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

AACE Digital Library

Does anyone have experience using this partiular database? It is also known by an additional or new title as Ed/ITLib: Education and information technology library. We currently have a trial subscription and I am interested in feedback.

Feel free to post here or to the CMCIG list.

The Impact of New Tools on Teaching

HigherEd Blog Con 2006 is currently hosting an online blog conference described as:

"a fully web-based eventfocused on how new online communications technologies and social tools are changing Higher Education. Except as noted, presentations are offered free of charge."

The conference is a month long event focusing upon four specific tracts of presentations including; teaching, library & information science resources, admissions, alumni relations, and communications & marketing, and websites & web development.

Of interest today is a presentation: "Legal Issues in Podcasting in the Traditional Classroom" by Elizabeth Townsend Gard and Colette Vogele, both from Stanford Law School. It is available in two parts as a quicktime movie and as a powerpoint presentation.