Our brains are not linear, so why should our textbooks be? Connexions allows users to break content down into smaller modules that can be linked and arranged in different ways better suited to an individual learning style.

Connexions Website: http://cnx.org/

A place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. Anyone may view or contribute:

Creative Commons article with Connexions creator Rich Baraniuk: http://creativecommons.org/education/connexions

Baraniuk’s main beef with traditional teaching and textbooks is that they’re too linear. Subjects are broken up into discrete units, and then never reconnected. Textbooks mirror this flaw in that they are completely linear, and depending on the particular focus of a course, tend to offer a great deal of irrelevant or redundant information, while failing to cast any illumination on vital subjects. Even worse, by the time they make it through writing, editing, school board reviews, publishing and finally into students hands, textbooks — especially in the fast moving sciences — are often obsolete.