http://twitter.com/bookmaid - RIT Rochester Institute of Technology has their own text book exchange on Twitter :) - Susan Beebe

Obama's chief technology dude (can't remember his name) headed a project like this before taking the cabinet position. The folks at Buzz Out Loud (@acedtect @Mollywood @raygun01) would know about this as he recorded a message for their 1000th episode last week and we were reminded of the program (somewhere on the east coast). - Kevin Arth

paul - Literacybridge.org is a great non-profit focusing on this issue. there are numerous issues here in terms of language localization, cost of print and transport of books, ability to have access to and understand content, etc. many textbook programs also assume one basic fact that is not necessarily true - literacy. although i am a fan of building schools and education, the reality is that many poor communities cannot wait 15-20 years for literacy rates to rise. they need immediate information. i like literacy bridge because they are developing an open source content PLATFORM that allows for local and relevant distribution of information in a manner that is readily consumable (in-language and targeted to a particular issue - ex: subsistence farmers in Rwanda have different issues than those in Uganda. immediate impact - scalable results. - Joyce

IMO, most textbooks betray a massive bias of quantity over quality, in part because quantity is confused with depth. If professors were doing their jobs (some are of course), they'd concentrate on distilling out the key points rather than partake of the laziness/spoils of the rigged textbook market... most textbooks are the equivalent of a public works program. - Alex Schleber

I am planning on using an open-source book for the intro programming class I am teaching next fall at Colorado University - http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpy... - Robert Felty

Doesn't the Wikimedia Foundation have a project for open source textbooks? EDIT: Why yes, yes they do, although YMMV. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki... - Chris, Taskerrific Guy

I agree with Alex. Sometimes a good curriculum or at least a lesson plan is more important than a textbook. That's why I think a great project is Curriki.org. It is an online community, where educational resources can be created, shared and re-used in an open license environment. They concentrate mainly on K-12 curriculum, however it seems like it can be a great tool to share the open-source textbooks. I find it great that all of these resources are in one place and their technology allows the teachers and educators to collaborate - http://www.curriki.org - Maciek Zielinski

Paul I agree that textbooks are way too expensive. As you may know, because of the way textbooks get adopted by some states, most of the kids in the country end up learning from books that were specifically designed to get approved in Texas and California. So how's this for an idea of how to give away your "lots of money": fund the development of a complete set of textbooks through an open source platform. I do a lot of work with a group another reader recently mentioned, called Curriki (www.curriki.org), which was originally started by Scott McNealy at Sun but is now an independent nonprofit. The group is gaining some traction, but it's still small and could use the boost. The site lets teachers build playlists of curriculum just like music playlists, but these are chapters of a textbook. It’s all web-based and open source, so teachers can edit the material to differentiate instruction for different types of learners and if they don't like a particular unit, they can just swap it out for one they like more. Funding the development of a complete set of K-12 open source textbooks would let schools save or reallocate hundreds of millions of dollars, not to mention the impact it would have in the developing world. Plus it would empower teachers to be an active part of creating the curriculum they teach. Just think of the implications from a project like this 5 or 10 years from now. The site is www.curriki.org. Peter Levy - Peter

Flat World Knowledge: Check it out: Professors donate time to produce textbooks. Students get them for free. - http://www.flatworldknowledge.com - scott willeke

Note the importance of audio to building literacy - http://literacybridge.org/talking... - Ed Dodds

Consider also that if a person "open schools" all the way up through university material, there is no way to CLEP a degree. The US Department of Education should issue guidelines for the degrees where this makes sense. - Ed Dodds

...i suspect that the textbook business is terrifically profitable for publishers, and that they'll fight any move to displace them tooth and nail. - .LAG liked that

There's also http://ck12.org/ They make it easy for teachers to put together custom textbooks by reusing existing pieces of content (chapters and such). - Meryn Stol

The South African "Free High School Text Book" project has a reasonable reputation: http://www.fhsst.org/. There are a lot of free non-textbook resources available through OERCommons (http://www.oercommons.org/) - Nick Lothian

@Peter - curriki looks pretty interesting. Do you have any kind of harvesting facilities? - Nick Lothian

@Nick. Yes. Curriki provides several ways to export materials from the site. Each of the 30,000 free and open source resources can be downloaded on to your computer, where they can be printed. You can also get the XML data for any resource. In both cases, you just have to mind the specifics of the Creative Commons license requirements. You can also embed a widget for any learning resource you find on the site. Lots of folks that are using Moodle and other learning management systems are active Curriki users (e.g. http://www.curriki.org/xwiki...) (via http://ff.im/5WLEP) - Peter

Here is a project that I have tried to contribute information to and one of my websites is actually listed there because at their request, it was easier for me to start a site of my own with the info I gave them, than for them to list all the book titles and links I provided them with. http://textbookrevolution.org - April Russo (app103)

Curriki is a knowledge exchange which is the 21st century textbook. EVERCHANGING, always adding, always collaborating. When I see this, I don't just see worksheets... I see customizable games- good easy to change content. I see LEARNING ACTIVITIES, best practices, I see collaboration, I see a whole curriculum FOR TEACHER INSTRUCTION- on learning how to use and implement different technologies in the classroom. I can see dynamic models of math word problems- worked out in algebraic form, or in a math-by-model-or BOTH. I see videos- cartoons on many topics.I see kids learning to read every way that there is- and it's ALL useable, accessible and there are user communities to exchange ideas. We're talking differentiated instruction. However, classes and/or groups of students can be learning on a given topic and no matter HOW they learn, or whether or not they have a 'harder aspect of the topic', that while they're learning, they learn to turn to each other and each other's strengths. They learn to be a team- which produces confidence in themselves, each other and teaches how things really work. I see that when this money is released to curriki, that it will be such a success, and so many teachers, students... of our WORLD population, will utilize and come to depend on the reesources and ideas generated by this collaboration, that more monies will be donated. It will be a starting point for many new, emerging technologies to be tried and tested everywhere... with REAL feedback, where problems can be fixed, and new directions come of it. I see this developing into a LOT more than just an open-sourced textbook project. I see this a being the groundbreaker for what education should be and NOW can be ... due to the wired and wireless technologies. No more barriers and common goals throughout the world. Friends and favorite classmates and teachers ALL OVER the globe. A textbook today- can be on a cd/dvd distributed by a textbook company with a bottom line. It's time that the... more... - Sharnon Johnston-Robinett

Ditto on Flatworld, but @scott, profs are not donating their time for free -- basic web-version of text is made for free, with chapters, learning materials, etc. available for fee-based download -- don't have to use the fee-based material, but is very nice to see business model that offers a good hybrid between paper-only and web-only content. In my classes, students often print out material because they want to work on their computers and have something "hard" to refer to. - Mickey Schafer

Check out my new blogs on Curriki, we address this issue and hope the community will make sure we are sustainable. - Bobbi Kurshan

http://www.cnx.org and http://ocw.mit.edu - joe is... from iPod