Devlin, Online Education, and Self-Publishing, Oh My

 Keith Devlin's latest posting, as his online course, "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking," approaches:

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-future-of-textbook-publishing-is-us.html

He employs Amazon's "CreateSpace" for self-publishing a math textbook, noting that "...the whole process is so well designed, there is no reason why anyone who can use LaTeX should do anything other than self-publish from now on."

And toward the end this,

"So the key to making something like this work is, I think, to build up a Wikipedia-like community of instructors who, for five weeks each year, will make available their expertise to the thousands of students around the world who are taking advantage of a MOOC [massive open online course] to obtain an education they would otherwise not have access to.

"The benefit to the students in the transition classes given by MOOC-participating instructors is that their learning will assuredly be enhanced by acting as tutors for the students who are not so privileged. Both because teaching others is a powerful way to learn – as most of us discover when we become TAs at graduate school – and because those students will surely feel much more incentivized to understand by playing such a feel-good role."