Dallas News recently published the following article:

Irving ISD uses online textbooks, so unused copies state must buy sit in a warehouse

Thousands of textbooks and other materials worth an estimated $4.6 million sit unused in an Irving school district warehouse. No one knows how many $50-$75 textbooks sit unused in school bookrooms or storage warehouses across Texas. ";It's not like you've gone and thrown a million dollars off the top of a building, but I think we could do better things with the money," said Lea Bailey, Irving ISD's director of learning resources. "I don't think we're being wasteful. I think we could probably revise the process and make better use of taxpayers' money for sure." The Texas Education Agency, which regulates public schools, budgeted $500 million for textbook purchases in 2008-09.

What does this say about our system? Will School districts do anything not to lose their funds for textbook adoption?  Even if we are throwing millions of dollars off the top of a building.............

Newsletter July 2009

Greetings CK-12 Community!

In this issue:

• California Digital Textbooks Initiative
• Introduction to CK-12 Content Manager Gary Clarke
• Interview with Juli Weiss and Annamaria Farbizio, CK-12 Science and Math Editors
• Update on Support and Twitter

California Digital Textbooks Initiative

If you live in California, you have probably noticed that digital textbooks are in the news lately.  Governor Schwarzenegger issued a call to educators and publishers to submit standards-aligned textbooks in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and math by June 15th. We are proud to have met that deadline. It has been a great group effort with all of our authors, editors, domain experts, copyeditors, and internal content staff working together towards this important goal.  The books are available for download here. They are Calculus, Geometry, Trigonometry, Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science, and Life Science.

Introduction to CK-12 Content Manager Gary Clarke

In other CK-12 news, our internal staff has grown.  We have added Gary Clarke as Content Manager.  Gary joins CK-12 with over thirteen years of experience in educational and web-content publishing.  We couldn’t be happier to have him.

Gary gave us a short bio to share: “I am very excited about joining CK-12. After spending many years in educational publishing and IT Web publishing, I wanted to work for a top-notch team that brought those two worlds together. Delivering high- quality online educational content over the Web and building a thriving online educational community, all in support of an open education mission...now what could be better than that! For the past nine-plus years, I have gained experience in online Web publishing and online community building with Catapulse, Rational Software, a little company called IBM (developerWorks) and an even smaller one, Microsoft (MSDN). Prior to that, I spent six years with Pearson and Key Curriculum Press. I attended the London School of Economics, University of London, University of Southern California, and taught logic and philosophy for one year at Manchester University.  I have a wife, Joze! fa, and two very small children, Oliver (4 years) and Abigail (14 months.)  I have no free time whatsoever!”

Interview with Juli Weiss and Annamaria Farbizio, CK-12 Science and Math Editors

CK-12's content team are:

• Gary Clark, Content Manager
• Annamaria Farbizio, Math Leader and Editor
• Gil Hoskins, Curriculum Alignment Specialist
• Juli Weiss, Science Leader and Editor

They are joined this summer by a fantastic group of high school interns.  See more info about all of the CK-12 team here.  The Newsletter sat down with Juli Weiss and Annamaria Farbizio to talk about CK-12's unique content creation process.

CK-12 Newsletter: Tell me a little about the CK-12 Publishing Process- How do you create digital textbooks?

Juli Weiss: CK-12 is committed to creating comprehensive K-12 STEM curricula written to state and national standards.  One of CK-12’s key differentiators is our academic and comprehensive approach to developing our seeded content.  For example, for our California editions, our book outlines were written to California and national standards.  Science content was aligned to California, National Science Education Standards (NSES), as well as the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Project 2061 Benchmarks whenever possible.  Math content is aligned to California and National Council of Teachers in Mathematics (NCTM) standards.  There are three ways we obtain content: 1) seeded content, which is commissioned by CK-12; 2) donated content, which is given to us by authors, and 3) “harvested”content, which is created by authors using our FlexBooks application and readily available open educational resources.

Annamaria Farbizio: We start out by interviewing different authors who have teaching experience and expertise in their subject.  They do a sample chapter which is checked by a domain expert and in-house at CK-12. Once authors come on board they start writing chapters based on an outline, which has already been created according to curriculum standards.  The chapter goes back and forth between the author and the Domain Expert.  The Domain Expert works with the author as well as the Book Manager at CK-12.  This collaboration really adds to the quality of the books.

