregard of copyright, but by the efforts and intentions of creators who gave away their knowledge so that others may learn from it.

If you feel the quality of any of these resources matches or exceeds that of commercial materials currently in use by your instructors, please let them know about it. I would be happy to know knowledge of these resources helped spare the unnecessary expenditures of even one class.

I'll keep updating this list with new resources and reviews as time and inspiration allow.

If you cannot find the course you are looking for below, do not despair. Try the following general sites to see what you can find.

Lectures: MIT OpenCourseWare (YouTube Channel)
Lectures: UC Berkeley Course Webcasts (YouTube Channel)
Lectures: Internet Archive Open Educational Resources
Lectures: VideoLectures.net
Textbooks: Internet Archive Texts
Textbooks: Spark Notes Subject Tests Preparation
Website: Wikipedia


MATHEMATICS

Geometry

Textbook: Elements
For nearly 20 centuries, Euclid's Elements was the geometry textbook of choice for western students of mathematics. It's approach, which consisted of defining axioms later used as a base to prove theorems and constructions, is a masterpiece of mathematical logic and an excellent introduction to the way mathematicians think. If you prefer, you may download a shorter, 6 book versions of Elements here (the original text consists of 13 books).

Algebra

Video Lectures: Math TV
Excellent site containing video lessons on arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, and the calculus. The videos have a very professional look and feel to them, but much more importantly, the information they convey is clear and useful and will surely help those struggling with specific topics. I particularly enjoy Mr. McKeague's videos.

Textbook: Algebra
I only gave this one a cursory glance, but it seems to be pretty well made. Then again, it's algebra. How hard would you have to try in order to mess it up?

Website: Pauls Online Notes: Algebra

Trigonometry

Video Lectures: Math TV
Excellent site containing video lessons on arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, and the calculus. The videos have a very professional look and feel to them, but much more importantly, the information they convey is clear and useful and will surely help those struggling with specific topics. I particularly enjoy Mr. McKeague's videos.

Textbook: Notes From Trigonometry
These notes are somewhat broad in scope, covering some topics on proofs and applications of mathematics in addition to trigonometry. The disclaimer reads "These notes may be freely copied, printed and/or used in any educational setting."

Website: Trig Without Tears
Trig without tears is an awesome site in which some guy explains trigonometry, from the basic functions of sine and cosine to the double and half angle identities. The interesting part is that the author, who believes it is wrong to use memorization as a substitute for thinking and disagrees with the memorization-based approach to identities regularly found in school, instead teaches you how to develop the identities in a way that is easy to follow and remember. I wish I had read this when I was taking pre-calculus in high school.

Single Variable Calculus

Video Lectures: MIT - Single Variable Calculus
These videos can also be found on YouTube here.

Video Lectures: Math TV
Excellent site containing video lessons on arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, and the calculus. The videos have a very professional look and feel to them, but much more importantly, the information they convey is clear and useful and will surely help those struggling with specific topics. I particularly enjoy Mr. McKeague's videos.

Video Lectures: Midnight Tutors
The Midnight Tutor is an awesome site in which some guys make videos of themselves in front of boards and teach calculus, be it a concept or how to solve a certain kind of problem. It is modeled on the American AP Calculus program (including test specific approaches and questions), but calculus is calculus. They also post their videos on YouTube. And if you have a question, you can e-mail them and they will (eventually) do a video on how to solve it.

Textbook: Calculus - Chapters 1-10

Textbook: Calculus Refresher

Website: Karl's Calculus Tutor

Website: Pauls Online Notes: Calculus I

Website: Pauls Online Notes: Calculus II

Multivariable Calculus

Video Lectures: MIT - Multivariable Calculus
These videos can also be found on YouTube here.

Textbook: Calculus - Chapters 11-15

Textbook: Multivariate Calculus In 25 Easy Lectures

Website: Pauls Online Notes: Calculus III

Differential Equations

Video Lectures: MIT - Differential Equations
These videos can also be found on YouTube here.

Textbook: A Short Course On Differential Equations
As it's name implies, this is a good small book on differential equations. It's stored in the Internet Archive and it was written in 1907, so it's reasonable to assume it is in the public domain. I have taken the liberty of downloading the pdf version of the book and adding bookmarks for each chapter, so if anybody prefers it that way, you may download it here.

Website: Pauls Online Notes: Differential Equations

Linear Algebra

Video Lectures: MIT - Linear Algebra
These videos can also be found on YouTube here.

Textbook: Linear Algebra
I don't know much about Linear Algebra, but you can read two reviews here and here. Aparently, the book is unusually focused on applications, which the reviewers consider a good thing. It is licensed under creative commons.

