Re: Open Books and XML

[Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com>]

Comments at end.

At 11:05 PM 7/21/99 -0400, Jan Hlavacek wrote [in part]:
>But the computers don't have to be internet connected.  The textbook can
>be served locally, on an intranet.  The school can download it once, or
>it can be sold on cheap CD like linux distributions. Plus the textbooks
>can still be on the internet somewhere, so the students can connect to
>them from home, or library, or wherever.
>
>Of course it is still cheaper to give every student a printed copy of a
>textbook than to give everybody a computer.  The school can also print
>only parts of the textbook, and students can access the rest on the net
>if they need to.  That's why the documents must be written in such a way
>that they still make sense when printed, i.e. no "click here to see the
>table of ..." and so on.
>
>Also, if the book is available electronically, teachers can modify it.
>That's one of the ideas of open source, isn't it?

I admit I'm coming late to this thread, but I'm finding the assumptions
behind the discussion a bit hard to grasp.

1. Just how do you expect the content of these textbooks to be produced? If
"Open Source" textbooks were a viable option economically, wouldn't we have
seen them develop with the Xerox machine, much as "black line masters" has
developed into a market for some kinds of worksheets. There are reasons why
free and Open Source code has developed in the software world. What
analogous reasons will motivate writers to write high-quality textbooks for
free? Robert's earlier comment that "On the textbook side all we have to do
select a set of topics,
create an outline for each and get people to fill in the pieces" seems to
treat as easy the piece of the work that seems to me much harder than
picking XML or some other publishing standard.

2. As regards printed texts ... how cheap is it really to print a text from
CD? I use 3 cents per page *variable cost* (that is, not amortizing the
printer itself) in my work calculations, and I'd guess about a nickel a page
counting the wear and tear on the printer. This makes a 200 page book cost
about $10 to print in unbound form, in black and white only ... plus labor
costs. Add in labor for printing, labor and materials for binding, and the
higher cost of color if that's needed or desired ... and I really doubt
there's much future in schools printing copies of their own texts.

The focus I've seen on this list up to now has been the development of
software that uses the strengths of computers as interactive, responsive
tools to promote learning. This idea seems to abandon the real strengths of
computers, instead chasing illusory, or at best marginal, financial savings
by using computers as printing presses and hoping the content gets created
by people who don't need to be paid for the difficult work of writing well.
Perhaps we should, in this area, concentrate on ways that computer-based
text presentation can improve learning (e.g., by including the links that
the printing method requires one to omit).



------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski                                        -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA  94303-3603    	 	        ray@comarre.com        
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