Connexions: An Open Source Initiative to Kill Textbooks

If you haven't checked out TED, then you're missing out on some big ideas. The conference, who's acronym stands for "Technology, Entertainment, Design", seeks to uncover and showcase "ideas worth spreading." The annual conference brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and dowers, who are challenged to give the "talk of their lives" in under 18 minutes.

I just watched a presentation by Richard Baraniuk's, a professor at Rice University and founder of Connexions. In the video below, he explains his vision behind Connexions' open source platform that aims to eliminate textbooks. His goal is to enable teachers "to share and modify course materials freely, anwhere in the world" and essentially become global clearinghouse of course materials. Here is a brief excerpt from their website that explains their philosophy:

Connexions is an environment for collaboratively developing, freely sharing, and rapidly publishing scholarly content on the Web. OurContent Commons contains educational materials for everyone — from children to college students to professionals — organized in small modulescollections or courses. All content is free to use and reuse under the Creative Commons "attribution" license. that are easily connected into larger

I'm thrilled to see academia starting to embrace new models for education. I've been disappointed with most academic approaches for some time now. Mostly because there isn't enough integration between the the classroom and the business world. I'll save that rant for later, but would like to make a couple quick predictions related to Connexions:

1. Textbooks will go extinct. This will occur at the intersection of open source initiatives like Connexions and technologies like E Ink that power the display of Amazon's Kindle. E Ink gives computer screens eye sensitive readability that mimics the visual of reading print on paper. [E Ink grew out of research from MIT Media Lab.]

2. Amazon's Kindle will spread like wildfire across campuses. Why slug around books when you access thousounds of virtual ones on demand via the internet? The Kindle makes reading on a computer screen comfortable, which essentially overcomes the largest hurdle for using digital versions text. This will reduce the burdensome nature of caring around books, eliminate the need to print out course material, and enable students to download and use course material instantaneously.

3. Companies will crowdsource more work through students. Just check out our story on GrouperEye, a college startup that enables companies to crowdsource case studies on campus. Not only does this give students real world experience (which they don't receive enough of in school), it enables companies to save money and "test" the skills of potential employees.

4. Open Source movements will proliferate in the same way that entrepreneurial initiatives continue to spring up in schools across the country. Check out the following video that demonstrates how open source can be used to improve education.