(Posted by CAAI News Media)
Wednesday, 02 December 2009 15:01 Jessica Macias
Global Text Project is an initiative jointly conceived by AIESEC and aims to provide free, open content electronic textbooks over the Internet for students who cannot afford them.
Global Text’s focus is on students in developing economies with disparities in gross income per capita between rich and poor countries. The lack of affordable, high-quality textbooks is a barrier to receiving quality education needed to lift students and their countries out of poverty. Cambodia is no exception.
In addition, professors are free to modify the books to suit local circumstances, as the books are published under a creative commons license and can be modified with attribution.
This is important because most books are US-centric and thus not relevant to local cultures or circumstances.
Feedback from users of the textbooks is encouraged so that that Global Textbook educates users around the world on conditions in other countries. Global Textbook is classified under Open Educational Resources (OER).
“Free licensed textbooks are the next big theme in education”, said Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia.
Don McCubbrey, co-leader of the Global Text Project said, “my vision for the future, even in the US, that in time all educational content will be open and free and the total cost to a student for four years’ of content will be the cost of an eReader, instead of US$150 per new book”.
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