Ryan Paul reports that California has launched an initiative to compile open source textbooks for the state. While the goal is to cut costs and improve the quality of education, the state’s complex standards and arduous textbook evaluation process will pose major challenges.  Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger intends for the state to develop digital open source textbooks for high school math and science classes. The books will be available for free and used at public schools across the state.

arstechnica.com report that the aim is to make  sure that the new textbooks are ready for deployment in fall 2009. and while  open source textbooks is not new,  this could be the first statewide initiative to put open content in classrooms.

The state’s high-profile adoption of freely available open source textbook material could compel other states to follow and adopt similar initiatives.

Previous efforts to build open source textbooks for California by various independent organizations have largely been unsuccessful. One such attempt was made by an organization called the California Open Source Textbook Project (COSTP) in 2002, which aimed to produce a digital K-12 history textbook under an open license in collaboration with the Wikibooks project. The program never gained traction and failed to produce a complete textbook.

Link: http://arstechnica.com

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