This post brought to you by Flatworld Knowledge. All opinions are 100% mine.

With ongoing trends towards open source, transparency, crowdsourcing, and "wiki"-style editing, we're seeing certain industries like television and radio advertising, traditional print newspapers,  textbook publishing, and college admissions evolving with new models (or falling away altogether).

Flat World Knowledge is one of the companies that is changing ideas about book ownership. Using open licensing along with a textbook personalization and rendering tool, they are offering educators, authors, and professors an ability to create educational experiences that are a dynamic learning platform instead of static, plain textbooks.

Their platform is called "MIYO" or "Make It Your Own," and the tool allows faculty to drag and drop chapters, delete and edit texts, and insert audio and video content from sources like YouTube and BlipTv. The tool allows for textbook customization.

When the professor clicks "publish" their source material gets converted into an html textbook (with search, note-taking, and multi-media), as well as PDF files for e-printing in color and black-and-white, as well as epub and .mobi files for reading on mobile readers and devices like the iPad and Kindle. A final format is audio books and formats like digital Braille for people with print disabilities.

U.S. textbooks are an $8.5 billion market. Flat World Knowledge has an available option to allow students a free online version, or offline versions of $35 for print and $25 for other formats. For the first time, students can choose the format and price point best for them.

By using a multi-media publishing experience to increase visual, audio, and experiential learning, authors/editors and students have an opportunity to learn, share, grow, communicate, and create with even more flexibility.