The Future of High School and College Textbooks Resides in Digital Textbooks or Flexbooks

California's governor, Arnold S. is challenging the state's school districts to start thinking and using ebooks, digital books or flexbooks. The state is bleeding under this long recession. Using digital books will save a lot of money. But will all children be able to use digital books? Do they have access to computer. Many educators are saying it is a lofty goal that will take time to happen. What this will do is that the educational divide is going to be larger. Rich kids who can afford computers and Internet connections will be ahead of the class.

At a high school near you, many students will have access to many English and Science textbooks. Many college students have already had this access for many classes. Now many superintendents are encouraging some teachers to develop lesson plans through power print presentations.

According the NYtimes, there is a future in digital textbooks. "Pearson, the nation’s largest one, submitted four texts in California, all of them already available online, as free supplements to their texts.

“We believe that the world is going digital, but the jury’s still out on how this will evolve,” said Wendy Spiegel, a Pearson spokeswoman. “We’re agnostic, so we’ll provide digital, we’ll provide print, and we’ll see what our customers want.”

Most of the digital texts submitted for review in California came from a nonprofit group, CK-12 Foundation, that develops free “flexbooks” that can be customized to meet state standards, and added to by teachers. Its physics flexbook, a Web-based, open-content compilation, was introduced in Virginia in March."

OpenTextBooks Resources and Links: Textbook Publishers Are Under Pressure by Textbooks Torrent Downloaders

Faced with expensive textbooks, students are looking for online files of textbooks. They do not want to pay for those very expensive books any longer. They are revolting against the current system. They want something they can afford. This article gives more information on this. Get the link below to read it.


"College students are increasingly downloading illegal copies of textbooks online, employing the same file-trading technologies used to download music and movies. Feeling threatened, book publishers are stepping up efforts to stop the online piracy.

One Web site, called Textbook Torrents, promises more than 5,000 textbooks for download in PDF format, complete with the original textbook layout and full-color illustrations. Users must simply set up a free account and download a free software program that uses a popular peer-to-peer system called BitTorrent. Other textbook-download sites are even easier to use, offering digital books at the click of a mouse.

"There are very few scanned textbooks in circulation, and that's what we're here to change," says a welcome message on the Textbook Torrents site. "Chances are you have some textbooks sitting around, so pick up a scanner and start scanning it!"

In response to such sites, the Association of American Publishers hired an outside law firm this summer to scour the Web for illegally offered textbooks"










Here is the link: http://chronicle.com/free/2008/07/3623n.htm

Welcome to AllOpenTextBooks: Students Want a Break from Publishers; Students Can't Afford Soaring Textbooks Cost

What are Opentextbooks?

They are free textbooks available online. Users download them, customize and print them as needed. Professors can change some of the content to fit the needs of their classrooms. Some opentextbooks authors allow others to print on demand. For sure, opentextbooks authors are trying to control the way books are sold. Flat World Knowledge and maketextbooksaffordable.org are pushing publishers to give a break to students. Very prominent teachers are joining them. We have the examples of Rob Beezer and Bob Stewart who have been participating in OpenTextbooks.