Goodbye textbooks; hello open source learning

Reviewed a talk on TED called Goodbye, textbooks; hello, open-source learning by Richard Baraniuk. He talks about Connexions which is focusing on digitizing books that are open/free and editable by anyone. At first I got the impression that this was a lot like wikipedia, but as he went on it became apparent that Connexions is much more. 

First the focus is on low-demand academic books and not mainstream commercial publications like Harry Potter. These books are provides under the Creative Commons license and contain rich interactive content like embedded tools that lets the student experiment with the concepts. The capability also provides the capability to create customer books tailored for the instructors specific needs.

My original thought was that this approach did not really address the problem of textbooks in poor and under-develop parts of the world and relied on the Internet to deliver the content. He did go on the highlight the ability to submit the book to a on-demand publisher and have custom books printed and distributed for around $20.00.

All in all, I though the concept was very innovative in that custom books that draw on a broad diverse talent pool for content can be delivered through Internet or traditional books formats.

It's worth the 18 minutes to watch.