The San Francisco Chronicle’s June 3rd article, “Free digital book plan costly, educators say“, is a well intentioned but misguided attempt to think deeply about the Governor’s Free Digital Textbook Initiative. Unfortunately, the article’s author fails to consider a variety of factors: What is the current state of textbook publishing?; What are the factors that are bringing digital textbooks, particularly open source books, to the forefront?;  What are the benefits and concerns about using digital textbooks in schools? and How will a technology-enhanced or delivered textbook benefit teaching and learning?

I’d like to address the author’s primary thesis: “Critics said any savings from free online books would be lost to the technology expenses.”

The Free Digital Textbook Initiative is currently focusing only on those free textbooks that can be downloaded, meaning that school districts have the option to print the textbook in book form or place it on some type of e-reader, which would include laptops, mobile devices, or a commercial e-reader such as the Amazon Kindle. While printing out a digital text may seem to be taking a step backwards, districts would save money by not having to purchase a book from a commercial vendor. A commercial textbook can cost more than $100, but districts could print an 800 page book for less than $35, which despite the Chronicle’s criticism, is a substantial amount in today’s climate. Every dollar saved as a result of this initiative is a dollar better utilized by our schools.

Free Digital Textbook Initiative Open Source CLRN

California’s free digital textbook reviews have started quickly out of the gate. Within 24 hours of the press release which called for submissions, four content developers created publisher accounts and a fifth has expressed interest. In addition, the first submission of free digital textbook for review has been completed.

We should note, though, that of the four publishers who created accounts, all of them were known to CLRN and had been contacted by us on May 28th. CLRN has not heard from any content developers who were not on our “radar.” Below is the current list of players:

David Guichard: http://whitman.mathematics.googlepages.com

CLRN is proud that Mr. Guichard is the first publisher to submit a textbook for review. We’ll be reviewing his textbook, Calculus in a few weeks. David is a professor at Whitman College in Washington state.

CK-12: http://www.ck12.org

We’re hoping that CK-12 will be submitting their geometry, biology, and physics textbooks.

Benjamin Crowell: http://www.lightandmatter.com

Mr. Crowell, a physics teacher at Fullerton College in California, has two books we’re interested in seeing: Calculus and Physics.

Hugues Gosse: http://stratus.astr.ucl.ac.be/textbook/index.html

Mr. Gosse, from the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium, will be submitting his book, “Introduction to Climate Dynamics and Climate Modelling”, which addresses many of the Earth Sciences standards.

Free Digital Textbook Initiative Open Source CLRN

While I’ve written at length about Clayton Christensen’s Disrupting Class book, another disruptive innovation on the horizon is digital textbooks and a related disruption, open source digital textbooks. On May 6th, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger launched an initiative to make California the first state in the nation to offer schools free, open-source digital textbooks for high school students. The purpose of the Free Digital Textbook Initiative is to provide students, teachers, and parents free digital textbooks for high schools that cover the course content in mathematics and science.

CLRN is proud to be a partner in this innovative initiative.

Today, May 27th, Governor Schwarzenegger, Superintendent O’Connell, and the State Board of  Education  announced a call for submission of free digital textbooks. Between today and June 15th, CLRN will work with content developers of open source digital textbooks to submit their downloadable textbooks for review. While several wiki-type textbooks are available on the web, which contain interactive links, this first phase of the project will be limited to those resources that can be downloaded. Mathematics subjects that will be reviewed include geometry, algebra II, trigonometry, and calculus. Science textbooks will include physics, chemistry, biology/life sciences, and earth sciences.

Beginning in late June, CLRN’s mathematics review site, coordinated by Jim Shaver, and CLRN’s science review site, coordinated by Cathy Dickerson, will commence reviews, which are expected to be completed by July 23rd.

You might be surprised how many open source textbooks are out there.

CK-12,  <http://ck12.org> a California non-profit, specializes in creating high-quality, open source textbooks. They’ve created a new model, the Flexbook, where users can customize the content in their books. The Commonwealth of Virginia recently took advantage of CK-12 by creating the “21st Century Physics” Flexbook to supplement their adopted physics text.

The Free High School Science Textbook project < http://www.fhsst.org/ > is a University of Cape Town, South Africa initiative that has created physics, chemistry, and mathematics books for high school students.

Textbook Revolution < http://www.textbookrevolution.org > is a student-run site dedicated to increasing the use of free educational materials by teachers and professors. The volunteers have assembled links to a variety of textbooks which are organized by subject. Users may also search by keyword or browse by copyright license, including public domain, Creative Commons, and All Rights Reserved.

Merlot, short for Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching, is run by the California State University Chancellor’s Office. Merlot < http://www.merlot.org/ > has compiled a list of more than 200 open source college textbooks, many of which are appropriate for high school classrooms.

These are just a few of the projects that collect links to open source textbooks. I’m certain we’ll discover more as textbook submissions progress.

open source textbook California CLRN Textbook Revolution CK12 MERLOT review