Free the Textbook: reducing the cost of studying with open textbooks

"I watched Cable Green's #OER15 keynote with great interest last week, and it brought me back to what I've been thinking about open textbooks for a few years now. When I've spoken with (or read) American educators, I've always got the feeling that 'open' and 'OER' relate more to textbooks than other resources, whereas over here in the UK the balance is more heavily distributed towards content and activities. That may not be the intention, or this may not even be 100% accurate, it's just the feeling I've got from being somewhat engaged (or on the fringes) in 'the open movement'. Opensourceway | CC BY:SA I read Martin Weller's post this morning which relates back to another of Cable Green's recent presentations where he tells a similar story to that at #OER15. The basic premise is that Washington State have been spending a ridiculous amount of money in buying textbooks, and because of the cost, they can only afford to buy a couple each year. Furthermore the students (K12 I think) don't own the books as they have to be passed on to the next intake. [Yeah crazy isn't it?]. So instead the idea is that rather than paying for those textbooks, the money can be used to fund the writing of new, current and open text books. These can be easily updated, and suspect they can be printed reasonably cheaply [that ebook master @hopkinsdavid used CreateSpace for the #edtechBook I contributed to]. This means all students can have their own copy, and the impact of this can spread beyond the Washington State area. Public funds = open textbooks = huge potential impact. Easy right? So why haven't we done this in the UK? ..."