[Blindmath] Open Source Instructional Material, an opportunity for accessible math?
Birkir R. Gunnarsson
birkir.gunnarsson at gmail.com
Tue Dec 6 21:33:47 UTC 2011
Hi all
I am no expert on this, but I know that school districts, and even
entire states, are increasingly looking into adopting open source
instructional material (online, can be viewed freely).
This would, I assume, be particularly appropriate to "classic"
subjects, such as standard math courses (Calculus, Geometry,
Statistics, Linear Algebra) i.e. subjects that do not change at an
insane pace.
If this were to take hold with math courses, it seems like we would
have a huge opportunity to push for accessibility in these types of
materials, and to make free and accessible math courses available to a
lot of people.
It seems like one of the main problems of studying math are the
constant changes in text books and editions, and sometimes that is
definitely more for the financial benefit of the author than actual
quality improvement (not always, I am not saying that a new edition
cannot be a good thing, but there is absotly no definite quality
improvement with subsequent editions of text books).
Has anyone here looked into this? Has there been any interest from
organizations or universities to invest in accessibility, or go after
requiring materials to be accessible?
May be it is still too early, on the other hand, it is good to push
for accessibility in an emerging trend.
Wikipedia was a huge hit, as was NvDA, so why not expect good things
from open source. :) (I conveniently leave out less successful open
source offerings).
I'd be curious to hear opinion and ideas or experiences on this subject.
Cheers
-B
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