About FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a pdf version of the book that is better for printing?   

• Answer: Not at present. This was a decision that was made in 2005 to make GSS all-digital online, for cost savings as well as for facilitating rapid implementation of revisions and improvements. Most students are perfectly happy to read the material online where there are no printing flaws are introduced, and of course no paper is consumed.

Is GSS up to date/How does GSS stay up to date? Answers: 

• GSS staff can evaluate and implement a change very quickly, usually within days or even minutes. This is something textbook companies simply cannot do. The student books reflect automatically the most updated version. Updates do not need to wait for any multi-year cycle. 
  
• The GSS “Stay Current” email service sends updates, mostly in the form links to articles relevant to specific GSS chapters, about once a week. You may sign up for this service by contacting gssmail@berkeley.edu and requesting to be on the GSS email list (it’s actually a Google Group but serves as email list). The archive of GSS Stay Current postings may be found on – http://www.globalsystemsscience.org/uptodate.

If I have suggestions for improvement, find errors, or notice issues (links that don’t work, information that is not correct…), who should I contact?  

• Answer: Contact gssmail@berkeley.edu. The student books are on a web site that is very easy for us to update it at anytime.

If I have [x] students, do I pay $5x to use the materials?

• Answer: Yes, if you, your school, district, supporting parent or company can afford it, the intent of the pricing can be viewed as $5/student. We do not have any mechanism through UC to get revenue to support the project other than these licenses, so we use that mechanism for donations as well.  E.g. if someone wanted to donate $150, they would purchase 30 licenses.

What improvements are planned? Answers: 

• We are in the process of updating GSS to be in support of NGSS. Latest efforts can be found on the GSS standards page.
• We are also working on converting the GSS books to be more mobile-adapted. It already takes advantage of an intrinsic Google site option that makes it mobile-friendly, e.g. the left nav is hidden until you tap the menu icon. Page layouts are being improved as new techniques are learned.

Is there an updated teacher guide?  

• Answer: Contact gssmail@berkeley.edu if you are a teacher and want access to the teacher site. It is served as a web site, and it is very easy for us to update it at anytime if new ideas or any errors are found. So what you see there is automatically the most updated version.