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Open Source Textbooks For California
T-1000, appropriately enough, lets us know about a California initiative to compile open source science and math textbooks for the state, in the hopes of saving money. The effort is spearheaded by Gov. Schwarzenegger. "The effort seems very promising, but the state's complex standards and arduous textbook evaluation process will pose major challenges. ... The governator will surely be able to stop the digital textbooks from gaining sentience and subjugating humanity, but there are trickier challenges that will be even tougher to defeat than the impending Skynet apocalypse. Textbooks are a surprisingly controversial issue in California and there is a lot of political baggage and bureaucratic red tape that will make an open source textbook plan especially troublesome. ... [T]he traditional wiki approach is untenable for California teaching material. Individual changes to textbooks can become a source of fierce debate and there are a multitude of special interest groups battling over what the textbooks should say and how they should say it. It would take the concept of Wikipedia edit wars to a whole new level."
I'm surprised that introductory algebra is such a politically polarized topic...
I can only imagine the debates in calculus, what with the ongoing Newton/Leibniz war..
...the printed books we had when I was in school were full of lies. Who cares if these are full of bullshit? So were the old ones. Let's get these kids using some free bullshit and save some money. Of course, instructors who knew the material could teach from Wikipedia, using versions of articles vetted for correctness — a process in which they could participate.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How is this open source ? You can already read what goes into a book, so the source isn't hidden. Maybe they meant community contributed and owned ? Copyright is the issue, not authorship.
Ok, I didn't do the whole degree thing. Part of the reason was that I felt what was being taught in the computer science classes was out of date and often flat out wrong.
Whats more, the teachers over-priced book as required reading and I was given failing grades for correcting the errors in them.
So long as teachers choose the subject mater, they can choose books that make them money.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Open source is about the ability of the community to freely access and manipulate, as long as the changes are documented. Regulation is about the control of access and manipulation. Which special interest groups are allowed to look at it before the public? What idea offends which group? Does the example use gender neutral language? Restrictions, restrictions, restrictions...
If it was creationists who were the special interests groups, it would be in the article. If creationists go anywhere near science there are people screaming about it. Which special interest groups do you think are involved? Maybe the Scientologists will be able to write the text book on psychology?
I've been saying for years that it would be a great idea for public schools to invest in the production of open-source-style licensed textbooks. As long as textbooks are being sold by traditional publishers, they get to charge a per-unit price for them. If you want ten million students to read some publishing house's version of Our Glossy History of America or what have you, then you have to pay ten million times n dollars. If you instead invest in having a new textbook written from scratch and placed under a Creative Commons license, then you pay an up-front cost (expensive, no doubt, but probably pretty cheap as line items on the state budget go) and then it can be issued to any arbitrary number of students for no more than the cost of having copies printed up by the lowest bidder. The publisher's markup, marketing costs, and distribution costs vanish from the price.
There are external benefits, too. Some day it might be plausible for schools to save even more money by going all-digital; they wouldn't even have to pay to print the books. If the books are formatted in such a way that they can be printed paper-bound at your local Kinko's (the way most college readers are), students could cheaply have one or two extra copies as their private property—one to highlight and take notes in, or one copy for the locker and one for home. And free online textbooks would be a resource to autodidacts and other schools, not just in the state, but anywhere on the Internet.
The analogy to open-source software is apt. These days, reproducing information costs next to nothing, as long as it was produced by someone who chooses not to charge a per-unit price. Public schools essentially pay rent on individual textbooks issued to students, not unlike the so-called Microsoft tax when you buy a PC. I have nothing against the textbook publishers' profit-seeking activities—they're free to try whatever business model they like—but philanthropists and volunteers really ought to be able to beat their prices.
A book based on the "lecture notes" principle which also tries to use the available space can typically cover the same subject matter in a clear and concise manner in a quarter of the size and weight.
That would be something Open Source textbooks can address.
I have only one plea: don't make e-books. E-books on laptops aren't as easy on the eyes as even poorly typeset hardcopies.