While the economy digs out toward the future, it seems likely that ideas that are designed for the future are to be banked upon. That has just happened for Flatworld Knowledge, the Open College Textbook enterprise scheduled to launch in January. While much of the world economy is pretty much frozen, in a press release today, Flatworld Knowledge announced the completion of a $700,000 round of funding. The approach Flatworld Knowledge takes to textbooks is open source, customizable, and flexible for professors and students in other smart mobby ways. As the press release reports:

In the last nine months, Flat World Knowledge’s open source textbooks have generated excitement among students and academics who appreciate how Flat World will dramatically decrease the cost of learning materials. Students benefit directly from those decreased costs, and educators prefer the open-source approach employed by FlatWorld because it gives them far more control over the classroom experience by enabling instructors to customize books to better suit their syllabus and teaching style.