Sanford is Director of Business Development at Flat World Knowledge. He brings accomplishments in publishing and technology. He began his textbook publishing career with Prentice-Hall, followed by Holt-Rinehardt, Little-Brown, Benjamin Cummings, Springer-Verlag (Telos Library of Science), and Addison-Wesley - in sales, sales management, field editorial, and marketing management positions. He also started and ran a successful used textbook wholesaling company. Looking for new challenges, Sanford migrated to the digital technology and distributed information sectors, where he served as a strategic business development and technology consultant to Apple Computer; Stanford University's Office of Technology and Licensing; On-Command Video, and several others. Sanford also served as domestic business development and M&A lead for British publishing/broadcasting giant United Business Media, Sanford co-founded two for-profit technology startups, in embedded mobile consumer electronics applications, and embedded asset security applications, respectively. He was co-founder of Telophase, a not-for-profit community broadband consultancy that advocated for local control of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH); Telophase created the widely discussed (within the FCC) concepts of "Communicative Assets" and "Broadband Bonds". Sanford also founded the non-profit California Open Textbook Project (COSTP), the first K-12 open textbook project in America. COSTP has had seminal influence on the open licensed textbook movement, worldwide. Sanford has consulted and/or advised with the most prominent open textbook and open content initiatives. Most recently, Sanford was Senior Project and Research Consultant for the California Community College Open Educational Resources project, funded by The Hewlett Foundation, and founded by current Undersecretary of Education Martha Kanter. Sanford has spoken and written widely about open licensing, educational publishing reform, educational technology innovation, and the social benefits accruing from properly deployed public information and education infrastructures. Sanford holds degrees in Economics and Cognitive Science/Educational Technology.
Authored Comments
Thanks, Greg! Hopefully, we'll go for a combination of platform(s) + content that enables teaching and learning *flow* - with "flow" understood within the context of a user losing track of time while involved in a learning task, because the task is a *pleasure* to engage toward desired outcomes. That, rather than the frustration of engaging content that forbids the kind of fluid reuse that OERs promise. Every time a new user encounters a serious frustration that runs counter to the promise made by the "OER Brand", we stand to lose a champion, and make it more difficult to convince that same user the second time around.
It's imperative that we achieve this goal; we have to get it right, because unless we do we're not going to optimize the large mass of dormant intellectual capital that OERs are promising to unlock. I know that's stating the obvious, and this is a bit of a rant, but we must get past any scenario that implies a "dueling standards" war for developers and users. This is about *delighting* the user, whether student, or teacher. That's the goal; we need to insist on no less.
Here's more <a href="http://www.dr-chuck.com/csev-blog/">insight from Chuck Severance </a>, in addition to Greg's very elucidating piece.
Thanks for the well-wrought, thoughtful responses and queries - including essential agreement on the dire need to reshape the college textbook publishing sector in service of creating better opportunities for America's college students, and our collective American future. Flat World Knowledge will continue to innovate in service of bringing the highest-quality Open textbook value to students and teaching institutions, everywhere.
That said, Flat World Knowledge Chief Openness Officer, David Wiley, has already eloquently addressed some of the reservations that deal with the issue of various flavors of open licensing expressed above. So, rather than restating David's work, I'll link <a href="http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/1050">directly</a> <a href="http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/1196">to</a> it <a href=" http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/1109">here</a> .