DynamicBooks and College Open Textbooks Partner to Make Open Textbooks Easy to Edit and Customizable

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"It is exciting to see DynamicBooks working with Creative Commons-licensed textbooks to bring shareable, remixable, and reusable educational resources to teachers," said Eric Steuer, Creative Director of Creative Commons.

New York, NY (PRWEB) September 14, 2010

The goal of both DynamicBooks and College Open Textbooks is to make open textbooks easy to edit, personalize, update and expand. Twenty-seven open textbooks from varied disciplines including history, science, business and mathematics will be available from the DynamicBooks platform beginning in January 2011 with more titles planned throughout 2011. Students will pay a $20 per term fee that enables them to highlight, annotate, search, print page-by-page and easily navigate through their customized DynamicBooks.

"It is exciting to see DynamicBooks working with Creative Commons-licensed textbooks to bring shareable, remixable, and reusable educational resources to teachers," said Eric Steuer, Creative Director of Creative Commons. "We are happy that this collaboration will provide educators with content that allows them to more easily do their jobs."

Using the DynamicBooks editing tool, instructors can revise content, add or delete chapters or sections and include audio, video and course notes to make the textbooks more current and more relevant for their students. Students can access DynamicBooks online, download the books to their computer, print up to ten pages at a time. Printed, bound versions are also available for student purchase. Instead of copyright, all rights reserved, these textbooks are copyrighted with Creative Commons, GFDL, and customized open licenses that mean the textbooks can be freely shared and modified.

"Open textbooks have vast potential to reduce costs and increase flexibility for both students and faculty," said Nicole Allen, Textbooks Advocate for The Student PIRGs and Campaign Director for Make Textbooks Affordable. "With the cost of textbooks rising at a rapid rate, we applaud any initiative that will help get affordable options like open textbooks into the hands of students."

The open textbook titles that will be available in the DynamicBooks platform for Spring 2011 classes include:

Science and Physical Sciences

• Concept Development Studies in Chemistry, John S. Hitchinson
• Physics for K-12, Sunil Kumar Singh
• AP Environmental Science, University of California College Prep (Ana Preciado)
• Project Management for Scientists and Engineers, Merrie Barron and Andrew R. Barron
• What is Biodiversity, Collection Editor: Nora Bynum. Authors: Eleanor Sterling, Ian Harrison, James Gibbs, Melina Laverty, Robert Ahlfinger
• Educational Psychology, Kelvin Seifert and Rosemary Sutton

Mathematics & Statistics

• Elementary Algebra, Wade Ellis and Denny Burzynski
• Advanced Algebra II: Conceptual Explanations, Kenny M. Felder
• Advanced Algebra II: Activities and Homework, Kenny M. Felder
• A First Course in Linear Algebra, Robert A. Beezer
• Collaborative Statistics, Barbara Illowsky, Ph.D. and Susan Dean
• Trigonometry, Michael Corral

History

• A Comprehensive Outline of World History, Jack E. Maxfield
• US History since 1877, Dr. James Ross-Nazzal
• History of Western Art and Civilization, Beth Harris, Albert Van Helden

Business, Economics and Politics

• ECONOMETRICS, Bruce E. Hansen
• REMIX: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, Lawrence Lessig
• Business Ethics, William Frey
• Minority Studies: A Brief Sociological Text, Ruth Dunn
• Three Modules on Clear Writing Style: An Introduction to The Craft of Argument, Joseph M. Williams and Gregory Colomb

Computing

• Quantitative Information Analysis III, Collection Editor: Jeffrey Stanton Authors: Susan Dean Barbara Illowsky, Ph.D.
• Programming Fundamentals: A Modular Structured Approach using C++, Kenneth Leroy Busbee
• Intro to Logic, Ian Barland, Phokion Kolaitis, Moshe Vardi, Matthias Felleisen, John Greiner, Fuching Chi

Miscellaneous

• The Basic Elements of Music, Catherine Schmidt-Jones
• OER Handbook for Educators 1.0, Seth Gurell, David Wiley, PhD, editor
• Minority Studies: A Brief Sociological Text, Ruth Dunn

About College Open Textbooks Collaborative
The Community College Open Textbooks Collaborative (College Open Textbooks) is funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. This collection of 15 educational nonprofit and for-profit organizations, affiliated with more than 200 colleges, is focused on driving awareness and adoptions of open textbooks to more than 2000 community and other two-year colleges.
http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org

About DynamicBooks
DynamicBooks brings a new generation of interactive textbooks to students, instructors and authors. Using the DynamicBooks editing tool, instructors can easily customize the content of both open textbooks, and textbooks from leading textbook publishers. Authors gain new creative options and timely book updates. Students can access DynamicBooks using BookShelf from Vital Source Technologies, an Ingram Content Group company. DynamicBooks is a subsidiary of Macmillan. http://www.dynamicbooks.com.

Karen Lippe
DynamicBooks
karen(dot)lippe(dot)contractor(at)dynamicbooks(dot)com
831-430-0526

Sharyn Fitzpatrick
College Open Textbooks
sharyn(dot)fitzpatrick(at)happyabout(dot)info
650-814-5835

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