Monday, December 14, 2009

FREE

In addition to staff training on Tribes last week I spent a lot of time with the ABCTE team discussing FREE: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson who also wrote The Long Tail (Free ironically cost me $26.99 at the book store). The important premise for Scholarity is that digital content will all be free at some point. Companies that survive will find alternative ways to make money. It dovetails nicely with Liberating Learning by Chubb and Moe which claims that publishers will no longer be able to charge for digital content but will have to find ways to help students learn in order to make money. The winners will win on content delivery - not the content.

The demand for inexpensive digital content for education or for wiki-like education materials is going to radically change the dynamics of the education publishing business. It will take cutting edge concepts of digital delivery to create a new revenue stream for those who are really paying attention.

Free education content is already here and rapidly taking over the industry. It remains to be seen as to which publishers can survive the onslaught.

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