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A year and a half ago, the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) released the first 42 of Washington state's 81 high-enrollment courses under the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY). Now they have released the remaining 39 under the same terms, which means that anyone, anywhere, including the state's 34 public community and technical colleges and four-year colleges and universities, can use, customize, and distribute the course materials.

Just in time for Creative Commons' 10th birthday celebration of its license suite, the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) announced a 3.5 million dollar grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a new program - Integrated Digital English Acceleration (I-DEA) - that will help adult English language learners improve their language skills while simultaneously providing career and college readiness training through technology-based tools and resources.

A state-funded project to create low-cost digital textbooks for community-college courses has saved students about $5 million in just a few years, advocates say.

Rep. Hans Zeiger wants to cap it at $100 per book. He introduced House Bill 1958, which would restrict professors from requiring books above that amount unless no comparable lower-cost material is available. The bill would apply to community and technical colleges as well as four-year state universities.