School Districts Allowed to Delay Updating Textbooks. This was the headline in a recent Sacramento Bee article. The story reports how the Elk Grove school district will be allowed to delay adopting new textbooks until 2013. Budgets that were designated for upgrading 2002 and 2003 books will instead be used to save jobs in the district. The article goes on to suggest that by the time new books are adopted California schools may be using 15 year old math books and 9 year old history books.

The reality is that the publishing industry needs to be significantly overhauled, just like many other “closed networks”, such as the real estate and music industries. The education market would greatly benefit from Information alliances between publishers, writers, teachers, students, and many other collaborators who have skills and experience. The problem is that every old industry tries to hold on to as much of their empire for as long as possible. However, the ferocity of the Internet is conspiring to decimate these industries.

UC Davis has taken a unique approach to solving the “pricey textbook” problem. In the article Professors hope to turn page on pricey textbooks , I read that UC Davis professors have come up with a unique way to make textbooks more affordable. The article, written by Caitlin Cobb, goes on to say “Expensive, used textbooks have long been a bone of contention among college students.” Well … duh!

I’m not an expert on education, but it appears to me that their unique idea, of building information alliances between multiple authors, i.e. the wiki approach, makes complete sense. The Davis Enterprise elaborates on how the collaboration is amongst students from multiple colleges and universities.

“Students have to spend a lof of money on textbooks, and publishers will come out with a new version of the textbook, but really they are just playing around with the used book market.” This was a quote from Andrew Waldron, the vice chairman for undergraduate matters.

In my estimation, Mr. Waldron is all too correct. Information today is very fluid and dynamic. And, with the ubiquitous nature of the Internet, information flow and collaboration should be the mantra. In fact, let’s extrapolate the solution a bit further. What if the information alliances were extended to the local printing company, such as Kinko’s/FedEx? Those students who really wanted a “hard copy” of the textbook can select their favorite local printer; click a button and presto – instant textbook. It might even be bought at 1/2 the cost of the “publisher’s version” sans expensive book cover.

The idea of a collaborative textbook makes SO much sense. You now give the “intellectual power” to a collective whole, rather than limit it to a select few. It’s hard for me to fathom that any one publisher or any one author is the final and ultimate authority on a topic, especially in this new age of accelerated Internet discovery.

One other powerful offshoot of these textbook information alliances is that you’ve now engaged students at a much higher level than ever before. They now can take a sense of ownership in the materials and content. In this way, they may even learn and absorb more. Isn’t that what learning is all about anyway?

Is this a novel idea or an idea whose time has come? After all, aren’t we in the 21st century?

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