David Wiley, via iterating toward openness, emphasizes the significance of Flat World Knowledge (FWK) going Public Beta, and outlined the common and distinctive features of FKW textbooks in light of traditional ones. Excerpt:
FWK textbooks are much like traditional textbooks in that they are:
- beautiful looking printed books,
- written by world-class authors,
- supported with all the supplementals and teaching aids (like an instructor manual, slides, and assessments) teachers expect, and
- available as review copies (for teachers),
FWK textbooks are UNLIKE traditional textbooks in that they are:
- licensed CC BY-NC-SA,
- always available in full-text online for free,
- offered in a variety of additional, affordable formats (paperback black-and-white ($30), full-color ($60), audio book ($30), individual book chapters as audio ($3), etc.),
- supported by a variety of study aids available at the student’s option (NOT forcibly bundled with the book)
I’m SO excited about FWK because we’re going to show the world that extremely high quality open educational resources can be produced and disseminated in a way that is sustainable over the long term. Jump over to the Catalog page, choose a book with a Feb 2009 publication date, and click “Start Reading” to see what I’m talking about.
