From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

About COSTP World History Project

1. Civilizations of Ancient Times
2. Ancient philosophy and the development of Western political thought
3. Eastern Civilization and Its Impact
4. An Age of Empires - Rome, Han China, and the Silk Road
5. More Changes in the Middle East
6. The Middle Ages and Middle Eastern Golden Age
7. Precolumbian History of the Americas
8. Ancient Kingdoms of Africa
9. Changes in Eurasia - Mongol Conquest and Aftermath
10. The Renaissance in Europe
11. Age of Discovery & Imperialism
12. Three Revolutions, liberty and self-government
13. The Industrial Revolution
14. Global change in the era of New Imperialism
15. Causes and course of the First World War
16. Effects of the First World War
17. Totalitarian governments after World War I
18. Causes and course of World War II
19. Effects of WWII
20. Contemporary nation-building and the Cold War
21. The World Economy
22. A New Millenium

Please note: Wikibooks hosts another textbook on World History based on Advanced Placement Standards for World History. Although a worthy project in its own right, the AP World History project is not related to the California Open Source Textbook Project (COSTP). COSTP is dedicated to writing content that strictly adheres to the California State Education framework for K-12 content in all disciplines - in this case, World History.

COSTP's aim is to use California State K-12 Standards to develop printed, open source textbooks that will be approved for adoption by California's State Board of Education for use in California public schools at far less cost than current commercial textbook offerings, thus helping the State of California save money (more than $200M per year) while providing more robust content for its public schools.

In order for open source books to pass peer review (and thus approval for public school adoption) at the California State Board level (this is also true in most other states), textbook content *must* conform to the written state K-12 education framework standard - this is a sine qua non for adoption, no exceptions are made. California's State Board of Education would thus *not* approve the above AP World History project for general adoption because it does not conform to California's K-12 World History standard. This is an important distinction between the two projects. Private institutions, some state education bureaucracies, and independent learners might want to choose the AP World History course for their own specific purposes, but adoption by California public schools for widespread baseline World History K-12 education would not be permitted or considered for the reasons stated above.

The COSTP World History Project on Wikipedia is a placeholder pilot that is helping to prove the open source concept in the K-12 textbook sector. The COSTP World History Project has been been successful in helping California education officials understand - even in its current basic beginnings - the value of the open source content approach applied to K-12 textbooks.

Lastly, COSTP has just begun to work with history textbook authors and others to begin to fill out content for this project. We invite all who love World History, and want to make a real contribution to young learners with superior content, to contribute to these pages. Please visit http://www.opensourcetext.org for more.