OStatic

Part of the high cost of attending a college or university is due to the exorbitant fees for textbooks. It's an $8 billion dollar market and schools often pass on the high cost of textbook purchases to their students. Once a school selects course books, it's up to professors to mold their curriculum accordingly, rather than offer reading material that suits their teaching style and course content.

In an effort to make curriculum content more accessible to both students and teachers, New York-based startup Flat World Knowledge is going after the textbook industry by offering expertly-written books that educational institutions are free to modify to meet their needs.

ZDNet's Chris Dawson has been thinking about Linux in the educational setting quite a bit lately, thanks to his school district's purchase of some new Intel Classmates, and the educational and financial benefits they bring.

Fueled by a piece he read in a recent openSUSE Education newsletter, he began pondering the ins and outs of open source software software adoption. Though he mentions Linux specifically, his thoughts transfer quite well to free software on closed platforms. Dawson asks if Linux is only for the poor -- if the economy wasn't in such a rough spot, would school districts (or businesses, or individuals) be moving to, or even seriously considering, open source platforms and alternatives?

It's a great question, and it's hard one for me to answer honestly. I know how I'd love to answer, and I know perfectly well that answer is unrealistic. Even if increased open source adoption in certain fields is primarily due to the dismal economy, it doesn't mean better financial times will lead to mass open source abandonment.

There are loads of terrific general Web publishing tools available these days, but some industries require specific features to meet unique needs. Omeka is a free and open source Web-based publishing platform designed with libraries, higher-level learning institutions, and museums in minds. Funded by philanthropic organizations and licensed under the GPL, Omeka makes launching an online exhibition as easy as launching a blog and is perfect for groups that don't have IT-specialists on the payroll.