California Open Source Textbook Project

COSTP recommends Creative Commons licenses. Creative Commons licenses allow creators to let the public freely copy and distribute their work, while maintaining control over the full degree of rights that creators choose to permit. Open Licensing, as deployed by Creative Commons is one of the most profound innovations in Intellectual Property history. Open licensing is the future of content; it is a universal enabler in the spread of information and knowledge.

Textbook enterprises of the future will offer Open content surrounded by bevies of content that is:

Professionally developed and supported.
Very high in quality.
Peer-author-reviewed.
Written by vetted subject matter experts.
Superbly marketed, with deep attention to meeting the expectations of students and teachers.
Accessible to all, no matter physical limitation.
Interoperable on all presentational modalities (digital; handheld devices; print, etc.).
Regularly updated for currency.
Distributed from a sustainable market model, and relatively independent of private foundation and public financial support.
Nimble – i.e. based in a system that is hypersensitive to the market for student’s and teacher’s learning/teaching demands.
Indistinguishable in quality from the best textbooks created by today’s largest publishing houses.
Free to view, use, and share - surrounded by high quality, seamlessly delivered services and low-cost content alternatives to free (the best example of this model, to date, is Flat World Knowledge, a venture-capital-backed Open college textbook startup that deploys the most robust and sustainable Open textbook model created, to date).

Additional Links:

David Wiley’s The Four R’s of Openness and ALMS Analysis: Frameworks for Open Educational Resources.) and other seminal articles on Open. DDavid Wiley’s thoughts on Open content and Open education are required reading for anyone interested in this topic.
Flat World Knowledge: Open College Textbooks is a highly disruptive college and university Open textbook publisher. Their market-driven model, deployed in a way that pays close attention to what consumers actually want and use, has proven to be the most successful endeavor in Open textbook publishing, to date. Flat World Knowledge publishing model permits private market initiative, as well as cooperative efforts with public agencies and private foundations – an ideal mix of capability that represents a sustainable way forward.
Free to Learn: An Open Educational Resources Policy Development Guidebook for Community College Governance Officials. Written by Hal Plotkin (DOE) is the most current exhaustive resource on (primarily) non-profit Open Educational Resource (OER) content and courseware models. Mr. Plotkin has been a long-time Open education advocate, working closely with Martha Kanter (currently Under Secretary of Education to Arne Duncan, in the Obama Administration). Martha Kanter’s work in Open education is profound, as she has been responsible for starting up key Open initiatives, and working with the Obama Administration to keep the Open meme in front of the public, and educators, through her policy and personal efforts.
California State Department of Education: Curriculum Frameworks and Instructional Resources - http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/index.asp
Curriculum frameworks are the blueprints for implementing the content standards adopted by the California State Board of Education. Frameworks are developed by the Curriculum Development and Supplemental Materials Commission, which also reviews and recommends textbooks and other instructional materials to be adopted by the State Board.
The California Open Source World History Project was the original placeholder pilot program, shown to many California Legislators, State Education functionaries, and dozens of other education professionals as a partial proof-of-concept during the first years of COSTP’s existence - when the phrase “Open content” was not known as the powerful meme it has become. This project was never completed, but served as an important catalyst, to demonstrate what could be done. The World History Project undertaken with Wikipedia, when COSTP was first formed, at the behest of Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s co-Founder.
California Content Standards for World History, Culture and Geography - Grade 10 - pp. 125-139 Again, for all those who intend to write Open content for K-12 curriculum, it is still best to create open content that generally conforms to the State Curriculum Frameworks for the subject matter of choice. This is crucial for gaining consideration by State and local Boards of Education, and other peer review committees - it is always best to create Open content in the K-12 arena teachers, districts, and states will use. There is a slight trend in some States to decouple State Curriculum Framework Standards from content requirements, but this trend is nascent. For post-secondary Open content, creators are generally not constrained in this way; there are no State curriculum standards for most post-secondary content; the standard is subject-matter-expert created, with special attention to the qualities attributed to the future of all Open educational content, at the top of this page.

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