Earlier this month, I wrote about the future of textbooks — if traditional hard-bound books might someday be replaced be electronic editions, or if the industry might go the way of music and movies, with many people downloading pirated versions from peer-to-peer services like Bittorrent.
After that blog post, the Spark community weighed in on the future of the textbook. Jack Andrew Chapman wrote:
In two of my units we don’t have textbooks. Instead the lecturer uploads PDFs of book chapters and journal articles to the University’s “Learning Management System”
Lianne said:
I think eTextbooks would be a good idea. For some courses. For example, in literature or history classes, and the like. But for Maths and Sciences? Forget it
And Karim Kanji wrote:
I know that every year I was at York University I had to purchase NEWER versions of the same textbook. Why? We were told that the older (one year old) texts were outdated and needed updating. The real truth: Professors had written these texts and where supplementing their “teaching” income by also selling “newer” textbooks.
Well, recently Nora talked to Eric Frank, the co-founder of one company that’s trying to reinvent the textbook publishing industry. The company is called Flat World Knowledge, and it publishes “open textbooks” which are free works that can be edited, updated, and remixed into custom course materials.” These open textbooks are free to read online, but if you want, say, a printed copy or an audio version, you’ll have to pay.
A shorter version of Nora’s interview with Eric will air on Episode 84 of Spark, but you can hear the full, uncut interview below, or download the MP3.
Play audio:
Also, if your textbook needs aren’t covered by Flat World Knowledge, the Gadgetwise blog from the New York Times suggests checking out the free Bigwords iPhone app for textbook price comparison.
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[original image by House of Sims]
Lets get the definition right. Flat world knowledge is not a provider of "open text books" unless the code is in the public domain like McAfee's economics text book (http://www.introecon.com/), then the book is not an "open text book" period! McAfee's standard is the right way to go. This FWK model is merely an extension/variation of the current business model. It helps to lower cost of course, but lets confuse ourselves.
Hmmm… I agree with the previous commenter – Flat World Knowledge is hardly an "open educational resource." The books cost money to print or download. Fair enough! On the other hand, our site, http://www.smarthistory.org (which won this year's webby award for education) is entirely free and open (under a Creative Commons license) – and is intended as a supplement or replacement for the standard art history textbook – with more than 200 video conversations and pages and pages of text oo. No ads, no cost to the student. We're looking for contributors and more publicity!