ED and DougJ’s posts about their hippie views on the school system made me want to mention the CK-12 institute and their innovative textbook creation system called Flexbooks. This system allows K-12 teachers to assemble subject textbooks from state-approved content, add in their own teaching materials, and download the result in ebook or pdf form. All the content is freely licensed, so the books cost nothing.
Couple a flexbook with a third-generation Kindle, which costs $130, needs a recharge every few weeks, and weighs a few ounces, and you have a whole textbook delivery system that costs little more than a couple of books and is fairly tough and resilient when compared to a laptop (or even an iPad). Even printing Flexbooks at Kinkos is probably cheaper than what the textbook racket wants for their books.
In addition to being free, Flexbooks sound like a great way to sidestep the hegemony of Texas, which apparently sets the standard for many textbooks in the nation simply because they order a lot of them. Texas can keep its bible/textbook fusion, and schools in the rest of the nation can simply use Flexbooks instead of being forced to buy Biology textbooks that shill idiocy like intelligent design.
Linda Featheringill
That sounds interesting. And it probably has a future. Especially if there is a way to access it without the Kindle, like online or something.
cs
For hard copies, I hope someone will tell the teachers about places like Lulu, where they can upload the PDF’s and get a well-produced spiralbound workbook and it’s quite a bit cheaper than Kinkos. This is the solution my company uses for our companion workbooks.
jeffreyw
The interests being served by governments are not the interests of the people being governed. Governments do not want to save money, they want to spend money. They want to spend money on their friends. That want to regulate things so that you are forced to give money to their friends for things that they say you must have.
/Yglesias
ItAintEazy
I can’t imagine the cartel that is the university bookstore would allow such technology to be instituted on college campuses, but one can be allowed to dream.
uila
So we should cede the printing press to the wingnuts? What will they use for fuel at the book burnings?
schrodinger's cat
@jeffreyw: How is Homer? Eagerly awaiting the latest update.
beltane
Variations on this are common where I live. My kids do not use textbooks to the extent we did. I do hope college textbooks are well on their way to extinction by the time my children finish high school.
stuckinred
I’ll post this again for your information
Global Textbook Project
The project will create open content electronic textbooks that will be freely available from a website. Distribution will also be possible via paper, CD, or DVD. Our goal initially is to focus on content development and Web distribution, and we will work with relevant authorities to facilitate dissemination by other means when bandwidth is unavailable or inadequate. The goal is to make textbooks available to the many who cannot afford them.
stuckinred
@ItAintEazy: It’s coming, the state legislature in Georgia is getting a great deal of heat on textbooks prices.
Calming Influence
Sounds like the perfect way to include pictures of humans riding dinosaurs into any Flex science book!
Will
Teachers in K-12 have no power to choose their own textbooks. Those decisions are made at the district and state level and usually involve a good deal of quiet “perks” to the officials and purchasing officers involved from the textbook publishers.
The rationale for this is that the books are chosen to mesh with the testing curriculum, but there’s always been a huge element of graft. It’s a major reason that states, which spend millions producing and printing documents of every sort, haven’t set up their own textbook publishing operations.
It’s a racket.
Joy
I can’t wait to see this trend develop.
I teach 7th grade in a middle school in Florida. For each of my students, the state pays at least $250 for a set of textbooks, estimating about $50 per text. My school has almost 1500 students. Until the past 4 years, Florida purchased new texts about every 8 years in my discipline, language arts. Often the content was mostly the same, but the cover was different.
I have never liked the texts I had to teach from. I would love to be able to build a customized text as this site describes.
I subscribed to CK-12’s mailing list. Thanks for the info.
beltane
@ItAintEazy: A friend of mine is the chair of the English department at a budget strapped public college whose name I will not mention. Her attempts to save her students money by doing this were met with such deep hostility that she just gave up.
jwb
@ItAintEazy: Actually, if it gets a foothold in K-12, the universities will follow. My guess, however, is that the textbook lobbyists will be out in force at the state level to force the buying of “approved” content.
Barring that, I imagine that there will be an attempt by image right holders to bar or at least control the use of copyrighted images in these packets. Acquiring image rights are in fact one of the most substantial costs of textbook production. Layout is another. Paper and distribution, yet another. Digital production and distribution solves the last. With Flexbooks, you are stuck with amateur layout, which can vary, like professional work, from great to crappy—though professionals are more likely to do a good job. Image rights might fall under fair use so long as the use satisfied certain requirements, but I can’t imagine that the copyright holders wouldn’t push back.
jeffreyw
@schrodinger’s cat: Homer is an official member of the family as of the paper signing today. Bea is verrryy slooowly warming to him. I mean by “warming” that she still growls and swats at him, but with less enthusiasm than formerly. Toby was nose to nose with him today without any displays of drama. Not at the playing with him stage, yet. The dogs seem resigned to another cat. Annie licked him for so long yesterday I feared she might inadvertently drown the boy.
