Text book prices getting you down? Tired of copy-and-pasting, photocopying and printing the relevant bits from textbooks for your class? You might want to take a look at Flat World Knowledge

Apparently, this company – Flat World –  produces digital-rights-free textbooks, which can then be used however a person wishes . If you view them in a browser, no cost; download the pdf, $20; ask for a bound version, $60.

This has enormous potential to shake things up, I would think! I wonder what they’ve got in their catalogue. Their tagline is, ‘Remixable textbooks by expert authors, free online and affordable off’. Their books are peer-reviewed. Seems they do audio and pda versions, too.

Some links:

www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/open-source-textbook-company-now-at-400-colleges ‘Open Source Textbook Company Now BMOC at 400 Colleges’

www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/02/flatworld-know/ ‘Flat World Knowledge to Bring Free Textbooks into Blackboard’

www.wired.com/epicenter/2008/09/open-source-text/ ‘Open Source Textbooks Challenge a Paradigm’