Open Educational Resources | Pao Yue-kong Library, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

e-book

New Media Futures

This book is intended for use in a large introductory class in new media in a program that covers the “full-stack” including critical/cultural studies, media management, diffusion of innovation, and synthetic media production. The first half of this basic sequence covered new media and democracy, finance, intellectual property law, basic games, and transmedia. The second half of the sequence covers many topics related to aesthetics, design, technology, and methodology. To that end, this book needed to be written so that it would be helpful for many different professors and trajectories of study. This book is in neither engineering, social science, nor the humanities, but also all of those. At the same time, this is a program in the Communication Studies and Media Studies traditions of the United States and that texture will come across.

Subjects:: Communication
Keywords:: Mass media -- Social aspects Mass media -- Influence Mass media -- Political aspects Communication Textbooks Mass media -- Technological innovations
Resource Type:: e-book

e-book

Technical Theatre Practicum

Welcome to the exciting world of technical theatre. Studying this topic can lead to many different careers in several different sectors of the economy. The general skills needed for any of the careers or sectors have many things in common. Workers need to be dead-line oriented, as most productions have firm timelines that cannot be altered. Critical thinking and analysis are much needed skills. Almost every project in the field is unique and technicians and designers alike must discover the best way of reaching a project’s goal. Creative problem solving is trait successful practitioners have in common. With every project being unique, there are no guaranteed solutions to the problems that are presented. Technicians draw on their vast experience of what worked in the past that can be adapted to be a solution to the current problems. Clear communication and collaboration round out the necessary skills. No technical theatre project is ever handled by one person on their own. Collaboration with many people is the norm, and successful collaboration requires clear written and verbal communication skills.

Subjects:: Performing Arts
Keywords:: Theaters--Stage-setting scenery Stage management Theater -- Production direction Textbooks
Resource Type:: e-book

e-book

Slavery to Liberation: The African American Experience

Slavery to Liberation: The African American Experience gives instructors, students, and general readers a comprehensive and up-to-date account of African Americans’ cultural and political history, economic development, artistic expressiveness, and religious and philosophical worldviews in a critical framework. It offers sound interdisciplinary analysis of selected historical and contemporary issues surrounding the origins and manifestations of White supremacy in the United States. By placing race at the center of the work, the book offers significant lessons for understanding the institutional marginalization of Blacks in contemporary America and their historical resistance and perseverance.

Subjects:: Area Studies and Sociology
Keywords:: Slavery African Americans History Textbooks
Resource Type:: e-book

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Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the Cyber Domain - Second Edition

Unmanned Aircraft Systems are an integral part of the US national critical infrastructure. The authors have endeavored to bring a breadth and quality of information to the reader that is unparalleled in the unclassified sphere. This textbook will fully immerse and engage the reader / student in the cyber-security considerations of this rapidly emerging technology that we know as unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). The first edition topics covered National Airspace (NAS) policy issues, information security (INFOSEC), UAS vulnerabilities in key systems (Sense and Avoid / SCADA), navigation and collision avoidance systems, stealth design, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms; weapons systems security; electronic warfare considerations; data-links, jamming, operational vulnerabilities and still-emerging political scenarios that affect US military / commercial decisions.

Subjects:: Computing
Keywords:: Drone aircraft Computer security Textbooks United States
Resource Type:: e-book

e-book

Studying the Bible: The Tanakh and Early Christian Writings

Studying the Bible: The Tanakh and Early Christian Writings is a university-level, textbook introduction to the study of the Bible, its literary forms, and historical and cultural contexts. This textbook is a companion to the Bible courses taught in the English Department at Kansas State University, in particular ENGL 470 The Bible, though it is available for use in other courses and contexts. This textbook examines the Hebrew Bible (also known as the Tanakh) and the early Christian writings of the New Testament. It is an introduction to the analysis of biblical texts, their histories, and their interpretations. The emphasis throughout this textbook is on the literary qualities of these biblical texts as well as their cultural and historical contexts.

Subjects:: Religious Studies
Keywords:: Rhetoric in the Bible Textbooks Bible
Resource Type:: e-book

e-book

Bate-Papo

An Introduction to Portuguese

Subjects:: Foreign Language Learning
Keywords:: Portuguese language Textbooks
Resource Type:: e-book

e-book

Speak Out, Call In: Public Speaking as Advocacy

Speak Out, Call In: Public Speaking as Advocacy is a contemporary, interdisciplinary public speaking textbook that fuses rhetoric, critical/cultural studies, and performance to offer an up-to-date resource for students. With a focus on advocacy, this textbook invites students to consider public speaking as a political, purposeful form of information-sharing.

Subjects:: Sociology
Keywords:: Public speaking Textbooks Social advocacy
Resource Type:: e-book

e-book

La lingüística hispánica: Una introducción

Editoras: Paige Wilson, Margaret Saine, y Anna Traini Este libro, todavía en desarrollo, se dirige a estudiantes de español en universidades estadounidenses y pretende ofrecer una breve y simple introducción a la lingüística hispánica. Incluye conceptos básicos de la lingüística, brinda ensayos que abarcan temas de interés social conectando la lingüística con la vida diaria, y ejercicios para practicar los conceptos. También hay enlaces a materiales relevantes disponibles en la red. El libro está creado enteramente por textos escritos y materiales compartidos por estudiantes mayoritariamente de pregrado y también cuenta con el trabajo y esfuerzo de estudiantes-editoras en un proyecto a largo plazo de pedagogía abierta. Editors: Paige Wilson, Margaret Saine, and Anna Traini This book, a work in progress, is aimed at students of Spanish in universities in the USA and intends to offer a brief and simple introduction to the field of Hispanic Linguistics. It includes basic concepts in linguistics, essays that address topic of social relevance connecting linguistics to everyday life, and exercises to practice the concepts. Links to relevant material across the internet are also provided. The book is entirely created from texts and materials authored by mainly undergraduate students and it also includes the work and effort of student-editors, as part of a long-term open pedagogy project.