Polish Government Funding 'Full Set Of Educational Materials' Available Under CC-BY

from the setting-a-good-example dept

One of the fields that is ripe for disruption by open digital technologies and business models based on abundance is education. That's already starting to happening with growing successes in the areas of open access and free textbooks. Now here's a major win for open educational resources in Poland (via Slashdot):

Polish Prime Minister Office yesterday accepted "Digital School program" with "Digital Textbooks" component included. With 45 million PLN (approx. 15 million USD) funding it has been the biggest governmental Open Educational Resources initiative in Poland so far. The government has decided to fund creating full set of educational materials for grades 4-6 (9-11 year olds). All those resources will be available under CC BY license, which is fully free license according to the Definition of Free Cultural Works.

It sounds like the use of that cc-by license was a close thing:

This draft [of the Digital School program] was accepted by Ministry of Education, but at a later stage of preparations the free licensing requirement was left out. Both Open Education Coalition and Modern Poland Foundation took part in the public consultation process; their comments in support of free licensing were taken on board in the very last minute.

Without that free license, this would have been just another scheme to produce government-funded educational materials. But with the license, those resources can take on a life of their own through re-use, improvement and wide-ranging adaptations. And once teachers, parents and students begin to see what can be done with freely-licensed educational materials that is hard or impossible to match with traditional licensing, the demand for them is likely to grow.

This makes the last-minute acceptance by the Polish government that the materials would be released under the cc-by license, after some apparent reluctance, doubly welcome, since it may well help to trigger the production of further open educational resources both within and beyond Poland.

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Filed Under: disruption, education, poland, textbooks

DailyDirt: Newspapers? Books? We Don't Need Those Where We're Going...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The era of printing words on dead trees might be coming to an end, but that doesn't mean people aren't reading or writing anymore. When e-readers/e-books/tablets finally take over, it should be no surprise that the volume of reading material produced will be much, much greater than there ever was when the latest technology was just the printing press. Here are just a few projects that journalists are playing around with so they can adapt to an all digital future.

• The New York Times has started experimenting with some software projects that might help spread its news. Beta620 is supposed to be "a place for anyone to suggest and collaborate on new ideas and products" -- and maybe it's time for the NYT to split up its online/paper businesses into Netflix/Qwikster-like entities....[url]
• Middle school journalists published their writing online via the Living Textbook project. These 7th graders created a blog -- is this the future of journalism? [url]
• Writing printed textbooks about journalism isn't an easy job. People write them for love or reputation. But even in the ever-changing field of journalism, there are still some truisms like: "know your audience and know how to reach them." [url]
• To discover more interesting journalism-related content, check out what's being reported on StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: aaja, beta620, e-books, e-readers, journalism, textbooks
Companies: new york times

Flat World Knowledge Continues To Innovate: Make Your Own Textbook Platform

from the very-cool dept

We've been impressed by Flat World Knowledge from its very early days. The company offers open source textbooks, and has a business model that really fits with what we talk about: the books are free online (even without registration). But if you want a printed version, or certain additional conveniences, you have to pay. And, as an "open source" textbook company, it's always encouraged "remixing" of the textbooks in question to meet different classroom needs. However, it's now taken things a step further by launching a platform to make it easy to "make your own," by taking a textbook and remixing it, editing it, etc, directly in their platform. As soon as you're done, the new version becomes a "published" version. So a professor can create the "perfect" textbook for his or her class, building on the works already offered. This seems like a very useful offering for lots of professors.

Filed Under: make your own, open source, textbooks
Companies: flat world knowledge

Random House Invests In Creative Commons 'Free' Textbook Publisher Flat World Knowledge

from the are-they-getting-it? dept

We've written a few times in the past about Flat World Knowledge, a textbook publisher that really seems to have embraced the sort of business models we discuss. It gives away digital versions (the infinitely abundant kind) of its textbooks for free, but charges for the scarcities, such as printed copies. It puts the books up under a Creative Commons license as well, letting anyone improve upon the works as well. Thus, it's interesting to see that established publishers are taking notice. Apparently Random House has now invested in the company. Of course, some may point out that Random House doesn't publish textbooks, but perhaps it can learn a thing or two about how FWK has embraced openness and free as a part of a larger business model.

Filed Under: investment, open source, textbooks
Companies: flat world knowledge, random house

Colleges Experimenting With Bulk-Buying E-Textbooks... And Forcing Students To Pay Up

from the bye-bye-used-book-market dept

We've pointed out in the past how the college textbook market is ripe for disruption. You have a market where books are ridiculously overpriced by publishers, knowing that students are often compelled to purchase the product. As book prices have continued to rise, apparently some universities are experimenting with bulk buying licenses to ebook textbooks and simply charging the students a fee. The schools all say they're doing this to reduce textbook fees -- and I'm sure they mean well. But the very fact that many publishers seem to be jumping on this as well suggests that they know damn well, in the end, this will work out well for them. First, it forces all the students to "buy" the books at full price. It wipes out the secondary market (which many students make use of in selling their books back), and even the case of the student who just checks the book out of the library. Also, we've seen in places like Canada how a simple mandatory student fee can start out low, and then suddenly jump massively. It's good that some universities want to lower book fees, and making use of ebooks is a possible solution, but mandatory fees seem ripe for abuse.

