Monday, February 22, 2010

Wiki-textbooks

Macmillan is introducing software that will allow for professors to edit, update, and customize e-text books for their classes. Not only will this allow professors to streamline the material in the text books to relate more directly to their course teachings (because lets be honest, how many professors actually taught us a course directly by the book), but the cost will be less for students.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/business/media/22textbook.html?ref=education


Interesting copyright note:

"While many publishers have offered customized print textbooks for years — allowing instructors to reorder chapters or insert third-party content from other publications or their own writing — DynamicBooks gives instructors the power to alter individual sentences and paragraphs without consulting the original authors or publisher."

2 comments:

  1. Wow. Not only can the Prof reorder, but edit? History in the making, folks... literally.

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  2. What I can't quite see, in the article or in this demo...

    http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=31076

    ...is whether or not the changes made by the professor are made clear, or if they blend seamlessly in with the text. If it was clearly marked (e.g., the added text was blue while the rest was black) I could see this being less of an issue of copyright or of putting words in the author's mouth as the professor's changes and therefore potential bias (as Shelby touched on) would be clear.

    Has anyone found a better demo that would clarify this?

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