DO THIS FIRST, BY WEDNESDAY 10PM: How to Use the Textbook

Let's deal with the serious part first: Do this by Wednesday of Week 1, at 10pm. I'll use this one-question quiz to drop people who are not participating in the class after that time.

Now to happier things...

Good news - You don't have to buy a textbook for this class! The textbook is free and available online.

This quarter we'll be using a Textbook called Astronomy, written by two former astronomy instructors and a research astronomer. These three people - one of whom used to teach at De Anza's sibling school, Foothill College - have written general astronomy textbooks for decades.

A few years ago, an organization called OpenStax came into existence. They're funded by a variety of donors, and their mission is to provide free textbooks for introductory college courses. The three astronomers mentioned above decided to write a text that would be given away for free through OpenStax.

Although you can order a hardcopy of the book if you want, most or all of you will probably want to read the book as a PDF document.

• Good News: The PDF is free to download, and you can read it on a desktop, laptop, or mobile device.
• Slightly Less Cheery News, Possibly: You need to download a big file, and you need to get used to handling a big PDF.
• More Good News: Once you've downloaded the file, there are plenty of programs that will make it easy to read and navigate through a big PDF like our textbook.

Getting the PDF

I recommend doing this on a desktop or laptop computer first. (Later, you may want to try transferring a copy to your mobile device(s), and/or downloading copies using those devices.)

Right-click on the link below, and "Save File As..." (or "Save Link As...")

PDF version of the OpenStax Astronomy textbook

(If you're using a laptop with a touch pad, you may need perform some equivalent of a right-click, like Control-click.)

It'll take a while to download, but once it does, it's probably in your Downloads folder. You may want to move it someplace like your Documents folder or your Desktop.

Reading the PDF

It's not a good idea to try and read this big PDF in your browser! You might be able to get away with having it open in its own browser tab, and viewing it with your web browser's built-in PDF viewer. However, this will all work a lot better if you use a PDF-reader program.

The most common reader is Adobe Acrobat Reader. Adobe gives this away for free, and it works pretty well. I recommend trying this first.

(Note: You only need Acrobat Reader, not Adobe Acrobat Pro. Acrobat Pro is for editing PDFs, which you don't need to do in this class.)

On my desktop PC at home, where I do a lot of the work for this class, I use a program called Foxit Reader.

My laptop is a Mac Book Pro, and on OS X I like to use Skim.

When I'm reading a big PDF on an iPad, I like to use Goodreader. (There is a free Adobe Acrobat Reader for iOS too, though, if you don't want to pay for something like Goodreader.)

I wish I knew more about the Android/Google mobile ecosystem. Maybe one of you will run into a good (and hopefully free) PDF reader for Android mobile devices? I assume there's a version of Adobe Acrobat Reader for Android, but I don't know for sure.

Setting up a Good Online Learning Workflow

This is something I learned when I was an online student, getting my Masters degree in Astronomy. I had to read and manage vast numbers of PDFs of scientific papers, so I was using Skim all the time to look at them. Once you figure out which PDF-reading program works well for you (hopefully it'll just be Adobe Reader, for simplicity), make sure you can easily switch between the PDF of the textbook and your web browser. If you have a big-enough screen, such as on a desktop with a big monitor, you might be able to put them side-by-side. Or you might get used to switching between them using the Dock or the Taskbar.

If you can comfortably switch between your PDF reader and your browser, or see them at the same time, you're putting yourself in a good position. You'll proably find yourself switching between a big PDF and some other program all the time in the future, especially if you take more online classes. Maybe you do it already, such as when you're reading a manual or how-to book, to learn a big piece of software like a drawing program or image-editing program, or reading a game guide in PDF form.