E-Texbooks Gaining Popularity in the United States

In the U.S., textbook companies and universities are taking initiatives to cut their textbook expenses as well as their environmental impact. Statistics from an article from Epoch Times show that 65% of educators plan to phase out traditional textbooks and replace them with electronic textbooks in the very near future. California is the first state to attempt an all-electronic textbook initiative, which began in 2009.

Even publishers like Macmillan announced that it will publish their textbooks in an all-new electronic format, as well. The new format is called DynamicBooks, and it allows teachers and professors to customize the textbook for the purposes of their classes. They will also be available for download on Apple's iPad, which will launch on April 3rd, 2010.

From an environmental standpoint, 12 trees are cut down for one ton of paper for textbooks, and only 5% of paper is recycled. Economically, California expects to save $2 million for going electronic.

This news that California is leading the movement in transtioning to electronic textbooks is good news for The Global Text Project. Recently, the Red and Black reported that UGA is planning to incorporate DynamicBooks in Fall of 2010. While the movement is still happening in the U.S., the more accessible electronic textbooks are here, the easier it will be for the Global Text Project to provide textbooks absolutely free of cost to developing countries and to put our mission into action.

Some questions for our readers:

How would using an electronic textbook be different from a traditional textbook for you? What advantages and disadvantages would you predict to find? Further, do any of you already use an e-Book reader, and which kind?

Students for Students

All of a sudden it is the beginning of March and we are rapidly nearing our first book deadline. It's amazing to see all the work that the interns have been able to accomplish thus far, especially since we have only been on board the project since the beginning of this year. Big things are beginning to happen in the world of open education.

Open Educational Resources says it best: "In a brave new world of learning, OER content is made free to use or share, and in some cases, to change and share again, made possible through licensing, so that both teachers and learners can share what they know," and that is exactly what we have been trying to do at Global Text.

This semester we have five student interns from the University of Georgia (UGA) working to make textbooks available to students around the world. The most amazing part of this collaboration is the fact that we have students working for the benefit of other students. The Global Text Project office on campus at UGA is a place where students work together to learn more about the process open education. We are in the midst of a learning curve that will create ripples around the world.

The children of the world today are quite literally our future, and as students ourselves it is amazing to think that we are helping pave the way for generations to come. In America we are blessed with the ability to go to school every day - but other people our age are not as fortunate. Every day in the office is one more step to impacting a fellow student's life.

Global Text Project is more than your average internship. Yes, we have set hours to be in the office and are gaining incredible resume boosters, but we are doing so much more. We are creating a link - a bond - between students around the globe that will last years after we have graduated and will enable the children of today to become the leaders of tomorrow.

United Nations Meeting Addresses Education Goals

At the United Nations meeting on January 19th, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon addressed the issue of unequal global education. Ban pointed out that less than 55% of children in developing countries attend secondary school. Although there has been some progress, the recent UNESCO report indicated that countries not only need to increase efforts to reach out to children who are not achieving the UN's education goals, but also need to increase aid efforts. Ban encourages all countries to increase their aid for education so that the UN may meet their Millennium Development Goal for universal education, which states that all children everywhere will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling by 2015.

The UNESCO report on Deprivation and Marginalization in Education (DME) focuses on education poverty (or the proportion of those aged 17 to 22 with fewer than 4 years of education) in developing countries. You can also select specific countries, regions, and economies to compare on the chart. It also points out the issues of education disparities in these countries due to wealth, location, ethnic group, and language groups.

For example, in Niger, the education poverty is 76.04% for the whole country. That means that 76.04% of people between 17 and 22 have fewer than 4 years of education. UNESCO divides the data up into the wealthier class and the poorer class. You then find that the wealthier class in Niger only has 33.9% education poverty, whereas the poorer class has 91.7%. In Niger, the poorest 20% have had on average less than 1 year of education. The richest 20% have had on average 5.5 years of education. The disparities here are too striking not to address.

Thinking about Ban's statements and the UNESCO report, it is apparent that universal education is an issue that needs serious attention. Ban stated that education is "a fundamental human right." The Global Text Project wants to pursue that goal. Growing our open education system can help education move from an "accident of circumstance", as Ban put it, to that fundamental right.

More information on the UN meeting can be found here.

What Do Our Followers Think?
Do you think, with the help of organizations like Global Text Project, that the Millennium Development Goal for universal education will be achieved by 2015?

What other countries did you research on the UNESCO report charts?

Global Text Project Teams Up With Creative Consultants

The Global Text Project has reached out to the Public Relations Student Society of America at the University of Georgia to assist us with our PR campaign. Creative Consultants, a student-run PR firm, has paired us with a group of PR students: Staci Dale, Account Executive; Koby Kelsey, Junior Account Executive; Mamie Cargile; Cassidy Hoffman; Deena Lipson; and Christine Sawyer. During the Fall 2009 semester, our Creative Consultants group helped us with our logo redesign, our press releases, and other PR materials. They also organized an internship info session, which resulted in four GTP interns!

This semester, our Creative Consultants team has a social media campaign in store, so be sure to keep up with our Facebook, Twitter, and Blogger! Keep an eye out for videos, too! We look forward to engaging with our supporters through our social networks!

What Do Our Followers Think?

Do any of you rely on social media to keep in touch with other nonprofit organizations? If so, which ones do you think are using social media successfully? We'd love to hear your thoughts!

Local Creation of Textbooks

We just received an updated list on the use of local textbooks by students of the University of Concepción. It was a good sign that a larger portion of them are classified as books of high demand, being actively used.

The University of Concepción has supported the development of textbooks by teachers for a long time. Currently there are over 300 textbooks that have been produced and, as mentioned before, being used.

The policy of developing textbooks responds mainly to the need of our student for cheap textbooks (they are sold at printing cost). The cost of an university degree is high and very few of the students I've talked to purchase books for the courses the take.

We hope that as part of the Global Text Project we can contribute with some of those books, and also that we can motivate other teachers in LatinAmerica with this effort.

-Andres Sepulveda
Coordinator Spanish Library

Amazon's Announcement of an Updated Kindle

Amazon announced its new version of the Kindle today. Bigger screen (9.7 inches). More expensive ($489). Touted to be the salvation of newspapers and textbooks. Maybe newspapers (but doubtful). And textbooks? I don't think so. Amazon wants to sell students textbooks for the Kindle, but has not yet disclosed the pricing. If they are going to be priced in line with current online versions, they'll be half the price of a new hard-cover, or around $80 or so. Not as attractive as a free textbook downloaded from the Global Text library to a Sony Reader, a pdf on the student's laptop, or a printed copy for around $15 from Lulu Press. Here's the story from today's WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124162110396691937.html

Sorry, Jeff.

-Don

Renting Can Lower Textbook Costs

Today's Wall Street Journal had an interesting article by Peter King, entitled "A Textbook Case of Renting Books". I'd heard of similar schemes before, but most were offered by some of the major textbook publishers. This article compares four independent sites where university students can rent textbooks for the amount of time they need them and return them to the company when they're finished. The savings can be high. For example, the third edition of an advanced accounting text, "Fraud Accounting", costs $177.95 new, but can be rented for as little as $52.54 for 55 days, or $41.12 for 90 days from one the sites which employs a guaranteed buy-back model.

The four sites analyzed in the article are:
http://bookrenter.com
http://campusbookrentals.com
http://chegg.com, and
http://textbooks.com

The last one is the site employing a guaranteed buy-back model.

Progress, but still, free is better.

-Don