andPOP - Pop Culture With Substance

A British school that lost all of its musical instruments in a 2007 flood has received a big helping hand from Coldplay.

The super group have purchased a $6,000 Kemble piano for St David’s School, a primary school in Moreton-in-Marsh.

After a neighbour told bassist Guy Berryman about the school’s plight, the band sprung into action.

“It is fantastic,” head teacher Bob Forster told BBC News. “I was impressed they cared enough to want to help. Music is important to St David’s and gives huge pleasure to people inside and out of the school.”

The children of the school have sent a thank you letter to the band, and will send photos of themselves with the piano.

A group of enterprising university students has launched “BooksForSchool.ca,” Canada?s first free textbook exchange web site, based on a social networking concept, which links students within similar schools and courses. BooksForSchool.ca helps reduce the costs of post-secondary textbooks by creating an online community of buyers and sellers.

Motivated by concern over the high cost of education, rising tuitions, living expenses and onerous textbook fees, student developers were anxious to find creative ways to manage the accumulating student debt load. As a result of the hard work put into the development of BooksForSchool.ca, students now have a convenient system to save money and time with the free online textbook exchange service.

An online textbook exchange service is a web site that facilities the direct exchange of post-secondary textbooks between students. Members may buy, sell or exchange their new and used textbooks without surcharges.

“Textbook fees continue to rise and schools continue to devalue buyback offers on used textbooks,” said Lawson Hennick, press coordinator of the BooksForSchool.ca web site. “BooksForSchool.ca allows students to determine the price of textbooks without the added expense of the middleman.”

BooksForSchool.ca matches students with others across Canada who have the textbooks they need. Web site tools automatically inform students by email when a required textbook becomes available. BooksForSchool.ca is completely free to buy, sell or trade textbooks so students can retain much more of their initial investment when selling their textbooks online.

“Since BooksForSchool.ca is a national initiative, books which may be outdated in one province may retain full value in another province,” explains student web developer Paul Levine. “We are very excited to share this cost saving opportunity to students across the country.?

Founded in 2003, BooksForSchool.ca pioneered the country wide online textbook exchange service in Canada. In 2005, BooksForSchool.ca combined textbook swapping with social networking, enabling students to decrease their expenses and make it easier to buy and sell new and used textbooks.

BooksForSchool.ca is a completely free service for university and college students. The BooksForSchool.ca web site can be accessed by visiting: http://www.booksforschool.ca.