[seul-edu] open textbooks

[Chris Hedemark <hedemark@bops.com>]

I was reading on /. today about how many private universities, and now
public universities, are requiring students to purchase $2,000+ laptop
computers.  This is on top of the rediculously high costs of textbooks.

It got me to thinking.  How much does the average high school spend on text
books for a 4 year student?  Forget about recycling to next year's student
for a moment (I'll explain).  Is the cost greater than that of a laptop
computer?

Here's what I am thinking.  If textbooks were developed in an Open Source
fashion, it could be more effective for schools to distribute laptops
instead of textbooks.  Every year an updated version of the text can be
distributed to students at no cost to the school.

The only real problem that I see is getting qualified people to write &
maintain the texts.  What is the incentive?