Website: Pauls Online Notes: Linear Algebra


NATURAL SCIENCES

Biology

Video Lectures: MIT - Introduction To Biology
These videos can also be found on YouTube here.

Video Lectures: MIT - Introductory Biology
These videos can also be found on YouTube here.

Audio Lectures: MIT - Introductory Biology

Textbook: SAT II Biology

Chemistry

Video Lectures: MIT - Principles Of Chemical Science
These videos can also be found on YouTube here.

Video Lectures: MIT - Principles Of Chemical Science
These videos can also be found on YouTube here.

Textbook: SAT II Chemistry

Textbook: Physical Chemistry

Physics (Classical Mechanics)

Video Lectures: MIT - Classical Mechanics
One name should tell you all you need to know about these lectures; Walter Lewin. Yes, this set of lectures was performed by the legendary MIT professor, who has been featured in the New York Times and compared with the Great Explainer Richard Feynman. Like other MIT OCW lectures, these ones have been uploaded to YouTube and can be found there.

Textbook: Calculus-Based Physics I
Calculus-Based Physics is the best free physics textbook I could find. It is licensed under creative commons.

Textbook: Motion Mountain - First Part
Motion Mountain is a mediocre text. Despite its good looks, the book lacks proper formula derivation and focuses too much on qualitative explanations at the expense of equations and problem solving. It is licensed under creative commons.

Physics (Electricity And Magnetism)

Video Lectures: MIT - Electricity And Magnetism
One name should tell you all you need to know about these lectures; Walter Lewin. Yes, this set of lectures was performed by the legendary MIT professor, who has been featured in the New York Times and compared with the Great Explainer Richard Feynman. Like other MIT OCW lectures, these ones have been uploaded to YouTube and can be found there.

Textbook: Calculus-Based Physics II
Calculus-Based Physics is the best free physics textbook I could find. It is licensed under creative commons.

Textbook: Motion Mountain - Third Part
Motion Mountain is a mediocre text. Despite its good looks, the book lacks proper formula derivation and focuses too much on qualitative explanations at the expense of equations and problem solving. It is licensed under creative commons.

Physics (Vibrations And Waves)

Video Lectures: MIT - Vibrations And Waves
One name should tell you all you need to know about these lectures; Walter Lewin. Yes, this set of lectures was performed by the legendary MIT professor, who has been featured in the New York Times and compared with the Great Explainer Richard Feynman. Like other MIT OCW lectures, these ones have been uploaded to YouTube and can be found there.

Textbook: Calculus-Based Physics I - Chapters 27-31
Calculus-Based Physics is the best free physics textbook I could find. It is licensed under creative commons.

Textbook: Motion Mountain - First Part
Motion Mountain is a mediocre text. Despite its good looks, the book lacks proper formula derivation and focuses too much on qualitative explanations at the expense of equations and problem solving. It is licensed under creative commons.


SOCIAL SCIENCES

Economics

Audio Lectures: UC Berkeley - Microeconomic Analysis

Audio Lectures: UC Berkeley - Macroeconomic Analysis

Textbook: Introduction To Economic Analysis
Written by Professor R. Preston McAfee from Caltech, this is an introductory economics textbook licensed under creative commons. It was deemed so good that Dr. McAfee was offered $100,000 to turn his book into a commercial publisher. He turned it down, however, and to this day we can continue to use his well written text to learn about the intricacies of the market.

American History

Audio Lectures: UC Berkeley - US History: From Civil War To Present

Textbook: SAT II U.S. History

Psychology

Video Lectures: UC Berkeley - General Psychology

Audio Lectures: MIT - Introduction To Psychology

List Of Cheap Netbooks/Subnotebooks

Ever since OLPC launched the XO-1, it seems the trend is for everyone to release extremely small and cheap laptop. These may be used for a variety of purposes; as a note taking device during classes, as a first notebook for a child, as a portable web surfing device, etc...

Chances are that if you want to purchase such a notebook for those kinds of activities, you want to spend as little as possible. So in the interest of helping those so interested, I have compiled this small list of the cheapest notebooks I could find, as well as their pictures. The pictures are links to online places where they may be purchased (mostly Amazon). They run between $240 and $400.

Note #1: From what I've read, the Sylvania G-Netbook is basically a rebranded Everex Cloudbook. The only difference is the doubled RAM; everything else (including the price) is identical.

Note #2: The Asus Eee PC 900HA and the Asus Eee PC 904HA are identical except in price and in that the latter has a 6 cell battery, while the former has only a 3 cell battery.


