Textbook-l July 2003

textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org

16 participants
78 discussions

open textbook project
by Karl Wick 10 Jul '03

10 Jul '03

Here is another link to a group seeking to develop open content textbooks: http://otp.inlimine.org/ A bit of text from their site: >The mission of the open textbook project is to develop openly copyrighted (copylefted) textbooks using the free software development model. The books, developed collaboratively, would be freely available to download, modify, print and distribute. Not only are textbooks unavailable to a great number of students in the US and abroad simply due to cost, few textbooks are universally suitable for courses in any given subject and many are simply sub-standard. The Open Textbook Project aims to address these issues by using a collaborative development model which has proven its effectiveness in the world of free software. >Development has begun! >We are currently working on the website and the interactive tools with which individual textbook projects will be developed. We'll make a more formal announcement when there is more ware and less vapor. And from the main page: >in Limine strives to find innovative and thoughtful ways to improve education and the arts. Our efforts take the form of well-focused, low cost projects. Our organizational model is an incubator in which we nurture small, sometimes risky projects with administrative and financial support until they are able to stand on their own. We are constantly seeking new ideas. We don't aim to change the world (just small pieces of it). Jimmy: Have you been in any more contact with those Cali folks, the Creative Commmons fellow or anyone else? __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com

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RE: textbook.wikipedia.org wiki set up
by Karl Wick 10 Jul '03

10 Jul '03

Thanks Brion !! Karl __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com

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textbook.wikipedia.org wiki set up
by Daniel Mayer 10 Jul '03

10 Jul '03

Brion wrote: > Should now be editable: > http://textbook.wikipedia.org/ > > No special features so far; like meta, it's running > in UTF-8 mode. Has > not yet been thoroughly tested, so be warned. :) > > -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com) Thank you Brion! :) -- mav __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com

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textbook.wikipedia.org wiki set up
by Brion Vibber 10 Jul '03

10 Jul '03

Should now be editable: http://textbook.wikipedia.org/ No special features so far; like meta, it's running in UTF-8 mode. Has not yet been thoroughly tested, so be warned. :) -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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nested URLs
by Karl Wick 06 Jul '03

06 Jul '03

I have an idea on how to do the URLs for the Textbook wiki. As much of textbook structure is divided into chapters and subsections, and this structure lends itself well to the web, maybe we could reflect this in the URLs of the textbooks. I know that this was not appropriate for the general nature of the WP but as we move into the specific nature of the textbook subsite it could work. http://textbook.wikipedia.org/organic_chemistry/foundational_concepts/histo… could be the full nested URL of a section on the vital force historical idea of organic chemistry. The name of the page would be only the words after the last slash, here, "Vital force". Maybe the page could have a series of links at the top to each level of the heirarchy: Organic chemistry > Foundational concepts > History of organic chemistry > Vital force All of the sections of the book on organic chemistry would be housed under http://textbook.wikipedia.org/organic_chemisry/ and the software to compile the "next" page function for each module could just read thru the URLs nested in the /organic_chemistry/ section. If someone wanted to create a different book on the same subject they could just come up with a slightly different opener, like /ochem/ or /organic123/ etc. Check out the link I sent once before, http://test.wikipedia.org/Organic_textbook , for an idea of how a book could be structured, it shouldnt hold any big surprises. The software could also have the feature of telling after each link of the total number of links nested below so the reader can have a relative idea at each step of where the bulk of the content lies. One final idea is to use an idea similar to that employed by the Yahoo briefcase where you can copy modules from one folder to another, for example to create a derivative textbook or just take a couple of modules from one to another without having to open each page and copy out the code. The idea of using nested URLs will also help us get around funky URLs and/or page names for pages with common names like "Problem set". Plus this structure of URL hierarchy should be familiar to most internet users already so there is little learning curve. --Karl __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com

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organic textbook progress
by Karl Wick 04 Jul '03

04 Jul '03

http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_textbook I have the basic structure down now and navigational hierarchy .. maybe y'all could give me some constructive feedback. Except for the last sections, which we have not gone over yet in class so I have no idea. PS Thanks Toby for the hand with some corrections. Also thanks to whoever got the test.wikipedia server back up and running today, it was a great workday for me today because of it. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com

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License issues
by Jimmy Wales 03 Jul '03

03 Jul '03

I've been chatting with Larry Lessig about copyright and license issues, and of course he's a big proponent of his own Creative Commons licenses. http://creativecommons.org/license/ The GNU FDL is confusing and difficult to apply in a wiki context, and a lot of the language presumes software documentation. The Creative Commons licenses are much simpler. I believe that the 'Attribution-Share Alike' license or the 'Share Alike' license is going to be the right one to use if we did choose to go that route. Actually, what I think we should do, from the outset, is dual-license everything under both licenses. That ensures that the text is compatible with Wikipedia. It's a bit late for Wikipedia proper to do much good with dual licensing, but for textbooks, it might be a good idea to do it from the outset. --Jimbo

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Textbooks (response to Jimbo's WikiEN-l post)
by Daniel Mayer 02 Jul '03

