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BC Open Textbooks is an initiative started by the province of British Columbia in Canada. It is open textbooks adapted and created by BC faculty. It's difficult to tell which texts are complete and ready for use as Tony Bates incomplete text that I created another post about appears on the same page with complete texts (eg Chemistry, Biology Geography.) All the texts can be modified through Creative Commons licensing. This project has been creating concern for publishers who stand to loose business in BC and other provinces if the texts get adopted outside of BC. Initially, the project was focused on creating "a collection of open textbooks aligned with the top 40 highest-enrolled subject areas in the province. A second phase was announced in the spring of 2014 to add 20 textbooks targeting trades and skills training." Initially they looked for existing Creative Commons books they could adapt and they adapted 8 textbooks. From inception to fall 2014, 2244 students have used their open texts for a savings of $353,000 or $157 per student. The aim is to reach 200,000 students annually so they are at .6% and save each $900-$1500/year, still quite a way to go. Wondering how much this project is costing taxpayers, I googled and found this article http://www.ousa.ca/2013/04/24/textbooks/ which claims $600k-$1m/year. So the government has spent $1.2 - $2 million to save students $350k over the past two years. Still a long way to go to break even. In summary, 65 texts published, 45 adoptions, 2244 student users, for a savings of $353k to date. If this was a traditional textbook publishing company, they'd soon be out of business if they weren't already.

Thank for sharing, I believe that the conclusions that this article leaves us are not surprising, although yes very interesting. "Recently, the Babson Survey Research Group and Pearson conducted a survey of nearly 8,000 faculty members in higher education to find out more about how faculty are using social media. While we often post infographics showing trends or results from specific studies here at Edudemic, I found the results of this survey particularly interesting - perhaps because they were so different from what I expected." Julia Echeverria

You are so, so lucky. Here in South Africa, we are regressing, not even looking at online textbooks, but trying to reduce textbooks to only one per subject. The textbook crisis: http://mg.co.za/article/2013-08-23-00-south-africas-hidden-textbook-crisis and the regressive "solution" http://mg.co.za/article/2014-10-10-single-textbook-option-slammed. It is very frustrating for me, knowing all the possibilities, but not having any agency to get through to the authorities here.Llibraries are also failing horribly in advocating for the solutions that ARE available.

"What solutions might we find within our community to solve the problem of rising textbook prices? In our latest issue brief, Nancy Maron, Ithaka S+R's Program Director for Sustainability and Scholarly Communications, looks at recent trends in textbook publishing and suggests that collaborations between university presses and academic libraries might yield a new breed of textbook more aligned to the needs of faculty and students."

About MathTV Our History The current version of MathTV.com was started in 2008. That summer, Mr. McKeague hired six of his students to help him proofread and error check a college algebra book he was working on. Because of the extremely positive attitude of his students toward improving the book they were proofreading, Mr. McKeague decided to see how the students would do in the studio. With a little coaching they actually did very well. In 2009, we started adding online versions of three of Mr. McKeague's textbooks to the website, and experimenting with building an online homework system. In 2010 we published the first print versions of those textbooks with our new publishing company XYZ Textbooks, and we officially launched our online homework and gradebook software with XYZ Homework. As of now over 80 schools use our books.

It's great idea to start MathTV.com. I will show to my kids too

University of the Witwatersrand second-year actuarial science student Awakhiwe Kona was awarded a R4?000 bursary by the Gauteng province to buy textbooks, but because they are so expensive he has not been able to afford to buy all the ones he needs. "My [six] textbooks were expensive, so I didn't buy [the] other textbooks [I needed].

Relevant article on the cost of textbooks and the rise of open education Before entering the classroom of an intro-level economics course, students get a real-life experience with the subject - the required textbook costs $290 on Amazon. And that's just one book for one class. Textbook costs have surged 1,500 percent since 1970, according to the Economist magazine.

"But it's been over 15 years since the first openly licensed educational materials were published, and major publishers have yet to publish a single textbook based on pre-existing OER. Why?"

College textbooks cost too much - and something needs to be done about it, according to a report from the advocacy group U.S. PIRG. The College Board estimates that the average student in this country spends around $1,200 a year on books and supplies. A single book can cost as much as $200. This is why we need open textbooks!

