Guardsman article on open textbooks

Our colleagues and partners in the Community College Open Textbook Collaborative spoke about faculty use of open textbooks in this article about textbook affordability and the use of open textbooks, especially in community colleges.

Faculty discuss quality and affordability. They may choose an affordable, good book over an exorbitant, great book, but they won't choose a free, low-quality book. Makes sense. Now we need more people reviewing and publicizing books that work.

To read the full article click here.

NYT Education Life Features Connexions and Schmidt-Jones' Music

Check out The New York Times Education Life section today. It has a full discussion of the open education movement, "An Open Mind", of which Connexions is an active participant. It includes extensive commentary by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and discussion of the open course ware movement, interactive online learning, and several projects to learn online with peers . Pullout sections offer a look at Connexions, "How to Learn Sometihng for Nothing", and feature notable online courses, including the suite of music education by Connexions author, Catherine Schmidt-Jones, "The Music Lesson".

Open Access Textbook Webinar

Joel Thierstein, Associate Provost of Rice University and Connexions' Executive Director is giving a webinar on Open Access Textbooks on Friday, April 16th at 2 PM EDT. Dr. Thierstein will discuss what Connexions is doing to make open textbooks editable/customizable, format open textbooks for delivery on multiple devices, and encourage open textbook adoption.

The talk is sponsored by The Open Access Textbook FIPSE grant project. You can learn more about the grant project here.

The talk is hosted through the Florida Distance Learning Consortium and it is free with no required pre-registration. To fully participate in the webinar you will need a headset or webcam, but you can also participate through text-base chat. To join, click here.