Open Education Conference - Open Textbooks

Jennifer Morgan's picture
Open Textbooks is a great new teaching technology. As a teacher I had the experience of working with online textbooks, this type of technology has its pros and cons. After reading the information at the Open Textbook website (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_textbooks) I have gained a greater appreciation for this type of technology.
 
Several benefits of online textbooks include
  • Helping those schools who do not have the resources to afford books.
  • Updated books can be immediately accessed
  • Textbook adoption will be a much easier process
  • Teachers and students can use multiple books to teach/learn from
Several drawbacks of online textbooks include
  • Schools and students must have access to computers and the internet at home and school
  • Teachers do not have the benefit of having students work from a book during class unless they computers available in their classroom
  • Online  books have limited availability in all subject areas
  • Some students will have difficulties reading information online
I think open textbooks is a great idea and is the wave of the future. Although most books are free now or have small fee associated with them, I believe that as the demand of online books increases so will the cost. Publishers won't have to incur the expense of printing but they will need to pay authors, editors, etc. As I see it now the cost of printed books is offsetting the cost of online open textbooks.  As a technology teacher I am very excited for the day when open textbooks are available for software programs. I find it difficult to justify purchasing textbooks when I know that the software will be changing more often than the every five to seven years our district does textbook adoption.
 
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Submitted by Jennifer Morgan on Mon, 09/29/2008 - 12:45pm

Disclaimer

Any opinions expressed here, except as specifically noted, are those of the individual authors or commenters and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the Department of Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences, the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services, or Utah State University.