Name: Razorbook
Price: $240
Screen Size: 7 Inches
Color(s): Black
Storage: 4 GB
RAM: 512 MB
OS: Linux
Webcam: No


Name: Asus Eee PC 2G Surf (700)
Price: $250
Screen Size: 7 Inches
Color(s): White & Black
Storage: 2 GB
RAM: 512 MB
OS: Linux
Webcam: No


Name: Everex Cloudbook
Price: $300
Screen Size: 7 Inches
Color(s): Black
Storage: 30 GB
RAM: 512 MB
OS: Linux
Webcam: Yes


Name: Asus Eee PC 900A
Price: $300
Screen Size: 8.9 Inches
Color(s): White
Storage: 4 GB
RAM: 1 GB
OS: Linux
Webcam: No


Name: G Netbook (GNET13001)
Price: $300
Screen Size: 7 Inches
Color(s): Black
Storage: 30 GB
RAM: 1 GB
OS: Linux
Webcam: Yes


Name: Asus Eee PC 4G Surf (701)
Price: $310
Screen Size: 7 Inches
Color(s): White
Storage: 4 GB
RAM: 512 MB
OS: Linux
Webcam: No


Name: Acer Aspire One
Price: $320
Screen Size: 8.9 Inches
Color(s): White
Storage: 8 GB
RAM: 512 MB
OS: Linux
Webcam: Yes


Name: Asus Eee PC 900HA
Price: $340
Screen Size: 8.9 Inches
Color(s): Black
Storage: 160 GB
RAM: 1 GB
OS: Windows XP
Webcam: Yes


Name: Dell Inspiron Mini 9
Price: Starts At $350, But Can Be Customized At An Extra Cost
Screen Size: 8.9
Color(s): Black & White
Storage: 4 GB To 16 GB
RAM: 512 MB To 1 GB
OS: Linux Or Windows XP
Webcam: Optional


Name: HP Mini Note
Price: $360
Screen Size: 8.9 Inches
Color(s): Silver
Storage: 4 GB
RAM: 512 MB
OS: Linux
Webcam: Yes






Name: G Netbook Meso (GNET28001)
Price: $370
Screen Size: 8.9 Inches
Color(s): Black, White, Yellow, & Pink
Storage: 80 GB
RAM: 1 GB
OS: Linux
Webcam: Yes



Name: Asus Eee PC 900
Price: $380
Screen Size: 8.9 Inches
Color(s): Black
Storage: 16 GB
RAM: 1 GB
OS: Windows XP
Webcam: Yes


Name: Asus Eee PC 1000HD
Price: $380
Screen Size: 10 Inches
Color(s): Black
Storage: 120 GB
RAM: 1 GB
OS: Windows XP
Webcam: No


Name: Asus Eee PC 904HA
Price: $390
Screen Size: 8.9 Inches
Color(s): Black
Storage: 160 GB
RAM: 1 GB
OS: Windows XP
Webcam: Yes


Name: 2go PC (CTL E09L)
Price: $400
Screen Size: 9 Inches
Color(s): Gray
Storage: 40 GB
RAM: 512 MB
OS: Linux
Webcam: Yes


Name: Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (42312CU)
Price: $400
Screen Size: 10.2 Inches
Color(s): White
Storage: 80 GB
RAM: 512 MB
OS: Windows XP
Webcam: Yes



Name: Acer Aspire One
Price: $400
Screen Size: 8.9 Inches
Color(s): Black & Blue
Storage: 160 GB
RAM: 1 GB
OS: Windows XP
Webcam: Yes

Free Legal Media Content

Realizing that I knew a lot of website were to obtain media content legally (and a lot more websites where to obtain illegal content, but that is a different matter), I thought I would post it here in the hope that people might find it useful.

A few notes.

1. To the best of my knowledge, all of these sites offer their content legally. The copyright owner(s) either put it up themselves, or someone else made a deal with the copyright owner(s) to upload it, or it is very old content that has fallen out of copyright, or something else.
2. Adblock Plus + Easylist (USA) is extremely recommended for some of these sites. For example, they cut out the ads from the South Park streaming video.
3. Some of this content is delivered by stream rather than download; a high internet connection will come very in handy.
4. I am deliberately excluding educational content (textbooks, video or audio lectures, etc...). This is for entertainment media only.

Well, that's enough. Lets start listing the media by category.

TV Shows:

South Park:
All the South Park episodes, from first to last, made available by Comedy Central for streaming. Very entertaining.

The Daily Show:
Recent episodes of The Daily Show, made availible by Comedy Central for streaming. If you want to get to speed on the news while laughing at the wit of remarkable host Jon Stewart, this show is for you.

Hulu:
Made a deal with several companies to host their content online for free (making profit through advertisement revenue). Think YouTube, but with company content rather than user generated content. Highlights include all 37 episodes of Death Note (subtitled), all 13 episodes of Firefly plus its movie, Serenity, and much, much more.

