FRESH044: e-textbooks

Boundless - free, open source, digital textbooks

Boundless is a service that provides free, open source, digital textbooks. There are 18 open textbooks with Creative Commons licensed content, for college subjects including accounting, biology, economics and more.

Boundless provides a free alternative to expensive textbooks and they can also be used as supplemental materials for students. The content is changed and additions made, in direct contrast to printed textbooks that are usually outdated before they are printed.

Boundless has an interesting process. They find the best free online content, have experts curate and vet it, and then deliver it in a way that is easy to read and navigate.

They also have some great features like SmartNotes which condense the full book into the main points, terms and examples, and Interactive Notebook to highlight items and add your own notes, Flash Cards, Quizzes, Study Guides and search.

Boundless is a great resource for college students, as well as advanced high school students and teachers. I'm a huge proponent of free resources vs. expensive textbooks and really like the fact that these free digital resources are constantly updated and improved.

Here are all of their textbooks:

Discovery Education announces updates to it's Science Techbooks

Discovery Education has a lot of great resources for educators, many free (over 30). They also have fee-based services such as DE Streaming with thousands of videos, audio files, images, lesson plans, and much more.

The Discovery Education Science Techbook is more than a digital textbook. "It’s a different way of thinking. Thinking outside the box, perhaps. Or more appropriately, thinking outside the book." "The Techbook not only provides awesome content aligned to each state’s standards (there are currently Science Techbooks available for most grades K-8 in 30 states across the U.S.), but includes a model lesson for teachers to use with every concept, assessment questions for each standard, a teacher’s guide, and DVDs for when the Internet is not available. Resources such as the virtual labs, reading passages, video segments, science sleuths, explorations, and interactive glossary, etc., are packaged together to follow the five E model of instruction. Teachers have found an easier and creative way to build lessons using technology resources and content, as well as differentiating their classroom."

They have just announced Techbook 2.0 is available. This is an update to the Techbook based on feedback and suggestions from educators, including a group of well known and well respected educators who reviewed Techbook at a summit Discovery Education hosted. You can Register to attend a webinar to learn about the new layout, features, and enhancements.

links.discoveryeducation.com/sciencetechbook

Related:

25 Free Resources from Discovery Education

Discovery Education’s Science Techbook: Scientific Explanations in Action

What I Want from a Digital Textbook

TechBook Extravaganza

Apple Announces iBooks2 E-Textbooks - my initial thoughts

What I use with Physics classes instead of textbook

Resources to Replace Textbooks

Free Textbooks - online, download, iPad, Kindle