Thursday, October 2
I'd love to see a non-profit, uncopyrighted website that
collected free disciplinary readings that could be automagically
combined into downloadable coursepacks. Or just open it to
instructors to prevent crushing bandwidth bills, and let them
worry about distribution to students. I suppose such a site
could also collect lesson plans, etc. although those usually need
to be taken in a particular context to be very helpful. Please
promulgate this idea so someone else will throw this together :)
Think of a Napster for free (legal) textbooks. Bookster (the
domain is only $5000). It's arguable that I'm just describing
Google.
I'm not ready to throw out traditional publishers, however,
because despite the numbing sameness of many composition
handbooks, there is still great stuff out there that probably
wouldn't have ever emerged without a publisher (and tenure
requirements).
collected free disciplinary readings that could be automagically
combined into downloadable coursepacks. Or just open it to
instructors to prevent crushing bandwidth bills, and let them
worry about distribution to students. I suppose such a site
could also collect lesson plans, etc. although those usually need
to be taken in a particular context to be very helpful. Please
promulgate this idea so someone else will throw this together :)
Think of a Napster for free (legal) textbooks. Bookster (the
domain is only $5000). It's arguable that I'm just describing
Google.
I'm not ready to throw out traditional publishers, however,
because despite the numbing sameness of many composition
handbooks, there is still great stuff out there that probably
wouldn't have ever emerged without a publisher (and tenure
requirements).
