Apple's new app allows anyone to build interactive ebooks for the iPad for a low price and light load. 
When students groan about buying traditional textbooks, their grievances follow a familiar refrain: They’re expensive and usually boring. So this fall, a team of Temple University professors heeded those complaints and abandoned the old-fashioned texts for low-cost alternatives that they built from scratch. 
Two new capabilities, Kno Flashcards and an analytics tool called Kno Me, will soon be available with smart textbooks distributed by Kno, a Santa Clara, CA-based provider of educational software. An effort by college leaders to shake up the textbook industry got a boost this week, as five universities announced plans to try bulk purchasing of e-textbooks. The news comes just one day before an Apple news conference that is expected to feature that company's entrance into the e-textbook space, and it highlights steps that colleges themselves are taking to rein in textbook prices rather than wait for the market to reshape itself. 
Despite the promise that digital textbooks can lead to huge cost savings for students, a new study at Daytona State College has found that many who tried e-textbooks saved only one dollar, compared with their counterparts who purchased traditional printed material. 
State Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg is proposing a bill that will allocate $25 million of state coffers to create 50 free online college book titles that teachers can use, remix, add to, or edit as they see fit. The bill establishes the online California Digital Open Source Library, which will house the 50 most commonly used books for required lower-division courses. 
The high cost of commercial textbooks, both print and electronic, is a major concern for today’s students and their parents. In an effort to reduce these costs, the UMass Amherst Provost’s Office and the University Libraries launched a program in the spring of 2011—the Open Education Initiative—that supports faculty interested in pursuing non-traditional educational resources as an alternative to the traditional commercial textbook. 
Yorùbá Yé Mi is an interactive, communicative, introductory, multi-media program intended to provide college/university students with basic listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills of language learning in Yorùbá. It exposes the learner not only to Yorùbá language in meaningful situations but also to the culture of the Yorùbá-speaking people of South-western Nigeria. It contains effective techniques for teaching and learning Yorùbá including tones, and is userfriendly in its approach. 
Français interactif is the web-based first-year French program developed at the University of Texas and in use since 2004. Français interactif helps you explore the French language and culture by following the lives of real UT students who participated in the UT Summer Program in Lyon, France. The UT students will introduce you to their French host families, their French university, and their lives in France. 
This is the first semester of two that form an introduction to modern standard Chinese, commonly called Mandarin. Though not everyone taking this course will be an absolute beginner, the course presupposes no prior background in the language. 
In part one of this online textbook for Mandarin Chinese, you will learn the basics of the Chinese spoken and written language and to have basic conversations about yourself, your family, school, and daily activities. 
This Wikibook aims to teach the Spanish language from scratch. It will cover all of the major grammar rules, moving slowly and offering exercises and plenty of examples. It's not all grammar though, as it offers vocabulary and phrases too, appealing to all learners. By the end, you should be able to read and write Spanish skilfully, though you'll need a human to help with listening and speaking. 
Online books are seeping into schools. Starting this fall, almost all Fairfax middle and high school students are using online textbooks in social studies. |
Free online courses for the masses are all the rage—and many are being run by start-ups hoping to profit by selling related materials and services. Jim Groom thinks that’s too commercial, so he’s raising money for the online course he co-teaches at the University of Mary Washington using Kickstarter, the popular “crowd funding” service. 
One-fourth of the college students surveyed said they owned a tablet, compared with just 7 percent last year. Sixty-three percent of college students believe tablets will replace textbooks in the next five years—a 15 percent increase over last year’s survey. More than a third said they intended to buy a tablet sometime in the next six months. 
Built for students, with students to help you learn faster. Anytime, anywhere access across all connected devices. Search, highlight, take notes & see key highlights from other students. 24/7 interactive math & science help from Chegg's network of students and experts. 
Thousands of apps and billions of downloads consistently steal the headlines, while the mobile web is largely ignored by everyone but the consumer. Yet, despite what the marketing would lead you to believe, consumers use the mobile web just as much as apps. Catching up on today's digital textbook market and eTextbook functionality with CourseSmart's Chief Marketing Officer. 
The Open Course Library is a collection of expertly-developed educational materials – including textbooks, syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments – for 81 high-enrolling college courses. 42 courses have been completed so far, providing faculty with a high-quality option that will cost students no more than $30 per course. 
MIT has been doing online access to education a lot longer than most people, largely due to their invaluable OpenCourseWare project. Now they are poised to go to the next level by launching an online system called MITx in Spring 2012 that provides credentialing as well as content. 
Deutsch im Blick is the web-based first-year German program developed and in use at the University of Texas. It is an open access site with free and open multimedia resources, which requires neither password nor fees.
My Korean I - Monash University (Australia)
This book is primarily written for a Korean language university course for 
This is a free, introductory textbook/course on Spanish. "500 million people today speak Spanish worldwide and it is an easy language to learn for native or fluent speakers of English or Roman languages. The cultures of Spanish-speaking countries are rich in literature, food, music, and the arts. Throughout this course, you will find fact sections that contain facts about Spanish-speaking countries or their cultures." The site operates as a wiki, so it is continually updated by participants. 
Liberté, by Gretchen Angelo, is a first-year college French textbook with a true communicative approach. It is currently being used at California State University, Los Angeles, Mount San Antonio College, and Santiago Canyon College. Please note that the downloadable version is a draft, and that the author continues to expand and modify the text. 
How is academic publishing adapting to the Internet? While traditional publishers are interested in the bottom line, libraries-as-publishers are focused on the problem of access. Faculty, on the other hand, are concerned with how their publications will lead to promotion, tenure, and the advancement of knowledge. |
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