Online Textbooks: ChemWiki Part 1

I remember buying my first O-chem books back when I was attending DVC (Diablo Valley College), a not-so-little community college here in the Bay Area. At first I checked the bookstore and lost my lunch when I saw the price of the new books. The text was $215, the lab manual was another $70, and the solutions manual was $100. Unfortunately, a new edition had been released that year, so even though the professor said that we could use older editions, many of the problem sets wouldn’t match up, so we’d have to get the problems from our classmates. In the end, the cheapest and most convenient route was to go online and buy the international editions. Even after extending the method to all my other classes, I still paid almost $500 for books that semester. Now I attended DVC before California went belly-up, so my classes were still a great bargain at $18 a unit. Since I usually took ~19 units, my total tuition cost was around $350 a semester. The cost of the books were actually greater than my cost of tuition. The sad thing is, this wasn’t an unusual case. Luckily this wasn’t too much of a hardship for me; I had a job on campus and money saved up. However, I knew a lot of students for whom the beginning of the semester meant not eating lunch in order to save up gas money.

Now students have probably been complaining about textbooks since time immemorial. Aristotle probably complained that his scribe made spelling mistakes in his copy of The Republic. Most of the time our bellyaching is justified. Not only do textbooks cost a lot, but there is often a gross amount of errors in them. Everyone knows that the first time you find a caption or answer wrong, it makes the rest of the book suspect. Also, these errors give the publishers a reason to release a next edition…that never seems to fix even half of the errors. However, they do switch around problem numbers, add a few pages of new content, and possibly even rearrange chapters. So now the professors lesson and homework plan, that goes by chapter numbers, page numbers, and problem numbers, is moot. And the student is effectively forced to buy the new edition (price “adjusted for inflation”) or suffer some inconveniences. Most choose to simply buy the new edition since tracking down the old one can be difficult and you have to be quick. Also, sometimes bookstores won’t buy back the old edition so if you had it, and an edition switch occurred before you finished your course track, you are up the creek.

Some of these issues can be addressed with online textbooks. The idea of supplementing physical texts with online modules has been around and implemented by publishers for many years. However, I’ve yet to see a good entirely online chemistry textbook. The advantages of online texts are of many: accessible anywhere you get 3G or Wi-Fi and have your mobile device, interactive learning capabilities, easy distribution, instant update/revision, and low cost publishing (server fees). Of course this won’t necessarily result the publisher make more money, but at 4 billion (yea, you read that correctly, billion) dollars a year, the industry doesn’t really need much help.

The student, however, does. We need these online textbooks, not just to save our wallet, but also to help prevent being stuck with an expensive and lousy text for a year that does a poor job of explaining the material. That expensive O-Chem book I bought really was terrible and it forced my professor to do a lot of extra work in teaching us not to follow the book’s direction of simply memorizing 500 reactions, but to see the patterns and the underlying physical explanations. In the end, we learned from his powerpoints and I paid $215 for a glorified reference book.

Well, some people are pioneering an effort to create an “Open Access Textbook”. In a perfect example of “chem 2.0″, UC Davis Professor Delmar Larsen is the project director of the ChemWiki, a truly free online textbook written by everyone, for everyone. In an absolutely Herculean effort, the developers and Larsen (Mary Obrien, Ron Rusay, Brent Krueger, Michelle McCombs) are trying to create a free and complete, as in covering all branches, chemistry textbook using a community of students, faculty, and outside experts from around the world. Of course they aren’t there yet, and there is still a long way to go but hey, their text literally gets better everyday.

Now I know you probably have a lot of questions: what about correctness and plagiarism? Could such a thing ever be considered an Authority? What do the publishers say? Does anyone actually use the thing? Well, it just so happened that a couple of weeks ago, I was at Davis for the Borge fellowship visitation and I had a chance to talk with professor Larsen who agreed to answer some of these questions for me. In a couple of days, I’ll post the interview here. For now, I suggest you go and check out http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/ and browse not just through the core, but the wikitexts and community as well.

Subscribe to the comments for this post

TheChemBlog Closes Shop

Kyle Finchsigmate

One of the pioneering chemistry blogs closed their doors earlier this month. As a brethren to the class of 2006 [1], I feel the need to pay homage to the great Kyle Finchsigmate’s influential chemical blog. TheChemBlog came online in June of ‘06 and with his anonymity still intact he was able to get away with his potty-mouth antics in a way to be informative, cutting, and always entertaining.

All good chemistry blogs have a mix of literature reviews, opinion, and funny life as chemists posts. If you examine his early writing they focused mainly on dissecting the chemical literature. The blog served as a vehicle for his wry sense of humor and to develop his capacity to analyze literature and communicate his insights to the chemical community. I mention this only because an examination of his final posts at the blog reveals a complete lack of the literature reviews, and I think this switch is telling for why he closed the doors.

All that being said, I am sure we will hear from Kyle again. As Web 2.0 platforms continue to expand and evolve everywhere in our lives, it will only be a matter of time until Kyle finds a new one to his liking. With the recent very promising blogs Chemical Crystallinity and Chiral Jones he leaves a chemical blogosphere that I believe is in good hands.

Mitch

[1] In 2006 this blog was started and known as the ChemicalForums Blog; it was January 2008 when we moved to this domain.

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Wolfram|Alpha as a resource for chemistry basics

In honor of the ACS national meeting in DC, the WolframAlpha blog featured how to use their engine for chemistry. I won’t steal all their thunder so link is below.

