Re: [school-discuss] project idea: open source text books

["j. Tim Denny" <johndenny@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jeremy and Yishay

ÂYES

In the pat year or so many great projects have popped up to focus on OER and particularly on textbooks for high school and college. I think it is a wonderful idea for Schoolforge to support this effort but the question I have to ask is what aspect of theÂmovementÂcan we best support? might it be hardware, software or the actual texts?Â

There are various national efforts to digitize nationalÂcurriculum, ÂNepal is working on it through http://www.olenepal.org, Korean has openly talked about their goal to have an entire education system online by 2015.ÂThailandÂhas invested $2million to digitize its courses, etc Âetc...

so what can we offer? Should we be working directly with some national programs? other organizations? what?Â

Here I might offer that we first need to do needs assessment to garner a clearer idea of the current gaps and assess where nations can best use our support. ÂHow about a developing an online survey which could be used to communicate with key targets toÂassertÂwhere their needs are mostÂpersistent. ÂÂ

Anyhow, you are on to something immensely important as access to textbooks and in general access to learning materials is one of the greatest barriers to developing human resources the world over.Â

count me in..

Cheers

Tim

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On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 22:28, Yishay Mor <yishaym@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi Jeremy,

Very interesting idea.Â

Are you aware of -

http://en.wikibooks.org/

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/

http://www.oercommons.org/

Given Apple's recent announcement of iBook author (http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/) and theÂcontroversyÂaround it, I think its worth looking into the idea of open-source eBooks, and an open platform for collaboratively authoring eBooks.

A low-cost tablet and an open library of eBooks is much more cost effective than a repository of printable textbooks.

best

Yishay

____________________
Dr. Yishay Mor
Senior Lecturer, Educational Technology
http://iet.open.ac.uk/people/yishay.mor
+44 1908 6 59373Â

On 27 January 2012 14:19, Jeremy C. Reed <reed@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I propose the group advocates and works toward open source text books.

These would be open content projects that result in free digital and
(optionally) very low-cost print textbooks and course work. This would
be a public endeavor using open collaborative methods. The text and its
related artwork and formatting and tools to create and re-generate will
be freely and publically accessible and redistributable.

Some side goals could be to save money for schools and better allocate
tax payers money, such as increasing school teacher's salaries, and
maybe better learning experience due to further media capabilities.
(Another minor goal is so kids, like mine, don't have to carry around
20+ pounds of textbooks :)

Maybe some ideas at:

Âhttp://www.opencontent.org/

Âhttp://archives.seul.org/schoolforge/discuss/May-2002/msg00194.html
Â(Hey David where is your document now?)

Âhttp://www.jasonheppler.org/open-source-scholarship-and-why-history-should-be-open-source.html

Âhttp://teachinghistory.org/teaching-materials/ask-a-master-teacher/22276

Âhttp://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/open.htm

I know we talked a little about it before around May 2002, but sadly
nothing came out of it from me. But it is time to do this again because
I recently listed to an interview about Steve Jobs and their textbook
plans. ÂHere are some related links:

http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/apples-textbook-partner-mcgraw-hill-reveals-ibooks-2-plans.php

350,000 downloads in 3 days
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2140927/apple-s-textbook-initiative-350-downloads-days

http://www.apple.com/education/ibooks-textbooks/

They may be "reinventing the textbook" but I don't think they are open
source and may be, in fact, tied down to a proprietary platform.
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