Polish Government To Deliver Free Textbooks For All Kids Grades 4-6

rekrutacja writes "Today the Polish government started a Digital School pilot program, which includes distributing e-textbooks. This came after a years-long effort by the Open Education Coalition and its members to persuade policy makers, that Open Educational Resources are the future of education. The last few months have been especially eventful, as the free textbooks part of the program was dropped by the Ministry of Education and reinstated again by the Prime Minister Office."

That's advanced

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The India government is looking to deliver K-12 education to a half billion kids in the next decade, if they can get Android tablets at $40 each. I wish them luck. Right now the price point is $128 for a 7" tablet. The education is, of course, free - thanks to the diligent work of Michael Hart (may he rest in peace!)

CC BY

[Anonymous Coward]

from the article (in Polish):

all these resources will be available under CC BY [creativecommons.org], which is compliant with the Definition of Free Cultural Works.

Re:Good for them!

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah since they are available as CC-BY with sources that means any reader
from the site with the books http://wolnelektury.pl/
PDF to print
EPUB for an e-book reader
MOBI for Kindle
TXT for advanced usage
and
Source of the book
Source XML file
Book on Editor's Platform
Mix this book

Re:Yeah

[PCM2]

I went to school in the United States and I don't remember ever having to pay for textbooks for grades K-12, either. You gave them back at the end of the term, so most classes handed out used books.

When I first saw this story, my initial reaction was, "Oh no, are they making elementary school kids pay for books somewhere?" I can just imagine what it would be like to teach a class in American schools where half the kids don't even have a copy of the book.

Re:Lulz at Slashdot

[0100010001010011]

Indiana Pi Bill was not fictional. [wikipedia.org]

The Indiana Pi Bill is the popular name for bill #246 of the 1897 sitting of the Indiana General Assembly, one of the most famous attempts to establish scientific truth by legislative fiat. Despite that name, the main result claimed by the bill is a method to square the circle, rather than to establish a certain value for the mathematical constant (pi), the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. However, the bill does contain text that appears to dictate various incorrect values of , such as 3.2 (when 3.1 is closer, with = 3.14159265...).

The bill never became law, due to the intervention of a mathematics professor who happened to be present in the legislature