02 Jul '03

Jimbo wrote: >Daniel Mayer wrote: >> The reason why our encyclopedias >> have to be NPOV is because our >> audience is a general one. The >> reason why our textbooks have to >> be DPOV is because our audience is >> very focused (the biology student, >> for example) and we need to bring >> that student through the material >> in a logical and efficient way. > >Hmmm, don't be so quick to dismiss >NPOV in this context. Consider: > >1. Within various disciplines there > are legitimate and ongoing disputes > of which students should be made aware. Yes, exactly. But our current NPOV policy states that we should include all major viewpoints in a neutral manor (notice the lack of focus). This makes perfect sense in an general focus encyclopedia but doesn't make much sense in a textbook. I was planning all along to take the NPOV text and make some minor qualifications in reference to the scope under which the new policy (DPOV) would operate. >2. If "outside" views are likely to > be encountered by students, then students > should be made aware of them, including > the weakness in their arguments. It depends on the focus of the particular course you are writing for. An intro class in biology shouldn't spend too much time defending the underlying premise that modern biology is founded on (namely, evolution). There is a great deal of material to get through and therefore the arguments of creationism needn't be given much space or much credibility in such a textbook. However, if we can figure out how to organize chapters into modules then we can potentially create a very wide-foccused (and huge) textbook reference edition on all aspects of biology (including many counter-arguments to evolution and alternate interpretations of other aspects). That way instructors would be able to assemble textbooks from these modules into a variety of different configurations with each having a different emphasis (there would have to be a core set of modules that would form the foundation and framework of the textbook though). >> Same thing is true for a section of a >> medical textbook on abortion ; we leave >> out most of the history and the different >> political views on the subject and just >> talk about the procedure itself and maybe >> have a single paragraph at the end sating >> something about access to the procedure >> and that risks doctors face when they >> choose to specialize in this area. > >Right, but that's not POV-editing, that's >just restricting topical focus. Here's how >to tell -- an article which describes the >procedure neutrally (and in medical detail, >say) could be agreed upon by all reasonable >people, regardless of their political or >ethical views on the matter. Our current NPOV policy does not restrict topical focus; that was my point. It reads in part "A general purpose encyclopedia is a collection of synthesized knowledge presented from a neutral point of view. To whatever extent possible, encyclopedic writing should steer clear of taking any particular stance other than the stance of the neutral point of view." Simply replacing "encyclopedia" with "textbook" will not do for a textbook editing policy. If NPOV (as written) were applied to the evolution chapter of the above biology textbook example then we would have to present creationism viewpoints on an equal footing with the viewpoints of biologists. This is not acceptable when trying to explain evolution in a biology textbook because no serious biologist gives any credence to anti-evolution ideas. But NPOV can and should be applied to the major viewpoints that exist from within the biological sciences. There could still be optional modules that deal with the viewpoints of society as a whole - the larger debate (so that the same textbook could be used in a class that deals with those types of issues). The core modules need to be very specific in focus, though. Otherwise students won't know what to think (yes, part of education is indoctrination into the POV of a discipline). So yes, we can write about the current understanding of what evolution is and how it is theorized to operate but we cannot mix that with creationism viewpoints in the same module. So a modified NPOV ("DPOV") would need to operate in a compartmentalized fashion; within a core module it operates from within the context of whatever discipline the textbook is being written for; but in an optional module it can operate with a wider focus (although most optional modules are going to be more detailed treatments of certain topics raised in a core module). In short, the goals of what each module needs to do need to be focused. That requires restricting NPOV to that context. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com

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linearity
by Daniel Mayer 02 Jul '03

02 Jul '03

Magnus wrote: >OK, practical question: How does the software >on a given page *know* what page is next? >It doesn't until we tell it. The best place is within >the page/article/module, don't you think? Links on the TOC to specific modules would have info in them (after a & or ?) that would give placement info. So clicking on a link to the first module in Chapter one would give http://textbook.wikibook.org/en/organic_chemistry_level_1:module1?textbookT… And the "Next Page" link at the bottom would then be able to know where it was in the order of things and would give: http://textbook.wikibook.org/en/organic_chemistry_level_1:module1?textbookT… NOTE: The moduleid is now equal to "2." Play around with this link: http://transitorienteddevelopment.dot.ca.gov/project/stateViewProjectOvervi… Change the project and station ids and that will change which entry you are looking at. >The alternative would be to make an index >page with links, and then have *every* page >scan *every* index (well, the ones with links >to that page) for "Am I in here", parse the index, >and determine the next page. I don't think that is needed; just use ids in the urls. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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linearity
by Daniel Mayer 02 Jul '03

02 Jul '03

LDan wrote: >I'm not the programmer, but >should it really be a link to a >regular wiki page? I think it >would be more appropriate >if it linked to something like >[[Special:Next]] or {{NEXTPAGE}}. >It would also be convienient for >that to appear at the bottom of >the screen automatically, but that >would take some coding. I really, really like this idea; that way a particular module (wiki textbook page) could be used by several different textbooks. The software would keep track of the textbook (and module) the reader is reading from so that "Next page" always keeps the reader in the same textbook even when many of the modules of that textbook are shared. A possible way for the software to know the order of pages is to simply scan the table of contents of whatever textbook the reader is reading from. A website I've been working on uses JavaBeans to do this type of thing but I'm sure there is an open source solution. In short: Hard coding "Next page" is bad as far as scalability is concerned (but for now it should work fine). -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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Textbook-l July 2003