Bookboon started in Denmark. It expanded rapidly to Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands by 2007 and then, the following year, to the UK where the commercial idea blossomed.  The COO credits the site’s popularity to the universality of the English language and its ability to reach broader audiences. The publisher currently has strong plans to create a market in Asia through its sales offices in India, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The company’s blog states that developing countries currently account for 50% of ebook downloads.

In the United States, some colleges are adopting Bookboon’s open access textbooks, with about 70% using the ebooks as secondary literature and 30% using them as primary texts. The ebooks tend to be black and white with color only in diagrams and hyperlinked advertisements located at the bottom of every two to six pages. However, the technical and extremely direct nature of the texts may detract from their adoption stateside (where professors often seek the most engaging books possible).

The advertisements are, perhaps, one of the most interesting features of the Bookboon business model, for the ads are targeted towards professional or student audiences: “We finance our textbooks with a low number of employer branding adverts: in essence, we are getting the future employers to pay for the student textbooks.” Given the potential for employers to endorse some skill sets and knowledge bases through textbooks via this system, if it’s adopted on a large enough scale, the arrangement may have implications for the materials being taught.

South Korean publishers sidestepped scientific debate altogether by heeding a petition passed on to them by the government. Scientists were not consulted on the validity of any claims in the petition to “delete the ‘error’ of evolution from textbooks to ‘correct’ students’ views of the world,” although the petition reportedly has signatures of both scientists and teachers.

Turkey’s academia hosted its first conference for creationist ideas at Marmara University in Istanbul from May 16-17, titled “Why Does Science Deny Inter-Species Evolution?” The conference highlighted proposed deficiencies in the theory of evolution, bringing some transparency to the debates and combating notions that evolution is supported and acknowledged by universities and the scientific world.

Officially, Turkish schools are directed to teach both sides–creationist and evolutionist. However, teachers enjoy great latitude in the classroom, and Kareem Cankocak, a professor at Istanbul Technical University who supports evolution, aggressively claims that 90% of incoming students either do not believe or do not know about evolutionary principles.

As in the United States, the debate relies more upon undermining evolution than using scientific data to support creation science, continually drawing religion into the fray (Islam in Turkey and Christianity in South Korea). The debate is unlikely to end anytime soon, but education will likely do its best to make the debate honest and transparent rather than circumvent the academic sphere for a purely political one.

Creative Commons Love: cosmobc on Flickr.com

Higher education continues to get more expensive in the United States, but efforts like the Open Textbook Catalog at the University of Minnesota help organize and evaluate less expensive textbook options for professors to adopt. All books linked to the site are complete and openly licensed for free use, ready for use in English-language classrooms anywhere.

An estimate of the 2011-2012 school year determined that US students would spend an average of $1168 on course materials like textbooks, fueling an eight billion dollar industry. Especially with the frequency of revised editions that publishers release to prompt students to buy new textbooks instead of utilizing second-hand markets, it is more and more difficult to be thrifty. Institutional reform may be necessary, making efforts like the Open Textbook Catalog so exciting.

Of course, professors assigning books and syllabi have no reason to pick the most expensive options, but they have an active interest in picking the best materials to help their students learn. That makes the evaluation of open textbooks so valuable, and the University of Minnesota pays $500-$1000 stipends for faculty to review the textbooks, ultimately enabling other teachers to better understand what resources are available.

Most open textbooks are available in print for students who prefer a paper copy, typically for USD $40 in black and white or about USD $20-25 in PDF or EPUB formats. Online access to all materials is free.

Creative Commons Love: Alexis Fam Photography on Flickr.com

The $60 million total shall be composed of institutional support, grants, and philanthropy, which shall be managed by a not-for-profit organization based in Cambridge. MITnews reports that classes can be expected to start during Fall 2012, with the initial schedule of courses determined during the summer.

