The CBC has posted a great interview with Eric Frank of Flat World Knowledge about open textbooks. While an abbreviated version will run on the air, you can listen to (and download) the full, uncut interview online.
George Siemens has written a very thoughtful analysis of Flat World Knowledge (and the change process generally) titled Change that prevents real change. I want to respond to a few of his thoughts. FWK will succeed for the wrong reasons. It will succeed because it tweaks the existing model of textbooks just enough to disrupt publishers, but not enough to disrupt the industry as a whole. FWK is integrated into the system of education: authors, bookstores, faculty, and students. It uses existing reward metrics (recognition and a little bit of revenue for the author) and addresses the biggest complaint students have about textbooks: costs. Essentially, the existing system is used as the infrastructure for FWK model. And that’s the problem. ...
George has responded to my response to his earlier post as a comment on my recent post. It’s a great bit of thinking and writing worthy of being its own post! I respond below: My point is that openness is the virtue to be pursued (I feel silly making this statement to you – you’ve done more for this “movement” than almost anyone else has). Not sorta-openness. Or sorta-affordable openness. Full openness to download, edit, reuse, add media, etc. is the target. Settling for affordable quasi-openness may sell cheaper textbooks and may delay more foundational change. ...
Flat World Knowledge, the company I serve as Chief Openness Officer, is making great progress! We released a lengthy press release today full of good news. I include only the first two paragraphs below, which both give a sense of where we’re headed and include an awesome quote from Hooks Johnston of Valhalla Partners: NYACK, N.Y., March 24 /PRNewswire/ – Flat World Knowledge, the world’s first publisher of commercial open-source college textbooks, today announced that it received $8 million in Series A funding from Valhalla Partners, Greenhill SAVP, and High Peaks Venture Partners, with continued participation from several angel investors. ...
FWK, the open source textbook publishing company, has come out of private beta! Find out what all the excitement is about at http://flatworldknowledge.com/. As a quick recap, 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: ...
Chris Snyder at Wired exercised his detective skills on Bijan Sabet’s recent tweet to find out who Spark Capital (one of the VCs that funded Twitter) has been talking to recently: i had a mtg with a company today & one of their execs had the title ‘Chief Openness Officer’ What company is so committed to openness that it has someone like this? Flat World Knowledge of course! :)
FWK is conducting a survey in Facebook about college students’ feelings toward textbooks and potentially open textbooks. Students just go to http://apps.facebook.com/fwksurvey/ and all of the information that they need is there, including info about how we’re compensating students for taking the survey: The first 1,000 responders are guaranteed a $15 Amazon Gift Card; Every responder is entered to win $1k; For each Friend you “Tell” in Facebook you get one entry in a drawing to win a $100 Amazon Gift Card. Please pass along to any students you know. Thanks!
Since the discussion last week throughout the media generated so much interest (especially the story from Ben - who I respect a great deal - on Slashdot), some words on the FWK licensing model seem appropriate. ...
The New York Times ran a piece today on the outrageous cost of textbooks, That Books Costs How Much? that mentions Flat World Knowledge. It’s currently the second most blogged piece in the Opinion section! I’ll have another post coming on Monday explaining more about the FWK business model for those of you who are interested.
Marc has recently done a great essay called Philanthropy on the Commons. Quoting part of the article: The funny thing is, Michael Edwards seems to think that the commons and business are at odds. “The problem is that these approaches are absent from the philanthrocapitalist menu”, he says. The facts say otherwise. Who are the top funders of Wikipedia? Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla and Richard Branson’s Virgin Unite. Who funds the creative commons? Sun, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Yahoo, Facebook as well as a number of foundations created with newly minted high-tech wealth. The commons is clearly on the philanthrocapitalist menu. ...