Filed Under: ebooks, education, textbooks, universities

Answers To Textbook Questions: Copyright Violation?

from the oh-come-on... dept

Just a few weeks ago, in writing about the pointlessness of "derivative rights" in copyright law, I questioned the "example" of an answer key for a textbook, noting that there was no reason to have it covered by copyright:

But, to me, this seems ridiculous on a basic common sense reading. I can't fathom how anyone can (at least honestly) claim that copyright really has an idea/expression dichotomy and then say that Section 106(2) makes any sense at all. What's wrong if someone else wants to produce an answer guide to an original textbook? Why would it ever make policy sense to deny such a right? In most cases, you would assume that the original creator of the textbook would have a better understanding of the topics and the answers, so an "unauthorized" answer key is unlikely to be as valuable. But why should it be prevented? On top of that, if the answer key is just answering questions, then how could it be infringement? Those answers are accurate "facts" responding to questions. If an answer key is infringing, then wouldn't that make student answers infringing as well?

Apparently, though, others don't agree -- and they're the folks who make the rules. Michael Scott points us to the news that a court has ruled that answers to a textbook questions are a derivative work, and someone who was selling such answers online was infringing on the copyright of the textbook publisher. This still makes no sense to me. First, there's no "copying." Second, isn't answering a question a "factual" statement? How can answering a question be copyright infringement? From a policy and common sense perspective it makes no sense. But, that's what you get with the way copyright law is these days. It's not about the incentive to create, but about stifling competition and free speech. In the meantime, I can't wait to see the next student sued for copyright infringement for answering his homework questions.

Filed Under: answer key, copyright, derivative works, textbooks

Open Source Textbooks Gaining Traction

from the very-cool dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about the very cool business model being used by "open source textbook" company Flat World Knowledge. Basically, you could read the books for free online, but there were also other ways to get the book in other formats where you would have to pay. The company seemed to be gaining traction lately, with a nice round of funding, and now it's being reported that 40,000 students at over 400 colleges and universities will be using Flat World texts this fall. That sound you hear? It's an old stodgy market getting disrupted.

Related to this, Slashdot points out that here in California, where the state was running a free digital textbook competition, the results showed that some of the open solutions won the competition and were considered better reference materials than the ones provided by big publishers. In fact, the e-texts from a small company called CK-12 seemed to do quite well -- 3 of the 4 online texts that were deemed to meet 100% of the state's standards all came from CK-12.

Filed Under: open source, textbooks
Companies: ck-12, flat world knowledge

Texas Schools May No Longer Be Forced To Buy Physical Textbooks Just To Use Digital Ones

from the good-for-them dept

A few months back, a reader named JT sent in the news that school districts in Texas were being forced to buy physical textbooks, even if they only wanted to use digital ones. Apparently, some publishers were claiming that they had to "bundle" the digital textbook with a physical one, and that meant that schools were receiving shipments of physical textbooks, which were then locked up in a warehouse never to be used. That may be changing, as the state is moving forward on a law that would put electronic textbooks on the "approved list" of books that schools could buy. That said, I'm still wondering why the schools that wanted the e-texts (such as the one listed that issues every student a laptop) didn't just team up with other schools to give them the physical books for "free." After all, if they were forced to "buy" them, couldn't they give them away to others as well?

Filed Under: ebooks, texas, textbooks

Copyright Lobbyists Threaten To Sue Book Renting Firm In Finland

from the P2P-is-not-Pirate2Pirate dept

A bunch of folks have sent in this story about a copyright lobbying group in Finland that is threatening to sue a website that helps people rent textbooks, oddly calling it "The Pirate Bay for textbooks." That makes no sense if you understand what the site actually does. It's not hosting ebooks. It's literally connecting people who own textbooks to others, so they can rent their physical textbooks. It's difficult to see how that could be considered copyright infringement at all, let alone anything similar to The Pirate Bay. But, in this day and age, where the copyright lobbyists see almost anything as infringement, perhaps it's no surprise they'd freak out about this as well.

Filed Under: books, copyright, finland, renting, textbooks

Open Source Text Book Company Flat World Knowledge Gets Funded

from the disruption-on-the-way dept

We wrote about Flat World Knowledge, the open source textbook provider earlier this year, in noting how the textbook market was ripe for disruption. It's great to find out that the company has now received $8 million in funding -- which seems to go against a rash of recent stories from publications about how companies building business models with a big "free" or "open source" component would have trouble raising money these days. FWK, of course, is using free properly -- as a part of a larger business model where scarcities are charged for, but infinite goods are given away freely. Who knows if it will succeed, but it's nice to see the vote of confidence from investors.

Filed Under: disruption, open source, price, textbooks
Companies: flat world knowledge