[edu-eu] Crowdfunding project in Germany: First open and free textbook

[Projekt SCHULBUCH-O-MAT]

Hi out there,

just wanted to share this with edu-eu@

Give this project a big boost :)

Greetings from Berlin,

Hans

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New digital platform to start with biology textbook

Hope for support through crowdfunding

Two men from Berlin want to revolutionize the German textbook market and challenge the established textbook publishers. They intend to create an online platform to develop digital textbooks collaboratively and distribute them for free. To this end, they encourage teachers and authors to assume editorial responsibility and share their material, as Hans Hellfried Wedenig and Heiko Przyhodnik explained in an interview with "buchreport". 

To collect funds, media expert Wedenig and Biology and Phys. Ed. teacher Przyhodnik are presenting their project called "Schulbuch-O-Mat" (literally "Textbook-O-Mat") on the crowdfunding platform startnext. They hope for 10,000 Euros from project fans. The money is to go into the platform as well as their first textbook, an introduction to biology for 7th and 8th graders. 

The pioneers take a clear stand against the commercial platform digitale-schulbuecher.de created by the German textbook publishers where users pay for ready-to-use digital textbooks. Their hope of success is based on similar, but more advanced projects in the U.S. (flexbook) and encouraging early feedback from teachers.

Source: http://www.schulbuch-gesellschaft.de/en/content.php?contentid=273

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Project link: http://www.startnext.de/schulbuch-o-mat