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Re:A “simple” 3rd grade problem by DanBC on Saturday May 04, 2013 @03:26PM (#5656031)
Educational books is something that really could work fantastically well with open source models. Some group of people prepare best current practice chapters for a single topic. This group includes educators (to know where children get confused and make mistakes) and experts (to spot subtle errors, and to 'foreshadow' knowledge needed later).

These are released.

People can make corrections.

For something like math this could have significant impact not just in the US and EU but in the developing world too.

PS: About the fraction multiple choice: There's probably a bad joke about 24% being what we'd expect if we let the students chose at random. I'm not funny enough to think what it is. (The punchline being that there are 5 options, not 4.)

Re:A “simple” 3rd grade problem by SiVal on Saturday May 04, 2013 @04:15PM (#5656171)
The joke would be that if you don't know the answer, the "I don't know" answer is completely correct.

More seriously, yes, I think the open source books (actually teaching materials that include books) will eventually replace commercial materials in almost all cases except those tertiary (college/uni) level classes where the book is written by the teacher. Financial pressure, if nothing else, will have this effect. Many of the open source books could be primarily the work of a single Benevolent Dictator For Life, of course.