More on open textbook 

This is an open textbook that Tony Bates is writing as part of the BC Open Textbook initiative. The topic is Teaching in the Digital Age. It's interesting as it's a work in progress and Tony has been blogging parts of the book to gain feedback as he is writing it. It's a topic that I am interested in. I do think it could use a substantial amount of copy editing, which it may yet receive, as may inconsistencies jump out at me in the TOC alone. I will be continuing to monitor this one as it develops further into his finished book.

Learning and teaching will be severely damaged, many publishing companies will close and thousands of jobs will be lost if the government implements its proposal to remove any choice in which textbooks schools use. Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga published the policy proposal in the September 4 Government Gazette and invited public comment on it.

A source of some open text books with a interesting back story that should act as a warning about open--they are all now ex-open text books. After 2012 the publisher decided to abandon the CC/open textbook model and shifted the licensing on all their books. However, you can not revoke a CC license retroactively, so copies of the books downloaded prior to the change are still CC. But if the publisher no longer provides access to them, they disappear from CC circulation and access--luckily in this case, some one saved the CC versions and makes them available on this website. thanks!

Seriously useful! Indeed!

Wow, this collection is extensive, and the content seems good too! I'm so glad that someone was motivated enough to make these available according to their original licenses -- but it feels a bit bittersweet as well they had to resort to guerilla tactics to keep them available. It does make me wonder -- why did the publishing company decide to start charging for their textbooks? Was the previous model unprofitable?

The year I graduated high school, the media was overrun with speculation about a new technology set to shake the foundation of the world. What was it? We weren't told, exactly. All we knew was that code name "IT" was so revolutionary that we would have to rebuild our cities from scratch.

It is interesting that whenever a new innovation is introduced, the current one is declared dead before its final time arrives. Books in whatever format are appealing to different audiences for various reasons. To think that the introduction of e-books was going to lead to a declaration of war on printed books is laughable. Books will be with us for as long as we are still in this world. Does format matter? only time will tell.

Long back Lancaster wrote about paperless society but still we are heavily depending on paper only. Technology has fast evolved. First we talked about e-libraries then virtual libraries and now contemplating cloud based libraries. Many technologies have come and gone but paper is still ubiquitous.

Open Textbook development in BC, Canada.

Francesca Villette THE government plans to introduce a schooling policy to help redress educational injustices and inequalities of the past by having pupils across the country using the same textbook and study material.

This library is a tool to help instructors find affordable, quality textbook solutions. All textbooks in this library are complete and openly licensed. I found the site difficult to search. The available books are not useful for the courses that I teach but the site is probably useful for numerous courses and educational levels.

The open educational resources model, including textbooks, has emerged as a response to rising text prices, a need for greater access to high-quality learning materials, the proliferation of e-reader devices, and a trend in publishing toward electronic media. Many contend that educational resources should be open and that instructional models increasingly depend on open content.

CK-12 Foundation provides a library of free online textbooks, videos, exercises, flashcards, and real world applications for over 5000 concepts from arithmetic to history

Education South Africa - February 2013 With the 2012 Limpopo textbook delivery saga, and the rising cost of printed textbooks, one public school has decided to take a bold step into the future and convert to using E-books for all their learners.

This sounds like a good idea but then the students must have the tablets and computers to be able to read the books. Unfortunately I don't think this will work in many of the poorer rural schools that need it most.

The great idea of this project could be used by every educational organization, as the article say, the cost are clearly low.

This project, while still in early development, will help those interested in historical (read: ancient) languages learn them outside of the traditional instructional method. Students will gain proficiency in languages through engaging with real materials rather than inaccessible textbooks and through relevant tasks that engage them more deeply in the learning process. It's also part of a larger ongoing project called the Open Philology Project which reflects the growing trend towards more experiential and open models of student learning in the study of ancient languages.

This blog post gives a short but important overview about what is a MOOC. The author also gives an insight into the MOOC design model showing what to consider when planning a MOOC. What is even more interesting is the fact, that this post is just a chapter of an open textbook "Teaching in in Digital Age".