After a chapter is written, we send it out to reviewers.  It’s important to get the outside perspective, because in-house we can be very focused on the timeline.  The CK-12 publication process happens over a shorter timeline than a traditional publishing process.

Newsletter: What is a domain expert (DE)?

Weiss: Our domain experts have expertise in their subject matter.  They all have advanced degrees, extensive teaching experience, and significant experience in curriculum development complying with state and national standards.  Their role is to ensure our content has integrity and to provide quality control and quality assurance.

Farbizio: Part of the domain expert’s role is to help make the writing stronger by working with authors to get them to perform at their best level.  They work to incorporate feedback from the reviewers as well as the technical reviewers.  They’re like book coaches, in a way, because in addition to having subject matter expertise, being able to look through the material and make sure that it is accurate, make sure that it’s presented well, all of these things that we’re asking them to do…the most successful ones are able to really inspire the authors to perform at their best level.

Newsletter: So what is the reviewer’s role?

Weiss: Similar to our domain experts, reviewers serve to vet and ensure integrity of content.  They provide developmental content reviews evaluating pedagogical integrity, alignment to standards, and accessibility.  Accuracy checks are conducted by technical reviewers and copyeditors review the manuscript for typos and grammatical errors.  Seeded content is reviewed by six independent reviewers and their comments are synthesized into our final manuscripts by the domain experts and the book managers.  Our checks and balances are in place to ensure we provide users high quality content.

It may be of interest to our readers to explain our recruiting process – our science and math authors and reviewers are recruited from throughout the nation.  Writer qualification includes: BA/BS degree (MS or PhD preferred), 5+ years teaching experience, curriculum development, instructional design, and educational publishing is a plus.  Reviewer qualification includes: Advanced degree in area of expertise (PhD preferred), experience reviewing textbooks as well as experience in district/schools adoption committees a plus, and familiarity with state and national standards.  We advertise in professional organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Association of Science Writers, National Earth Science Teachers Association, American Chemical Society, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators, universities, teacher’s forums, etc.

Finally, CK-12’s distinguished community of authors, reviewers, and domain experts pride themselves in being pioneers in open educational resources (OER).  Again, our primary concern given our open source model is ensuring users our content has integrity, quality control, and quality assurance.

Newsletter: What does the future hold for FlexBooks?

Farbizio: One of our goals is to provide users with an image repository.  If they could use those images freely, that would be a great teaching tool.

Weiss: We currently provide users with a mini image repository – all images in our seeded content and on our site can be used and repurposed through our CC-BY-SA license. We are in the process of developing teacher’s editions, worksheets, test questions, quizzes, labs, workbooks, and supplemental materials, which are written to the same standards as our other materials.  We’re also looking at embedding links and videos.  This reaches and supports different learning styles.  The robustness of our application allows users to update content instantly.  With our latest platform upgrade, users can author and edit content on the FlexBooks tool on CK-12’s website.  We are now at the intersection and marriage of content and technology.  This is also at the heart of where we are headed – towards a collaborative community approach to creating content.  Going from our seeded content to user created content.  However, we will always have a system and infrastructure in place to vet our content for integrity, quality control, and assurance.

It should be noted that even if users don’t have access to a computer they can still download a hard copy to share.  Users don’t need to have a lot of technology.  And all of our content is free!

Newsletter: Thank you for your time!

Update on Support and Twitter

CK-12 has recently improved our support process, better enabling us to respond to your questions and feedback, and we love to hear from you.  Whether you are having trouble with the FlexBooks tool, you have a suggestion for how we could improve, or you want to get involved, we hope you will contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Follow us on Twitter @CK12FlexBooks.

Improving textbooks overall- their quality, accessibility, flexibility, and timeliness- is a community effort, and we couldn’t do it without you.

Thanks for reading and happy flexing!

Have we all not once or twice in our lives wished for a magic wand?  Well here it is.

It boggles the mind when I think about the fact that someone is responsible for distributing $140 Billion for education. BILLIONS. That kind of money should be able to change our lives.  Many countries could change the lives of their citizens if they had access to a fraction of that money.  How did we get to this?

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was at an event sponsored by the San Francisco Unified School District recently.  The room was packed.  Tables, usually for 10 people, had 12 people sitting around them and they were jam-packed, making it difficult to serve lunch.  All this to hear what this man had to say about how he was going to dole out these monies and hoping, “maybe I may be one of the lucky ones!”

