This is pretty cool stuff. FHSST (dumb name but it stands for Free High School Science Texts) have written textbooks for three different grades of both science and maths subjects at high school level, encouraging users to share (they do this pretty aggressively too, the first time I read
this I cringed, but trying to get children excited about this "new" concept i.e.
sharing, is perhaps a good approach, even if it sounds silly when we read it).
I've skimmed through one of the maths books and they've done an impressive job I think - the content is actually fairly advanced and thorough, but broken into manageable pieces for the reader. A healthy amount of applications are included which I've always thought are under-rated in my experience of learning maths through secondary school and college.
From the homepage:
The Free High School Science Textbook (FHSST) project is our contribution towards furthering Science Education in South Africa. As young South Africans who believe in building up our country, we want to use our skills as scientists to help our next generation by providing free science and mathematics textbooks for Grades 10-12 to all South African learners.
I like this.
Edit Related, dunno why I'm not talking about this in the first place:
Khan Academy: This guy Khan a few years ago started making maths and science videos and putting them up on youtube, I think it was just because his cousin needed help. He ended up with more than a thousand videos and the interest was mind-boggling. He didn't ask for money (he was pretty rich), but he's had millions donated to him (Bill Gates even tweeted that he uses them with his child), hence the foundation. Pretty useful work, it has to be said.
