Electronic copies of course notes

Commuter Consideration

I'm very eager for ActEd and the IFA to produce an electronic form of the notes. I commute for 3.5 hours a day, usually on busy trains at unsavory times. It is very impractical to pull out large binders of notes, and even more impractical to try and answer questions whilst all the space in front of me is taken up by the notes. In my company, there is quite a few commuters, and I would think an electronic form would give those of us who have these restrictions a better chance of getting more of the work done. In terms of copyright etc. Industrial scanners are available to many, and these can easily feed in the whole of an course, and out put a PDF if one were so inclined, so, if someone really wanted to get the notes out there in electronic, it wouldn't be too difficult as it stands. I own an Kindle, so if an ebook were provided with the course notes, I would have a choice as to use which ever medium best suits my situation when studying. CT8 and CT5 would be a good place to trial these .

Wookie

 

Do you reckon they'll be ready for the October exams?

 

Hooray!

Finally the institute is getting with the 20th century!

What next... an acknowledgement that financial economics left them behind about 25 years ago and they are a laughing stock in finance?

 

About time!!!

There's an incentive for me to get the overpriced iPad!!!

 

Brilliant one Devon.

 

Hi guys,

Has there been any progress on this topic perhaps?

 

Hi ActEd guys

All the eBooks need to be are pdfs - any half-decent e-book reader will be able to show pdfs.

To prevent the pdfs being copied/distributed, simply add a watermark across every page with the oderer's ActEd student number and/or ARN and/or name.

And this can be done with basic, free desktop software...

slatfats

 

I got my ipad ready, where's my app/notes?

 

This is not such a good idea to have a pdf A4 size being shown on a small screen half the size. Don't ActEd need to issue a special format for Ebooks?

 

Readability is a very subjective topic.

The iPad screen is more than large enough to legibly display an A4 pdf and personally, I was quite happy reading a dozen or so papers on my kindle when I was studying for SA3. Setting the screen orientation to landscape mode fits the page to the width of the screen and made the font large enough to read easily - just I couldn't fit an entire page in one screen. This was a small sacrifice and still much preferred to printing and carrying the hundreds of pages of paper that would have been required without it.

The eBook format allows devices like the kindle to do 'nice' things like change the font and the font size. It doesn't cope too well with non-standard text like mathematical formulae. These would (probably) be stored as images - so you lose any eBook benefits here - and who-knows how the document would look on different readers.

With pdfs the text would be guaranteed to be formatted as ActEd want it on all readers.

 

how large was your kindle?

 

The standard 6-inch screen (i.e. not a Kindle DX).

 

Great news!

Not clear if you've already purchased a CMP (e.g last Oct, for an April 2012), if the eBook version can be purchased separately for £20+vat.

However if I go to the shop, add to cart, and click on the "additional copy" under "reduced price claimed" it says:

So looks like yes! Now need to get an ereader...

 

Really?

Wow, this is great news for us students, but I give you about a week till the notes start appearing on torrent sites. I know most people get the notes paid for them but I still think piracy will be rife after this change. Are you not worried about this?

Edit: Oh and why are we being charged 20 quid for a pdf bit checky isn't it?

I've a few PDF's here about Quaternions if anyone wants 1 , tenner a pop.

 

Most workplaces have a photocopier that would make mincemeat of a CMP in about 5 minutes, so I don't think this is an issue.

 

I got an email from Acted yesterday stating that we can now purchase electronic copies of CMP notes.

I wonder if:

a) we can print the notes for our own use?
b) the adobe digital edition file is searchable / bookmark-able / annotate-able?

 

The PDFs are DRMed. I doubt it will be that effective, but the flip side is that anyone doing it is jeopordising their career as an actuary. Plenty of us have gotten permission to scan notes and have managed to restrain ourselves from scattering them all over the internet.