MIT and Harvard expect the online offerings to enhance their enrolled students’ education, not replace it. Online students have the option to get “Certificates of Mastery” for completing courses online, which will not act as degrees but speculatively might have value. As mentioned in an online promotional video, edX will have the same content as in-person classes and “should not be construed as MIT lite or Harvard lite.”

Beyond philanthropic motivations, MIT and Harvard hope to collect information that enables the  study of which teaching methods and tools are most successful. Although the data will likely be exclusive to the Cambridge universities, such research always has the potential to improve other efforts when published.

EdX will be release the jointly operated platform as open source software (OSS), permitting other universities and organizations may use in their own efforts and improve or add functionality. Experiments with online learning are indeed “potentially destructive” but always striving towards democratized education, so full steam ahead.

The recent poisoning of a school’s water supply affected approximately 150 female students. Takhar’s public health department is certain of malicious intent, although no group claimed responsibility for the terrorist act. The school has a larger tank of water from which smaller jugs were filled. It was this large tank that was contaminated, affecting girls throughout the school as they drank from their classroom’s supply.

The effects of the poisoning varied. Many of the girls experienced headaches and vomiting, while some are in critical condition. Approximately a third received treatment at the hospital and were discharged the same day. The schoolgirls are recovering and returning to school, undeterred.

Recently the Taliban laid off publicly opposing women’s education, but officials still suspect the group and are investigating the incident. In any case, this latest act of violence underscores the entirely-too-corporeal resistance to educational equality that haunts Afghanistan and other parts of the world.

Creative Commons Love: United Nations Photo on Flickr.com

Prevailing wisdom does not imply uniformity, and sites are still experimenting to find the perfect method. For example, the New York Times offers visitors the chance to read any 10 articles they like before asking visitors to become digital subscribers, and The Chronicle of Higher Education chooses which articles to make available publicly and freely while requiring a subscription to read the rest. Now, the Los Angeles Times website has instituted a paywall of its own, built on the any-article model of the NYTimes.com but with fewer workarounds.

Links to LA Times articles from social networking sites count towards a month’s quota of 15 free articles, but follow a NY Times link on Twitter or Facebook and you can read it even if you already hit the allowable limit. This porousness is inbuilt to the NYTimes.com paywall as a strategic decision to promote the brand, going so far as to permit simple hacks to circumvent the paywall for dedicated readers who cannot or will not subscribe. The LA Times, however, erect more rigid terms with additional benefits, like offering free or discounted admission to events.

At least for local papers, it is cool to offer perks that can build community, but subsidizing news with other goods seems misplaced from a business perspective. If information really wants to be free, a more permeable wall that can be bypassed when circumstances arise seems a better option.

Creative Commons Love: Casey David on Flickr.

A recent report indicates that control groups given laptops in Peru have not shown improved Math or Language scores, although some positive effects were recorded in general cognitive skills, especially in relation to computer use. Scores were abysmal with 70% of seven-year-olds not meeting required levels in math and 87% not meeting reading levels. The Economist suggests that Peruvians need to improve teacher-training and the curriculum to take advantage of the presence of laptops in the classroom.

As in the United States, technology does not prove to be an educational panacea replacing the importance of teachers and educational material. However, now OLPC proactively bundles laptops with mandatory teacher training that accentuates the merits of technology as another teaching tool that brings new opportunities. For instance, merely replacing note-taking from paper and pencils to laptops will not fundamentally change the education provided, but remaining focused on teaching students to effectively wield the tools provided by laptops for exploration and communication can be huge.

Enter: One Education, a new initiative being tested in Australia that trains and certifies students to use and repair their laptops. Classroom walls display the certificates earned and students also receive gear for successful completion. For example, students earn a wristband that incorporates a 4GB flash drive to extend the power of their XO laptops and take pride in their accomplishments. With Linux distributions that could easily fit on a 4GB flash drive, this sounds like an awesome program that could graduate some aspiring hackers from the child-friendly Sugar desktop environment to full blown Linux.