The program was very touching as at the center of it were the children; their singing performances, a video with students displaying placards that thanked the sponsors as well as the Secretary.  The room was filled with school superintendents, school board members, teachers, charter school representatives and many more.  I even ran into CA Secretary of Education Glen Thomas, Joanne Weiss (who has been appointed for the distribution of the stimulus funds), Ted Mitchell, (Head of the Board of Education, CA), and Martha Kanter (Federal Assistant Secretary of Education).  Secretary Duncan gave a fairly short and to the point speech which was followed by questions about his plans from three students who were from disadvantaged families yet had done well in the system.

Secretary Duncan was very consistent with his message.  He believes that we have to fix three things in our education system: (1) more hours in school, (2) more opportunity, and (3) higher expectations of our students.  During the period that the secretary was speaking, a piece of paper was handed out.  This piece of paper gave the details of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, detailing the funding for education, jobs and reform.  It gave the details of how the money was going to be distributed:

•    $77 Billion direct funding for stabilization funds to avert education cuts to move towards reform, Title 1 improvement, IDEA, higher standards, quality assessment, data systems, early childhood education, and other education investments
•    $30.8 Billion are set aside for college affordability for low- to moderate- income students for grant money and tuition tax credit
•    $33.6 Billion for additional funds for school modernization

One of the lessons learned from this economic crisis is that we need to take some things into our own hands.  Secretary Duncan asked that we “stop subsidizing banks” by making them the place that we send students for financial aid.   We in education can save up to $4 Billion a year by not providing funds from banks loans.  These bank loans are causing the system to become unaffordable.  We need to think differently about resources and subsidizing other businesses through education.
Secretary Duncan had a very loud and clear message to California.  California, once the leader, has lost its edge and is now one of the lowest performing states.  California needs to step up:

California can come along with what is happening or watch history go by!  California needs to have the political will to make it happen.


Let’s just hope that we Californians can stop pulling each other down, step up and work together to help our children to be productive and performing citizens of the nation as well as the world.    Now is the time.

Have you heard the news? Governor Schwarzenegger announced that he wants to explore digital free and online accessible textbooks that are standards aligned.  These books will be in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Keeping inline with the spirit of the state, there are various opinions about this.  I hope we can have a fair and open dialogue about this important issue. As you can well imagine, we are very excited about this development.  Now, we Californians are thinking out of the box, which is what we do best!  We are on our way to making education accessible to many more students, as well developing alternative ways to get content into the hands of the students.

I have been following the dialogue about this on different blogs.  In general, people are feeling like this is a good thing, considering that the cost of textbooks is getting to be unaffordable, which is a situation that needs to be remedied ASAP.  We can not keep treating this as, "We don't worry about what it costs.  We never look at the price when we go through the adoption process."  This attitude is what has gotten us to where we are.  Of course cost matters.  How can this mentality be allowed to continue?  It is irresponsible and continues to contribute to the divide between who can afford to buy the books for their children and who cannot. Since we are not going to be sorting out our budget mess quickly, it is even more important that we look for alternatives.

Here is what people are saying about the announcement.   Please keep in mind that the details of the announcement and how it will work are yet to come.

• "Textbooks are a surprisingly controversial issue in California and there is a lot of political baggage and bureaucratic red tape"
• "Individual changes to textbooks can become a source of fierce debate and there are a multitude of special interest groups battling over what the textbooks should say and how they should say it.  It would take edit wars to a whole new level."
• "How to keep the old system from penetrating the old (new) system - considering that there are a lot of lives depending on the old system - lobbyists, PR/Marketing, publishing houses..."
• "How to deal with pedagogy and topics - lecture based teaching vs. hands-on activity, predefined process of content exposure vs. student driven learning needs, problem-based learning vs. procedural-based learning, conceptual learning...."
• "Printing copies of the books.  You can pay someone to write them but you still need to get copies into the students' hands.  Electronic distribution - aside from the initial cost; replacing lost/damages readers would be an ongoing cost and nightmare"
• "This will never happen as school administrators are extremely risk adverse.  They will never be able to accept the risk that the reason their students didn't do well is that the open source textbook they used didn't meet the state/federal curriculum standards.  The state/federal education agencies will also never certify that any textbook meets their curriculum standards."

From osdir.com

• Wow! As a teacher myself, I would love this! No more worrying about sharing texts, them getting lost. Why shouldn't we have open access to all text books, I know that education is a business, but maybe, it shouldn't be.
• great idea if it works...
• Yeah, let's complain about modernizing school so that the public school system will fail to provide children with a decent education....