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SuperHero
Joined: 10 Dec 2003
Location: Superhero Hideout
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 Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 2:14 am Post subject: Free downloads of professional ELT books |
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I was surfing for something and ended up at this forum which has a lot of materials available for download for ELT. audio, pdf of course books, workbooks, teacher books, it's got it all.
I hadn't seen pirated ESL materials until recently. This appears to be the mother load. Enjoy or not as you see fit.
http://vinasofts.ws/forum/learning-english.html |
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Ukon
Joined: 29 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 11:57 am Post subject: |
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Thanks! Bookmarked!
There is also a torrent up for ESL material if you search for it. |
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mrsquirrel
Joined: 13 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 5:36 pm Post subject: |
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| I've seeded a few torrents in the past with big collections of books I have downloaded. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 6:28 pm Post subject: |
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Actually, not the motherload at all!
They are only copying the torrents from the much larger site (who I've discussed, worked with), www.englishtips.org A russian pirating site. Lots there but unless you buy a rapidshare account, you can only download one file at a time and have to wait for a "ticket" also...takes time. v Say hello to stovokor from me at EFL Classroom! She works hard and is a dedicated sharer like myself.
Other good file sharing , open source sites are OER Commons http://www.oercommons.org/ and also for uni. - Connexions, richard Baraniuk's great endeavor to bring down the cost of uni text books. www.cnx.org Another great Rice thinker / futurist (and Canadian!) See his bio here http://www.dsp.rice.edu/%7Erichb/bio.html and also see his TED Talk (hit our player on EFL Classroom 2.0)
DD
http://eflclassroom.ning.com |
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robot
Joined: 07 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 5:13 am Post subject: |
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I'm going to have to take a Lars Ulrich stance on this one.
Pirating books sucks: authors already make no dough as it is.
As a professional musician, I didn't mind people burning CDs, as most bands make their real $$ on the road with a cut of ticket sales and with merch.
What benefit does the author get from punks stealing his books? Not much. Not that most writers expect to make much money at all, but still every bit helps. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 5:25 am Post subject: |
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I'm going to have to take a Lars Ulrich stance on this one.
Pirating books sucks: authors already make no dough as it is.
As a professional musician, I didn't mind people burning CDs, as most bands make their real $$ on the road with a cut of ticket sales and with merch.
What benefit does the author get from punks stealing his books? Not much. Not that most writers expect to make much money at all, but still every bit helps. |
robot, if it were true that writers were being paid for "good" books and making a living...I wouldn't hesitate to never pirate. But not the case at all and they are just as much victims as are our students.
Education should get a BIG pass when it comes to copyright laws. Sorry, totally against you on this. Further, many writers survive and aren't certainly living/working in coal mines.
About copyright, watch the Larry Lessig talk. Stanford produces or rather, gathers some great minds. He is one. His talk is almost perfect and please reflect on the new "world" when it comes to copyright and his metaphor about the airplanes....
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/187
DD
http://eflclassroom.ning.com |
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TECO
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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i've been doing searches http://www.oercommons.org/browse/tag/EFL and looks pretty useless for TESOL / Applied Linguistics.
some activities or materials there for ESL students but not teachers wanting to learn more about the field. |
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Chris Kwon
Joined: 23 Jan 2008
Location: North Korea
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| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 12:09 am Post subject: |
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Thanks, if I like the books i'd rather have them in person anyways. Just a good way to see whats good and what's not.
Can't say I do the same with music though  |
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robot
Joined: 07 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 6:00 pm Post subject: |
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| ddeubel wrote: |
| robot, if it were true that writers were being paid for "good" books and making a living...I wouldn't hesitate to never pirate. |
So you're saying you wouldn't steal from rich writers, but have no problem stealing from poor ones? Hmm.. you must be a backwards Robin Hood or something.
Like I said, while writers don't get paid much for all their hard work, many do make their living from writing, or at least supplement their earnings this way, and every bit that's not stolen by scury-ridden pirates helps.
I fully understand and support the idea of making information accessible to all. But if everyone in the world shared your pirate attitude, my matey, and they never paid for books again, there would be a sharp dropoff of writers in the market and the world would just be stupider.  |
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Easter Clark
Joined: 18 Nov 2007
Location: Hiding from Yie Eun-woong
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| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 8:50 pm Post subject: |
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Too much hassle to go through when trying to download something from http://vinasofts.ws/forum/learning-english.html. Half the time you get a dead link or have to install some kind of spyware on your computer.
I'm all for sharing sites like esnips which are straightforward and don't take an hour to find what you're looking for. If I need something badly enough though, I will just buy it!
I think being able to download books for free is fine for evaluating whether a text wil suit the teacher's needs or for those in poor / rural areas with no access to materials. However, for entire classes of students who would normally have to buy the textbook (as in a university or hagwon setting) using downloaded material is NOT OK. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 9:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| I fully understand and support the idea of making information accessible to all. But if everyone in the world shared your pirate attitude, my matey, and they never paid for books again, there would be a sharp dropoff of writers in the market and the world would just be stupider. |
Well it seems you are in contradiction when it comes to education....how can you support accessibility to all and then support charging exhorbitant amounts for a lot of uncreative crap that is marketed to death to "seem" useful and important?
Education should get a pass. Further, it is far from the case that people getting books by downloading =s nobody buying books. Exactly the opposite if you look at the numbers. Sorry but the facts bear that out.
There are far better ways to generating revenue then charging for "the book". Content is not a commodity in an instantly sharable, reproducable world....sorry but you miss that point and don't get it. Authors should be paid through ad revenue and social agencies and for their actual teaching/sharing in the community. Not for the texts they produce (I'm as always, still talking about education here..).
Further, using the web 2.0 model, texts can be updated and downloaded at will and people will pay for this........institutions especially. Look at how the cost of a medical textbook is around $80 on connexions and $380 in the store. The author still through the site, gets the same payment/fee.
I urge you again to view Larry Lessig's brillant arguement/presentation.
I also want to say, it makes no sense, your belief that the less writers there are in the world, the stupidier it will be. Less writers does not translate into less readers and even "reading" does not define intelligence........
DD
http://eflclassroom.ning.com |
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seoulsteve
Joined: 03 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:11 pm Post subject: |
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| robot wrote: |
I'm going to have to take a Lars Ulrich stance on this one.
Pirating books sucks: authors already make no dough as it is.
As a professional musician, I didn't mind people burning CDs, as most bands make their real $$ on the road with a cut of ticket sales and with merch.
What benefit does the author get from punks stealing his books? Not much. Not that most writers expect to make much money at all, but still every bit helps. |
Sorry, but the times they are a changin'. If you're a new and emerging musician, author, or film maker you better have a better plan than selling cds, paper backs and dvds. Those things simply make less and less sense every day.
The reason why artists are losing out to people downloading stuff is because publishers, recording studios and film studios refuse to move into the 21st century. |
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