Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking a page from high school science books in an effort to shrink California's $24 billion budget gap.
In fact, he wants to take the entire book – and do away with it.
By next fall, Governor Schwarzenegger intends to make free, open-source digital textbooks available for high school math and science classes throughout California, a move that he says will help reduce the more than $350 million the state spends annually on educational materials. ...
In the era of the Internet, do students really need to lug around pounds of often-outdated print?
Neeru Khosla doesn't think so. Two years ago, she helped start CK-12, a Palo Alto, Calif., nonprofit group that aims to lower the cost of course materials by offering primary and secondary schools free Web-based content. Already, the organization has partnered with Virginia to provide physics texts.
Ms. Khosla says CK-12 will submit at least eight proposals to the California Digital Textbook initiative, which the governor announced last month and detailed in a press conference earlier this week. Submitted digital books still have to be approved by state education authorities before being made available to California schools. ...
It's too early to know what Schwarzenegger's plan will mean for traditional textbook companies, but they'll certainly chafe if California's move leads other states to look into digital replacements.
Mary Skafidas, spokeswoman for McGraw-Hill Education, notes that her publishing company has long been able to provide schools with digital content. "We're a content provider," she says. "All of our major programs [for K-12] are available digitally."
However, she says, most schools are not yet equipped to make the leap into digital content. And, unlike open-source texts, content from major educational publishers would still come with copyright and distribution limits and typically a higher price tag.
Traditional textbook companies say the price of their books reflects the vast amount of work that goes into producing each text, often tailored to meet specific state standards.
But schools can receive similar quality at a lower price by using open-source books, says David Wiley, associate professor in instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and founder of OpenContent.org.
There is a misconception that "free text must be poor quality," he says. "That's certainly not the case. There are stinker textbooks and stinker open-source textbooks."
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
