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Open Textbooks Win Over Publishers In CA

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-put-them-in-a-wiki dept.

Unequivocal writes "Recently California's Governor announced a free digital textbook competition. The results of that competition were announced today. Many traditional publishers submitted textbooks in this digital textbook competition in CA as well as open publishers. An upstart nonprofit organization named CK-12 contributed a number of textbooks (all free and open source material). 'Of the 16 free digital textbooks for high school math and science reviewed, ten meet at least 90 percent of California's standards. Four meet 100 percent of standards.' Three of those recognized as 100% aligned to California standards were from CK-12 and one from H. Jerome Keisler. None of the publisher's submissions were so recognized. CK-12 has a very small staff, so this is a great proof of the power of open textbooks and open educational resources."

4 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. Common Sense by dintech · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Thankfully common sense has prevailed. This is one monopoly that the world should be glad to see the back of.

    1. Re:Common Sense by scorp1us · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You say that now, but wait for the Open Intelligent Design course materials come out.

      --
      Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
  2. Re:Computers to read the textbooks by TaggartAleslayer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I bought my netbook this year for less than the cost of two textbooks. I would go so far as to say the college book store could still make a decent living by offering rental and sale netbooks pre-loaded with proper course materials for much, much cheaper than what students pay on books right now.

  3. Re:Instructor Materials and Supplements? by paulsnx2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "But, even in something like a math course, open textbooks run into the "staleness" issue. That is, students do the assignments or tests and then the solutions are passed on to the next year's students. Publishers do quite a bit of work to change problems. Do not underestimate the amount of work and editing/QA involved in such an effort."

    This is now an absurd claim, at this point. WolframAlpha returns you the answer to any problem by just typing it in.

    Take for example one I just made up as I was typing this:

    Limit as x -> 0 of (sqrt(sin (x-5)) + tan((y- pi/2)^2)) / x(y-2)^2

    And bingo, it gives the answer, as well as gives the series expansion:

    http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Limit+as+x+-%3E+0+of+(sqrt(sin+(x-5))+%2B+tan((y-+pi%2F2)^2))+%2F+x(y-2)^2

    Besides, an Open Textbook can be modified, updated, support the development of new resources, homework sets, etc. by the teachers themselves. So they can leverage the MASSIVE amount of prep work they all do anyway. But with a closed book system, these teachers all have to reinvent the wheel for themselves, as they cannot share their efforts based on a copyrighted book.