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

["Jeremy C. Reed" <reed@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 27 Jan 2012, Unni Koroth wrote:

> The open textbook movement can produce quality books when there is
> involvement from both designers and teachers. And when the designers
> understand the teachers content. Till then, this space will be ruled by
> proprietary companies.

Convince lawmakers and school administrations to put their money that 
would normally be used to to continually re-pay for proprietary text 
books into funding open content.

For example, my local school district may spend USD$160,000 every other 
year for a single textbook title. We can show the numbers. This should 
be public data.

Paid content creators -- professionals and experts -- can be used to 
bootstrap and maintain open content projects at a significant lower long 
term cost. (I have experience with part-time book publishing including 
working with paid authors, editors, graphic designers, et cetera.) For 
example, why would a single school district spend near $700,00 over a 
decade for a single textbook and its revisions when they may be able to 
do the same maybe a quarter of the cost (and continue to get cheaper 
over time)?

I'd like to see research on how much changes in my state's approved 
textbooks each year and between editions. I can imagine -- especially 
for English, science and math fundamentals and old history and 
literature -- that beyond minor edits, some content changes aren't 
needed frequently.

Money can get redirected to qualified school teachers themselves. (I'd 
encourage that money saved or spent on this would be used to pay 
teachers more.)

> I am ready to help if there is a solution that you can find in this sector.
###
To unsubscribe from the schoolforge-discuss mailing list:
Send an e-mail message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx with no subject
and a body of "unsubscribe schoolforge-discuss"