Flat World Knowledge

Flat World Knowledge represents a revolution in the field of textbook publishing. The model is characterized by a mash-up of all the current tendencies concerning the book in the digital era: multimediality, e-learning, print on demand, social reading, text customization, etc.

[youtube width=”600″ height=”400″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81zVcWcfAcU[/youtube]

First of all, Flat World Knowledge gives free* access to textbooks which are generally very expensive. Those textbooks are under creative commons license, this means they are totally editable by the instructor, who can, for instance, make the concepts easier, change the examples, delete chapters, etc. Students can choose the way they want to study: reading online using laptops and e-readers or purchasing the books from the print on demand service, whether in full colours or in black and white. In addiction students can have access to podcasts and other extra contents. Flat World Knowledge allows social reading: students may ask questions online, discuss texts through multiple highlights and notes, chat with other readers.

Everyone takes advantage from this system: students save money and have at their disposal up-to-date learning tools, teachers achieve more involvement in the educational program and have control on the textbooks’ “shelf-life”, choosing whether to upgrade the book to a new edition or not. Books’ authors get higher royalties.

In the e-book vs printed book debate, Flat World Knowledge confirms the advantages of hybrid solutions, in which all means works together. Furthermore it gives a clear example of the digital technologies’ potential if applied to specific book’s typologies.

* Online version is for free, PDF download is already quite expensive, but it’s possible to download single chapters.

More information in this article by David Weir.

[youtube width=”600″ height=”400″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExxwEd3GuVI[/youtube]
[youtube width=”600″ height=”400″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu06K71JayE[/youtube]

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