The Growing Adoption of Creative Commons Textbooks
from US News & World Report:
Cable Green doesn't have to look very far to find an example of an education system weighed down by what he considers a bloated and inefficient textbook industry. The director of global learning for Creative Commons simply points to his home state of Washington. "My state spends $130 million per year buying textbooks," he says. "We only have a million public school kids in the state, so we're spending $130 per kid per year." Because each book is expected to last half a decade, the kids aren't permitted to keep them or write in them. The books are only available in one format, paper, and are sometimes seven to 10 years out of date. If one of Green's kids loses a textbook, as a parent Green is expected to fork over the money to replace it.
A superior alternative, he believes, would be easy to execute. "Instead of spending $130 million a year getting those outcomes, what if the state put up $100 million in one time money," he suggests. "We have 12 grades and eight textbooks per grade, so what if we put up a $1 million (request for proposal) for each book, and anyone can reply. The professors from the best universities can reply. McGraw Hill can reply. It's an open RFP, but the conditions are that the books are licensed under Creative Commons because they're paid for with taxpayer money."
Under this model, the intellectual property that results from these purchases would be owned by the public. In addition to being free to download online, the schools can print up paper versions for less than $5 per copy. Perhaps more importantly, the kids, once they complete the grade, would be permitted to keep the books, using them in the future if they need to. From there, the state would only have to spend approximately $10 million a year to ensure all the textbooks are updated with timely information. "It would save the state $120 million a year, and we'd actually have resources that our kids can use," Green says. "This isn't difficult."
The Creative Commons license celebrated its 10-year anniversary in December. And though the state of Washington has yet to adopt such a reform, several governments, both in the U.S. and across the globe, have passed and implemented similar policies as they've struggled to address the rising costs plaguing both lower and higher education systems. This movement, often referred to as open education resources (OER), threatens to upend what many reformers consider an anachronistic textbook industry, one that's ripe for disruption and change. ...............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/01/17/the-growing-adoption-of-creative-commons-textbooks
= new reply since forum marked as read
higher technology use in schools leading to some being left out. However, in this case, I think we could easily overcome that. For one thing, to tell you the truth, even LARGE books, depending on format, aren't HUGE downloads, so you wouldn't need the highest internet speeds, such as you do for streaming movies. So, I'm thinking that could be something that the school could host/provide. I think the idea of an e-reader, assigned to each student, could be workable. They could download the books while at school, take their assigned e-reader home, and still have access to the material without an internet connection.
I guess what I like about this idea so much is that content could stay current much more easily. With the way the world changes, that's a pretty big benefit, IMHO. Plus, I know since I've jumped on the e-reader bandwagon, I have read so much more, because I have all my current reads with me. I think that would be great for kids who have a commute to and from school -- flip out the reader if they are board and get started on some reading. Ok, maybe now I'm being too optimistic. 
