Wiki Books

Really, K-12 classroom textbooks. I have read articles about students considering electronic texts more cost effective for college courses, but have to admit not ever considering Wiki's to replace K-12 textbooks. This option (innovation?) seems to be growing as districts struggle to balance budgets against their the need for updated textbooks. Case in point, the California Open Source Textbook Project's K-12 World History Project (COSTP). The project is part of WikiBooks, the open-content textbook collection of "sister project" Wikipedia.

The COSTP home page states: "It is important to note that COSTP's mandate does not replace printed textbooks; it simply makes them less expensive to produce; and, in doing so creates many additional benefits, economies, and efficiencies that will fully leverage California's activities in the K-12 textbook publishing domain."

How will projects of this sort influence CMC's and their curriculum textbook collections?

More about the textbook project:

• Welcome to the California Open Source Textbook Project
• COSTP World History Project
• COSTP World History Project: Contents

More about Wikibooks:

• Wikibooks
• Wikibook FAQ's

Articles about Wikibooks:

• eSchool News Online: Wikibooks to offer free eTexts for education
• Philadelphia Inquirer: Imagine Textbooks in a new form
• ZDNet Education: Watch out for Wikibooks

ALAO News Blog

Hot off the presses, and the ALAO leadership retreat, the ALAO news blog! A press release will be issued shortly detailing the mission, vision, and policies of this newest venture. Below is a blurb from the spring press release detailed to the board.

"The blog will be a forum for information about workshops and conferences sponsored by ALAO and its interest groups. The blog may include summaries of events, pictures, comments, and links to related items."