Mike B
Open Source could do so much for our education system — not to mention our electoral system, by providing voting software that is transparent and verifiable.
But the governments will never allow that to happen. To teach our children, or permit people to vote, without some oligarchs somewhere making a profit off of it would make Jesus cry.
MikeJ
@Linda Featheringill:
Some sort of ebook reader will be the smallest problem. Within ten years you’ll be able to buy an ebook reader for the current cost of one mass market hardback. As mix points out, right now you can buy one for the cost of two textbooks.
Even if you were talking about purchasing for charity and shipping them to the third world, which would be better, two textbooks or two people sharing 1000 books?
The problem is still going to be getting decent texts approved by school boards. Very, very soon, those third worlders I alluded to above will be getting higher quality info than kids living in Texas.
TaMara (BHF)
Next to the photos of Seth’s dogs, this is my favorite post today and cheered me up immensely. There may be hope for humankind yet.
MikeJ
@jwb: Layout is done as work for hire, so even if you have to pay somebody, it’s still just a one time expense. And very few people get rich doing layout of textbooks, so I can’t imagine it would be a huge expense.
Individual rightsholders can be bought either through appeals to charity, tax cuts, or straight out buying them, and textbook editors could always go with the second best picture they can find if it means free v licensed.
RSR
The compilation aspect might be very useful for teachers like my wife who teach across subject areas, such as ESL.
jwb
@MikeJ: Actually, my daughter’s school (in Texas) doesn’t use the state approved books because, as one teacher put it, “they are terrible.” So apparently there isn’t a state requirement that the schools use the textbooks; they just can’t use a textbook other than the state approved one and so the teachers must make up all their own materials. I doubt whether Flexbooks would pass muster in the state, but I’m not sure. I know the state treats digital materials differently, and my daughter’s school uses those extensively, but I’m not sure how much longer this arrangement will last. On the other hand, since even many Republicans in Texas think the Board of Education is nuts, there is no immediate plan to merge digital oversight with textbook oversight.
TaMara (BHF)
@beltane: I have a friend, who just these week, was ‘let go’ over a book flap. Trying to get the kids the best books on the subject instead of toeing the line
jl
Thanks for the link mistermix, and the Global textbook link, stuckinred.
My bitter personal experience is that any innovation in curriculum is bitterly resisted, at least until a critical mass of ‘teaches’ is on board.
I like the idea of free flexible materials that can be tailored to specific interests of the class. In my experience teaching introductory and intermediate material, getting the students interested in applying theory to specific applications is absolutely critical. If you can’t do that for a good chunk of the course, they won’t learn much, and even if they manage to throw up some correct exam responses, they won’t retain it.
The internet has already made it easier in one way. For some classes I tell the students to skip the bookstore and buy used textbooks for half the price at one of the internet book stores. For small classes, sometimes I can persuade them to get one or two cheap supplemental texts to add more teaching material they can use. Most of the time, recent editions aren’t much different, except for the exercises, and I can hand out exercises from a random edition, or make up my own.
But institutions are so scared of copyright problems, it is difficult, or expensive, to go ‘flex’. I have not been able to give students access to materials under Creative Commons license through the official campus electronic class management system, or published articles either where I could show them it fell under fair use. They just didn’t want to be bothered with it. So I killed some trees and handed out paper copies. That is OK for a small class but not for a big one.
jwb
@MikeJ: Who’s going to pay this one time expense? Who’s going to pay to have the layout done again when the information in the textbook is revised? Who’s going to coordinate all of this work? Who’s going to do the copyright clearances? Pretty soon, you have many people with full time jobs on their hands and no way to pay them.
stuckinred
@jl: Here’s a recent article on the difficulty of introducing the idea of OER’s and some recommendations.
“Convincing faculty, staff, students, friends and family that OER is important is a difficult and sometimes frustrating process. For starters, even describing what OER is can be difficult. If you don’t lose your audience after saying “open educational resources” you usually do immediately after mentioning copyright.”
MikeJ
@jwb: It manages to get done in other open source projects.
jwb
@stuckinred: Well, one major issue could be fixed with a blanket rewrite of the copyright laws making it clear that the production of educational materials distributed without charge would constitute fair use. Of course, that would open such a big hole in the copyright statute that it would never, ever get through Congress.
stuckinred
@jwb: I suggest you just forget the whole thing and let the rest of us idiots work on it.
jwb
@MikeJ: I don’t believe there is another open source program, with the possible exception of Wikipedia, that is even remotely on the same scale as the world textbook market. Now I certainly think there are some texts that could be fairly easily converted to open source, and I’m sure they will be, but see what happens when some school or state gets cited for copyright infringement for using an open source textbook whose images had been properly cleared.
jl
The college textbook market has become a racket. The prices are outrageous. It seems more and more common for the authors themselves to evade copyright issues in an attempt to get their work out to a wider audience, like posting ‘drafts for discussion and review’ of a textbook on their personal websites.
