Curriculum Materials Center Interest Group: ALAO: Wiki

6/09/2006

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:

More about Wikibooks:

Articles about Wikibooks:

CMCIG Goals

To address mutual issues or problems related to Curriculum Materials Centers that can be discussed in a group setting for the purpose of generating ideas and solutions.
To share ideas and information regarding Curriculum Materials Centers by sponsoring or co-sponsoring programs and workshop.
To provide opportunity for networking between CMC's through the publication of a directory of Curriculum Materials Centers.
To promote the interests of CMC and CMC personnel through contributions to the ALAO Newsletter.
To support continued professional development of CMC personnel to insure high standards of service to education programs in the state (Ohio).