A few weeks ago, I did an interview with Matt Miller, author of the educational book, "Ditch that Textbook". Matt's book as described on Amazon is as follows: 

Are you ready for a change? You know potential exists for innovative, engaging, revolutionary education if you get the right ideas, right tools, and right people, all in the right order.
If that sounds like you, then you're ready to DITCH old mindsets and methods and replace them with empowering, liberating ones. Author and teacher, Matt Miller shows you how to choose and incorporate teaching practices that are:  

• Different from what students see daily.
• Innovative, drawing on new ideas or modifying others' ideas.
• Tech-laden with the use of digital sites, tools and devices.
• Creative, tapping into students' original ideas as well as your own.
• Hands-on, encouraging students to make and try things on their own.

Matt and I discussed the building and creation of the online textbook over the last ten years found at http://dgh.wikispaces.com/home   Matt's main point is to move beyond textbooks into something more local, more teacher/student drive, something more engaging to kids---Often called Open Educational Resources (OERs). 

Also below is a screen recording I did today to answer a group of questions I got in an email from Dallas in Oklahoma.  I thought I would include them as they deal with the idea of building your own OER.  

Google doc with links I am using during the youtube 

Travis and I are working to connect our student's more this year then we have been able to in the  past.  

Several years ago when Mike and I were connecting our classroom we used google docs as a shared space to ask questions, provide links, images etc. between the two schools.  Mike and I had done this several times during year.  

Travis and I have talked about trying to make this work for us.

We have been reluctant to take the student interaction to this level due to some of the hardware obsticles Travis has had. However this year, with Dublin having a new CTO, he has received a few extra devices for his class. Which have opened a few more doors for us throughout the school year. 

We moved to using google docs as a collaboration tool between the students at our schools 130 miles apart. Our first addition to having more interaction was bringing back the shared google doc that Mike and I use to do during the Middle Ages unit. We are currently planning out our next addition that we will do in the next couple of months. Which will give the students an opportunity to work on a project exclusively with their blog pal. We will write out Part 2 of this post once we have completed the second project. 

We talked for over an hour. Matt did a great job of summarizing that conservation and sharing his insights on the discussion (so I won't waste your time here:)  You can view that write up on his blog: ​http://ditchthattextbook.com/2016/03/18/a-student-created-digital-textbook-their-process-and-resources/ ​

I had mentioned a few resources that he did not have linked in his blog, they are as follows:
Slide show on our process to build the textbook
My youtube channel: 
Have a great weekend.