Will this model work for publishers? Can we obtain the rights to distribute electronically some chapters of textbooks and only pay for the portions we use? An interesting question..
With California in dire straits, the governor hopes free textbooks could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
So how are we going to pay the people who do the work of creating these "free" textbooks? If we could agree on content, perhaps school districts could work together and write the books and make them available through a creative commons license.
JB Schramm has touched on a key data point for high school graduates that most school districts do not have the capacity to explore - How are your graduates doing in college? Are they prepared? Do they stay?
Google said that it has opened to third-party developers the programming interfaces to Google Earth, the company’s 3-D visualization software. That will allow developers to embed Google Earth on their Web sites, much like they already can do with Google Maps.