Amazon, Apple, Google and many other tech giants have been opening online bookstores with little regard for open source digital textbooks.
Many universities, including MIT and Carnegie Mellon, post course lectures online for free use. A New York Times article last year explained some of the barriers to applying the same approach to textbooks.
For one thing, the textbook authors must agree to have them distributed online without charging royalties — something that may work well in the software world, where engineers often work on projects while keeping a day job, but typically avoided by writers who put their sweat equity into one book at a time. Also, books for K-12 classrooms must meet state standards, and most states don’t have procedures in place for approving open source textbooks.
But there’s no arguing that having at least a few open source textbooks (even when purchased through companies like Flat World Knowledge that charge for downloading or printing them) would cut down on the average $900 per year that the average student spends on textbooks. Online School has compiled this infographic to explain the cost savings. Excerpts from Mashable
Bookmarking should be an essential feature with on line materials. One has to appreciate WikiMedia’s development of being able to bookmark at major paragraph headings, rather than just forcing the user to go through a whole chapter (or module), which usually contains many major headings, to locate information. With cut and paste you loss the context of the information.
On an average a student spends $900 per year on textbooks. I believe this cost can be brought down significantly by shifting to open source textbooks. #Flexbooks offered by #CK-12 foundation can help students save money and have better learning experience.