Movies:

Michael Moore - Slacker Uprising:
"This is being done entirely as a gift to my fans. The only return any of us are hoping for is the largest turnout of young voters ever at the polls in November."

Internet Archive:
Old movies that have fallen out of copyright; can be streamed or downloaded. Highlights include Charlie Chaplin, Nosferatu, & Night Of The Living Dead.

Hulu:
Hulu again. They have a nice movie collection, too. Highlights include 28 Days Later, Men In Black, Titan A.E., The Karate Kid, and much, much more.

Books:

Cory Doctorow - Little Brother:
"One of the most awesome books any young adult could read this summer… and one of the most important novels anyone of voting age could read in the months leading up to our next election."

Baen Free Library:
"Baen Books is now making available — for free — a number of its titles in electronic format. We're calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online — no conditions, no strings attached."

Baen CDs:
"The Baen CDs hosted here are freely-distributable disks provided to promote the sale of the books contained within. Baen allows these CDs to be distributed not simply to provide free electronic copies of their books, but to generate sales for those same books. They are a medium of advertising."

Project Gutenberg:
Collection of books that have fallen out of copyright. Anything before the last century can be found here, although modern translations might still be under copyright and therefore unavailable. Highlights include... oh, the hell with it. Just take a look at the canon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_canon

Music:

Nine Inch Nails: Ghost I-IV (First 9 Tracks):
"The first 9 tracks from the Ghosts I-IV collection available as high-quality, DRM-free MP3s, including the complete PDF."

Nine Inch Nails: The Slip:
"As a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com."

The Power Of The Blog

My name is Jaime Astorga, and I have started this blog because I am curious. I am curious about the power of the blog. I am trying to realize the implications of a source of publication that allows any human being with basic computer and web knowledge to distribute information readily to whatever audience the blog's worth might have achieved.

This is not like a website. A website requires one has basic knowledge of HTML coding and the will to search a suitable host. While HTML is not difficult to learn, and a host of pages isn't substantially more difficult to find than Blogger, or any other host of blogs such as myspace, the psychological threshold remains. Who is going to start a website in order to say a few, disjointed things? When done masterfully, these sort of things can be very successful indeed... just look at Maddox's site, the self described "best page in the universe." But not everyone has that sort of talent, and even those with talent similar to Maddox's may have a style not readily appealable to the masses, upon the which a website's success depends.

A website must be updated and cared for least its audience loses heart. A website requires love. A website requires commitment. Websites must be linked to, or found by a search engine. In either case, the likelyhood somebody surfing the web will find a website specifically depends on its popularity.

Enter the blog. A blog does not have these restrictions or complications; it is an entirely different thing. A blog is already hosted by one of a few famous blog sites which will allow a person to simply write and be published instantly. Unlike a forum post, the blog has a much more readily available audience, and does not fade with time into the depths of the forums where necromancy rules prevent its resurrection. Unlike a web page, a blog doesn't need to fear publishing the few mad ravings of an individual because this is what blogs are supposed to be about.

And it is there that its power lies.

Time Magazine choose a rather interesting Person of the Year in the year of 2006; "You." In justification, it wrote "...who actually sits down after a long day at work and says... I'm going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana... I'm going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?"

The answer being, of course, we do.

Granted, Time Magazine has made some rather disastrous decisions in its Person of the Year before. Considering the award is for being the most influential person of a given 365 days, and not the most beneficial, Osama bin Laden should have been the person of the year in 2001, not the New York City Mayor. Likewise, the person of the century award should have easily gone to Adolf Hitler (tell me who in the past century has done so much to change the course of history as the Wolf?), not Albert Einstein (whom, to be fair, probably deserves the second place because his theory of relativity led to the atomic bomb, which would be the device that would shape the history of the world for decades as the world's two superpowers played a nuclear game of chess on the rest of the planet's surface). Hitler and Ayatollah Khomeini have both received the award in the past, and it was only the cowardice of the magazine in not standing up to the avalanche of idiots who could not understand the difference between an award for influence and an award for being the best that led to these discrepancies.

And still, as a the now proud owner of a blog and about to make its first post, for better or worse I am now among the millions of people who received the Time Magazine award for the person of the year. And as the winner of such a prestigious award, I intend to do everything in my power to live up to it. Enter this blog.

External Links:
What is a Blog? - Beginner's Guide
Why I blog - Anders Jacobsen
Newbie FAQ 101 - How to make a blog - Anders Jacobsen
Time's Person of the Year - Time Magazine
Person of the Year - Wikipedia