Link: Wolfram|Alpha Chemistry 101

Mitch

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Adopt a Chemist

In the spirit of Web 2.0 I’ve been inspired by the SPS (Sigma Pi Sigma) Adopt a Physicist. I was wanting to do something like this except for chemists, so I’m looking for chemists who wouldnt mind being ‘adopted’ by local high school chemistry classrooms so that they can ask questions about careers, chemistry, etc. I think the Chemistry Forum might be a good way to do this, but who knows, I’m just throwing this idea out there.

Here’s what the Adopt a Physicist is…we should do the same thing…or at least try to?

================================================================================
Adopt-a-Physicist connects high school physics students to people with bachelors degrees or higher in physics via online discussion forums. Through their interactions, students can find out about the careers, educational backgrounds, and lives of current physicists.
Adopt-a-Physicist Goals

* Expose high school physics students to the range of careers open to people with degrees in physics.
* Advance the dialogue between the physics and the high school education communities.
* Introduce physicists and teachers to the ComPADRE network and its resources.

Project Summary

Download the Program Packet

Physicists and students interact through discussion forums for a three-week period. Before the three week period begins, the physicists and classes (via the teachers) each create a brief introduction page. After registration closes, teachers choose some physicists for their classes to interact with, preferably from different career categories.

The physicists each host a discussion forum where students dialogue with them about careers, educational level, current projects, and other topics of interest.

This structure lets students interact with physicists and learn first-hand what people with degrees in physics are doing. In addition to dialoguing with their assigned physicists, students can also read conversations between other physicists and students.

Registered teachers will receive an Adopt-a-Physicist Teacher’s Guide that provides practical suggestions for implementing Adopt-a-Physicist in the classroom and suggested student assessments.

Adopt-a-Physicist is a service provided by Sigma Pi Sigma (ΣΠΣ), the physics honor society, in collaboration with the American Physical Society (APS), the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), and ComPADRE. It is supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation and the American Physical Society Campaign for Physics. Opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of ΣΠΣ, APS, AAPT, or the supporting institutions.
The Adoption Process

* Registration: Physicists and teachers register and create a profile. This requires a ComPADRE login. ComPADRE accounts are free, require only a name and email address, and give the registrant access to all ComPADRE resources. Further information such as school/employer and contact information is required for Adopt-a-Physicist, but will not be used for any other purpose.
* Physicists Adopted: Once registration has closed, teachers can search the profiles of registered physicists (by career, research area, degree level, etc.) and sign up their classes for discussion forums. Registered teachers will be notified when it’s time to choose their physicists.
* Discussion Forums Open: Students and physicists dialogue over the three week period that the forums are open. Teachers are encouraged to monitor the discussions.
* Discussions Archived: The discussion forums close after a 3-week period; however transcripts of the conversations are archived and will remain accessible.
==============================================================================

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Why is science important?

A new movie was recently made answering the question, “Why is science important?”

http://whyscience.co.uk/

This is a really short post since I’m currently jetlagged, but this movie is..well, it’s definitely a must-see. My only gripe is that they ignore chemistry and go more around biology and physics. So, my question to the readers of the blog is…

Why is chemistry important?

P.S. I found this wonderful website from Berkeley called Understanding Science. It puts things in perspective for the public. Give it a look as well! Highly recommended ^_^ Understanding Science

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Paul Bracher from ChemBark is back.

Paul Bracher from ChemBark fame is currently blogging for C&EN Blog in case you missed it.

Mitch

Subscribe to the comments for this post

ACS-2008 Philadelphia

The next ACS national meeting is less than 2 months away and already the facebook groups are getting created around it. [event] As these conference registration fees can become expensive for even graduate student members ($165), I tried to see if I could get mine comped. I applied as a press/media member, I knew it was a long shot since they even say on the webpage, “restricted to reporters and editors working full-time for print or broadcast news“. After a couple emails between me and the ACS Office of Communications I received the following email.

Dear Mitch,

Your request for credentials is approved. The ACS national meeting Press Center will be located in the Pennsylvania Convention Center. A media workroom will be included in the press center and is equipped with wireless internet capabilities, telephones, computers, and copy and fax services.

Press materials, which include a CD-ROM of the meeting abstracts, will be available at registration.

I’m not sure if other chemistry blogs will qualify, but apparently the bloggers at ChemistryBlog have now been granted media credentials by the ACS. See you at the meeting.

Mitch

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Social Networking ACS Presentations

Several people have requested the powerpoint presentations of Maz&Noel’s talk and my talk as well. So, for their convenience and yours if you weren’t able to attend, here are the talks we delivered in the chemical education symposium titled Using Social Networking Tools to Teach Chemistry:

• Development of chemical forums, blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, crowdsourcing, and social bookmarking websites for chemistry.
• Incorporating social networking tools to facilitate participation and discussion in nuclear chemistry.

The session was surprisingly well attended and even got a mention by Lisa Jarvis in the new C&EN blog here: Chemistry and the Interweb. I also got to meet the face behind the Noel O’Blog and a few others.

Mitch

Subscribe to the comments for this post

C&EN Starts Bloging

C&EN have started their own science blog. In recent years it has been common place for C&EN to blog while at the ACS conference or on a special assignment. A link to the blog is here: http://cenblog.org/

Mitch

Subscribe to the comments for this post

New Materials Science Blog

I always enjoy introducing new chemistry blogs to the community. The newest addition comes from a chemistry graduate student from the Philippines. She has been posting for awhile now, but finally got my attention recently. Have a look and enjoy. A screen shot is below.

She claims to be an introvert but maybe we can break her of that.

Link to blog: http://theeccentricchemist.blogspot.com/

Mitch

Subscribe to the comments for this post