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I see you did not pay attention in grade school AC. this is not surprising.

https://www.ck12.org/biology/i...

While the article is very short, I understand that your attention span is ALSO very short, as evidenced by your lack of creativity in your word choice in your ad-hominem. So, here is the pertinent portion of the article, with added bold emphasis.

Insects are crucial components of many ecosystems, where they perform many important functions. They aerate the soil, pollinate blossoms, and control insect and plant pests. Many insects, especially beetles, are scavengers, feeding on dead animals and fallen trees, thereby recycling nutrients back into the soil. As decomposers, insects help create top soil, the nutrient-rich layer of soil that helps plants grow. Burrowing bugs, such as ants and beetles, dig tunnels that provide channels for water, benefiting plants. Bees, wasps, butterflies, and ants pollinate flowering plants (Figure below).

There are some options in that area. Here is one: http://www.ck12.org/about/freetextbooks/

However, you also have to overcome the occasional stupid rule. For example, my son was issued two books that his teacher told him they would not even crack open this year. Both were replaced with other sources(digital books and such), but state law dictates that they receive a physical book for these classes. So, the district is forced to buy and distribute(and maintain) books that they never actually intend to use.

Well kind of. You use the internet to wirelessly download them.

I'm not sure about Australia, but in the US schools also spend tons on electronics, but can't afford textbooks

Have you tried http://www.ck12.org/student/ CK-12? Or even The Khan Academy...there are tons of professional quality resources out there.

That is why the flexibility of the free books produced by http://www.ck12.org/ are so much better than the "30 year old models". The teacher can choose which chapters are going to be included in the book. Many of the books include multimedia such as the Khan academy videos, so the teacher can flip the classroom. Flipping the classroom means the teacher assigns the student to watch the video "lecture" portion of the class at home. The student can watch it as many times as they like and rewind it if they miss or don't understand something that was said. When the student is in school the teacher then has the student do the traditional homework or hands-on practical projects which utilize the concepts while the teacher is there to assist and guide the student if they run into difficulty. The CK12.org books also have links to other websites which support, enhance and reinforce the concepts for the students. These books are FREE and under a Creative Commons share alike license. They can be downloaded to various electronic devices like a computer, iPod touch, iPhone, Droid, Kindle, Nook, or downloaded as a PDF and printed. The students can highlight and notate directly in them and can keep the books for later reference before the high stakes tests that drive our current educational system. If the word can get out to the schools I see it as a disruptive technology to the current textbook industry. Let your school district know about this option. In these tough economic times, the potential savings for districts are real while providing a quality product to the student.

While having slick creation tools is a cool thing, this won't end up working for public K-12 schools, at least in California. There's this thing called the Williams Case which requires all schools to have one copy of a textbook for each student in a class. Sure, the case was decided before digital textbooks were a possibility, but this has caused significant problems already with digital textbooks. Schwarzenegger tried with the digital textbook initiative to get things started, and there are even free, CC licensed, editable books out there already (disclaimer: I am an author for CK12). Nobody is using them because of the problems surrounding Williams compliance.

So while tools are nice, the problem is infrastructure and law. Which are, unfortunately, most of the problems those of us in education face when trying to make things better.

Would you consider donating your class material and your time to CK-12? (http://www.ck12.org/flexbook/)

What is CK-12?
The CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the U.S. and worldwide. Using an open-content, web-based collaborative model termed the "FlexBook," CK-12 intends to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality educational materials to be used both as core textbooks and as the basis for customized materials.
To learn more about our organization, visit http://www.ck12.org/about/

Sort of like:

Curriki
CK-12
Open Text Book

(These are all links from old Slashdot articles.)

I'd like to be a bazillionaire and dump a ton of money into a nonprofit of this sort.

Wow, I had not know about FlexBooks, thanks. It reminds me of Khan Academy somehow as far as scope, but obviously with a lot of people working on it. That's really terrific.

Example on "The Atomic Theory":
    http://www.ck12.org/flexr/chapter/7511

Too bad they picked "BY-NC-SA" for the license as it is incompatible with Wikipedia though. (Although I read somewhere that NC in more popular than not for individuals using CC Licenses).

Actually you only have to buy one copy of each.... crack the DRM.... now all the students have the books.

Or stop being idiot school administrators and use some of the great open education texts already available in ebook format.

http://www.ck12.org/flexr/

http://www.ck12.org/

This is why I like projects like CK-12.

CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the U.S. and worldwide. Using an open-content, web-based collaborative model termed the "FlexBook," CK-12 intends to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality educational content that will serve both as core text as well as provide an adaptive environment for learning.

http://about.ck12.org/

Basic K-12 and Undergrad materials and course work do not change that much. Why shouldn't there be open source materials available? If they are publicly funded in any way, it should have been a requirement long ago. I for one used to refuse to sell my books back to the store for pennies on the dollar. It was always better to keep them or give to another student. With open source, more people could afford to go to university.

This isn't necessarily directly under the scope of this, as I'm not sure if it counts as "publicly funded", but there is open content for K-12 science and math materials, including a decent system to put your own books together. Check this out:

CK-12.org

As a high school biology teacher in Thailand, where it is actually difficult to get decent biology books for a reasonable price, I have found this to be incredibly useful, and as far as I can tell the content is accurate. The book layout isn't tops, but, the pictures are pretty and the content works. I've also been checking out their physics and math books to refresh myself on a lot of things I have forgotten.

Point being, there are open materials out there, freely accessible. I would like to see more teachers using them. :)

http://flexbooks.ck12.org/flexr/

CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the U.S. and worldwide. Using an open-content, web-based collaborative model termed the "FlexBook," CK-12 intends to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality educational content that will serve both as core text as well as provide an adaptive environment for learning.

This site's work seems interesting. http://www.ck12.org/

The books are not in the public domain--they are available under permissive copyright licenses. For example, CK-12 Calculus (PDF) is licensed under CC BY-SA (page 2 of the PDF). This is the only book I checked, but I expect most (if not all) are licensed similarly.

If the books were public domain, they could be redistributed as proprietary works under another's name. Instead, these books are essentially GPL'd (again, assuming they're all licensed similarly).

Great observations and perspectives from Ben Crowell. We from CK-12 Foundation (www.ck12.org) are also participating in this initiative. What this initiative allows is to have Teachers presented with choice of books "from other great authors like Ben Crowell" and not just one provider. Irrespective of this initiative, the commercial publishing houses have dwindled down to 3 main stream companies, ending up in an oligopoly situation. It is also worth to note that there are superior materials from NSF funded projects which are available for free. Some examples of NSF funded projects are: http://www.nanosense.org/ http://www.mcrel.org/nanoleap/ as well books created by other states like Virginia: http://virginia.ck12.org/flexr/workbench/?searchTerm=cwv&mode=search&category=&autoSearch=1

Why reinventing warm water?
Go to Light and Matter for a high quality book set about physics.
By the way, CK-12,org already has one.