4 ms·

Is there no crowd sourced, open sourced textbook non-profit organization? Sort of like Wikipedia/Wikimedia but with textbooks. Ideally there would be a Wiki-lik

Is there no crowd sourced, open sourced textbook non-profit organization? Sort of like Wikipedia/Wikimedia but with textbooks. Ideally there would be a Wiki-like website with people constantly editing and revising and arguing over texts/chapters/paragraphs. A cursory Google search yields the site https://openstaxcollege.org/ https://openstaxcollege.org/, which appears to be supported by Rice University. This has open sourced texts, but not crowd sourced. As a recent graduate I remember shelling out thousands of dollars during my undergrad years to pay for textbooks. It was always a crapshoot because you never knew if the professor would not use the textbook at all or would heavily rely on it and assign reading/problems from the book. There are definitely ways around purchasing expensive textbooks, but most are illegal, and none are convenient or guaranteed.

guynamedloren 12y ago
I'm trying to do this with Penflip (https://www.penflip.com https://www.penflip.com). It's like GitHub, but for writing. Just like GitHub, there are public and private projects. Anybody can contribute to a public project by submitting a pull request. A big hurdle is that the concept of 'open source' is a bit foreign outside tech, but I think there is some potential. Here's an open source Java book on Penflip: https://www.penflip.com/lynnlangit/tkp-lesson-plans https://www.penflip.com/lynnlangit/tkp-lesson-plans
webmaven 12y ago
Yes, several: http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org/ http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org/ http://oerconsortium.org/discipline-specific/ http://oerconsortium.org/discipline-specific/ http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/ http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/ http://opensuny.org/omp/index.php/SUNYOpenTextbooks http://opensuny.org/omp/index.php/SUNYOpenTextbooks http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/ http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/ http://www.opensourcetext.org/ http://www.opensourcetext.org/ http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page http://creativecommons.org/tag/open-textbooks http://creativecommons.org/tag/open-textbooks
ethanhunt_ 12y ago
A wikipedia for textbooks? There's exactly that, though I can't comment on the quality. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Calculus/Limits/An_Introduction_to_Limits http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Calculus/Limits/An_Introduction...
ac29 12y ago
I came across this nice looking statistics textbook a couple years ago: http://www.openintro.org/stat/textbook.php http://www.openintro.org/stat/textbook.php Free online, <$10 in print. There is a high school level stats text book available as well. Its also not "crowd sourced", but the results seem solid.

guynamedloren 12y ago

I'm trying to do this with Penflip (https://www.penflip.com https://www.penflip.com). It's like GitHub, but for writing. Just like GitHub, there are public and private projects. Anybody can contribute to a public project by submitting a pull request. A big hurdle is that the concept of 'open source' is a bit foreign outside tech, but I think there is some potential. Here's an open source Java book on Penflip: https://www.penflip.com/lynnlangit/tkp-lesson-plans https://www.penflip.com/lynnlangit/tkp-lesson-plans

webmaven 12y ago

Yes, several: http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org/ http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org/ http://oerconsortium.org/discipline-specific/ http://oerconsortium.org/discipline-specific/ http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/ http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/ http://opensuny.org/omp/index.php/SUNYOpenTextbooks http://opensuny.org/omp/index.php/SUNYOpenTextbooks http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/ http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/ http://www.opensourcetext.org/ http://www.opensourcetext.org/ http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page http://creativecommons.org/tag/open-textbooks http://creativecommons.org/tag/open-textbooks

ethanhunt_ 12y ago

A wikipedia for textbooks? There's exactly that, though I can't comment on the quality. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Calculus/Limits/An_Introduction_to_Limits http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Calculus/Limits/An_Introduction...

ac29 12y ago

I came across this nice looking statistics textbook a couple years ago: http://www.openintro.org/stat/textbook.php http://www.openintro.org/stat/textbook.php Free online, <$10 in print. There is a high school level stats text book available as well. Its also not "crowd sourced", but the results seem solid.