[Blindmath] Open Source Instructional Material, an opportunity for accessible math?

[Richard Baldwin]

Are you familiar with OER at http://www.oercommons.org/ If not, take a look
at it.

CNX.org, where I publish a lot of my open access materials, is affiliated
with OER.

I can personally attest to the fact that a lot of "new edition" textbooks
offer little if anything of value to either the student or the instructor.
>From the students perspective, it means the the value of a used textbook
just went to zero. For the instructor, it usually means that things have
been rearranged slightly in the new edition of the textbook, meaning that
the instructor must rework existing teaching materials in order to stay in
synch with the new edition of the textbook.

Dick Baldwin

On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Birkir R. Gunnarsson <
birkir.gunnarsson at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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-- 
Richard G. Baldwin (Dick Baldwin)
Home of Baldwin's on-line Java Tutorials
http://www.DickBaldwin.com

Professor of Computer Information Technology
Austin Community College
(512) 223-4758
mailto:Baldwin at DickBaldwin.com
http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/