Custom designed for easy repair, OLPC purposefully ships spare batteries, keyboards, replacement screens and a screwdriver to allow children the chance to earn an XO Mechanic certificate for repairing laptops. Other programs include the XO Champion which deals with safety, software use, and school attendance.

So, OLPC computers are now repositioning themselves to more effectively meet realistic goals. Rather than a teacher replacement, they empower teachers to provide technology education in places it would otherwise be impossible. No small gift to the world in the 21st century global economy.

Creative Commons Love:  laihiu on Flickr.com

Going free with its own products did not entice enough users away from open source software (OSS) alternatives for projects like Moodle to fail.  Fundamentally, ownership is not concentrated with open source because anyone can use, reuse, and modify the code base, so there is no way to buy up the companies producing OSS. One way around this dilemma is to purchase the companies which most support the development of its OSS rivals–if you cannot buy the company, you can purchase its resources and starve it out.

Monday, Blackboard specifically acquired Moodlerooms and Netspot, companies which support the Moodle course management software. On the one hand, this can appear a threatening corporate power play; on the other, it may signify a paradigm shift for the company towards cooperation rather than domination. Time will tell.

In the meantime, officials at Blackboard, Moodlerooms, and NetSpot paint a rosy picture with a “statement of principles” that commit to keeping the OSS development alive. So far, there is no word on what may occur if a value conflict arises between Blackboard and Moodle, and there is no indication if there will ultimately be a split in the development community as happened after Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems forked LibreOffice from OpenOffice. Informed of some pending corporate strategies, Moodle creator Martin Dougiamas shows cautious optimism for positive synergies resulting from more interrelation between Blackboard’s products and the two companies it purchased.

Creative Commons Love: opensourceway on Flickr.

An experimental curriculum emphasizing non-fiction texts shows promising results in New York City. The new curriculum, known as Core Knowledge, hopes to use nonfiction to increase the base knowledge of children to make it easier for students to understand more complex texts and ideas presented in scientific and historical readings.

Dr. Hirsch of the Core Knowledge Foundation elicited criticism for his insistence that a common body of knowledge is the basis for success. Other NYC schools adopt a “balanced literacy” approach that encourages students to pursue their own reading interests so that a love of reading will emerge. Both have merits, but self-selection bias in reading materials may harm students who traditionally lack books or parents who read to them, so the Core Knowledge protection may help give equal footing to economically disadvantaged children.

In both social studies and science, NYC schools using the Core Knowledge curriculum scored significantly higher on tests involving reading comprehension than curriculum based on balanced literacy. However, a test of oral reading comprehension and vocabulary scores were not significantly different. The study suffers from a number of statistical and methodological problems. Some argue the sample size is too small, while others argue that the there is no way of knowing how closely the other schools in the study kept to the balanced literacy approach.

Surveys of teachers and administrators of the pilot program indicate that 72% of those involved were either “very satisfied” or somewhat satisfied with the curriculum. Further studies should clarify merits and disadvantages of the Core Knowledge curriculum.

Creative Commons Love: Brit on Flickr.

Harnessing the passions of 250 visual special effects industry workers from 30 countries, the project has almost $1 million pledged in “sweat equity” by the VFX wizards. With the kickstarter fund, the project hopes to raise enough to fund the first two episodes. Thus far, the pool of contributors is impressive, drawing from the talent that produced last year’s Hugo, Ice Age, Coraline, The Matrix trilogy, and even Avatar. Now that personal computers are powerful enough and creative software cheap enough to produce CGI of quality, VFX industry members can produce something amazing while learning from those who work for other studios and projects.

Eventually all episodes will be released on the web free in monthly installments, but funders of a dollar or more receive early access. As with most kickstarter.org projects, larger pledges result in greater concessions, including the ultimate prize of an onscreen cameo with spoken lines. Like most crowdsourced initiatives, The New Kind seems to be a labor of love.

Time will tell if the model of free contributions is enough to sustain a webseries of such scale, but the geek in me can dream.