Easy and Effective Education: Introducing Free Textbooks

Almost half of all advertisements on education these days, whether in newspapers, magazines or the internet, are related to virtual education. Preparatory courses for competitive examinations like SAT and GRE or professional courses in management and law are now available through virtual classrooms. However, we need to look at this new concept from different angles to judge its usefulness, feasibility and applicability to the common people. The single most important thing in this context is the availability of free textbooks and/or public licensed education material, which can be easily obtained and distributable.

Any form of education requires material in the form of textbooks or otherwise which is readily available and is rich in content and quality. But the internet still lacks quality and professional education material in the form of textbooks and other forms. Would it not be great to have free textbooks and education material on the internet which we could obtain with the click of a button? Isn’t this a brilliant concept? The entire concept of virtualization of education has stemmed from this idea. If education material were to be available online and distributable, and technology could enable conducting virtual classes, an entire new era in education would dawn.

Virtual education is majorly dependent upon two factors – one is the availability of education material in non-physical or non-paper mode, and two, to make such material available through channels which can be easily used and available to the common people. The first factor is taken care of by free textbooks or public licensed education materials that are available easily these days, while the second factor is taken care of by the internet itself. What can be a better medium of mass communication and mass availability of e-content than the World Wide Web?

There are many kinds of virtual education that we find nowadays. One type is where training institutes provide tutorial and preparatory courses and mock tests for competitive examinations like SAT, GRE, TOEFL and so on. The other upcoming category is educational institutions providing courses online for management, law and other professional avenues. Usually in both of these cases, the service provider makes some material in the form of free textbooks and others readily available to the students or its subscribers, while for kinds of content and services it charges some amount of money.

Virtualization of education is a great concept with tremendous potential. Not only can it help in disbursement of education at various levels with greater ease, but it can also spread education to the masses by making free textbooks and other material freely available on the internet. We hope this concept becomes a hit and widely accepted, so that it can play an important role in solving the education problems that we have today.