I heard one of the celebrity economists (Stiglitz or Krugman or somebody else, I forget which) talking about how they were yelled at by their publishers after they tried to write forwards and new chapters for pirate editions in China.
A legal way to evade outrageous prices legally, especially in math and stats and intro microeconomics where the core material doesn’t change much. Why buy a new book for a hundred smackers, when you can get one from two or three editions back for between ten and thirty bucks over the internet?
jl
Sad that Wikipedia has to be cited as a source. I guess if your are teaching a subject, you should be expert enough to know what is reliable versus unreliable in an article, but that works for theory and old history, not current events. I guess that shows how scarce resources really are for this stuff.
I always check to see how much of a Wiki entry is just a transcription of an article from a public domain edition of some encyclopedia. If I’m not familiar with a subject, that is the best I can do to check reliability, which is not really good enough.
SiubhanDuinne
So very O/T, for which I apologize, but holy wow! Lookit the ActBlue thermometer move north!
Did Soros stop by?
Ella in New Mexico
@Will:
Part of what is wrong with K-12 education in this country is that it often–not always!!–drives away the brilliant, inquisitive minds that it needs to inspire a love of learning in students with it’s bureaucratic, dogmatic watering down of knowledge. Hire smart teachers, the one’s who LOVED their majors, and let them go at it, teaching with the best of what they learned with– just like we let college profs do. Our kids will NOT be bored, promise.
stuckinred
Hanoi Jane’s attack on sub-commander Cole may have fired up the moderates!
Comrade Kevin
How do hipsters fit into this?
stuckinred
@Comrade Kevin: Maybe they read this?
http://www.bookofjoe.com/images/2007/11/13/steal_this_book.jpg
Martin
Individuals and publishers submit textbooks and a committee evaluates each one to see how well it covers the California state learning outcomes for each grade level and subject. It’s being handled in phases since there is an initial goal to have open source books available for every subject in grades 9-12 (including multiple book options to choose from). There’s also electronic learning resources that the group reviews and manages.
LevelB
As a parent I would welcome this. Not only is it a chance to keep teaching materials updated, it would also weigh a hell of a lot less. I worried about my daughter (who is a shortie-pie) all through High School, that she would throw her back out lugging all those books around.
Text books will eventually be electronic, but the change will not be quick or easy. People simplly do not like change.
stuckinred
@Martin: I’m telling ya it’s coming! Thanks for this.
Martin
Ok, the blockquote got totally fucked (FYWP). So the last paragraph is me, the ones before are CLRN.
Tom Levenson
Not entirely off topic, but did y’all see the NYT article today about the teacher led transformation of reading /language arts teaching at notoriously failing Brockton (MA) High?
Teacher driven, bespoke curriculum, and good results in a traditionally poor community and a school seemingly on the ropes.
A big school too. If ite can be done in Brockton, it can be done anywhere.
The key insight,btw, was that if you integrate the key lessons every part of the day, you can make good things happen, which is not a new insight, but one that seems to be forgotten s lot.
Phoebe
My kid goes to a charter school [yeah yeah BOO HISS but you send your kid to Roosevelt High, which is where she’d go otherwise. I dare you]. They have no money for textbooks; the kids have to check them out and check them in, there are only a few per class. I’m going to show them this at the upcoming parent-teacher conference. I think they’d dig it. It looks great to me.
Martin
Oh, and the California textbooks are Creative Commons licensed. One of the better benefits of open source textbooks is that states can turn to their own teacher base to support the effort, add content, and so on.
Tom Levenson
One minor quibble: Kindles wouldn’t be very good as a vector for these. No color and a screen less sharp than many (not to mention that they’re really small.
A decent ten inch tablet would be OK, though, and there are some intersting and cheaper alternatives to the iPad coming along. (one of w which may be the next gen. iPad, if rumors are to be believed.
Norwegian Shooter
If you think saving money on textbooks is any type of bullet, you’re dreaming. That said, I’m all for this type of variable content – the curriculum is way more important than any textbook. In fact, your high tech idea probably will end the textbook as we know it, rather than just make it cheaper.
BDeevDad
Rice University has been doing this.
http://cnx.org/
Also, HP is testing on-demand printing solutions that will reduce costs.
http://asunews.asu.edu/2010909_bookprinter
BDeevDad
Also, students don’t like current e-Book readers compared to paper because they are difficult to flip between pages and most don’t allow marking up the pages with notes or highlights.
Stan
I’m late to the party here, but the euphemism employed in Texas itself for this kind of thing is “workbook”. The “Independent School Districts” in Texas print so many workbooks many, many employ the efforts of a commercial printer to handle the substantial work load.
Not that I operate digital presses for a commercial print house in Texas or anything.
Stan
I’m late to the party here, but the euphemism employed in Texas itself for this kind of thing is “workbook”. The “Independent School Districts” in Texas print so many workbooks many, many employ the efforts of a commercial printer to handle the substantial work load.
Not that I operate digital presses for a commercial print house in Texas or anything.