I have this sneaky feeling like when we all have some
specific passages in front of us everyone is going to
pretty much aggree on what is appropriate or inappropriate,
and that the different POVs may all have a place. If it is
all built in modules then we can choose to link to any or
all of the ones that are there. I think that applies to the
issue raised earlier about what things should be included
like moral arguments or other perspectives on the subjects
covered. One of the cool things about a hypertext book is
that we can link to all kinds of things that a traditional
textbook doesn't have space to print and the reader can
choose which parts he wants to read.
Karl
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For the purpose of this general discussion of the relationship
between NPOV and textbooks, we should all dig up some texts and
look for examples.
I used to teach freshman economics 101 at the University of Alabama,
and I remember being frustrated at finding bias in the texts that we
were using. That was some years ago, and perhaps a review of that
text (which I still have at home somewhere) with an eye towards
finding examples of POV that could be made NPOV might be useful.
Samuelson, in particular, was notorious about putting his personal
judgments into the text as if they were consensus science. Had
he been subjected to the discipline of wiki-editing, his text might
have been much improved.
--Jimbo
Toby wrote:
>The text in [[en:Wikipedia:Neutral point of view]]
>of course must be changed, since it refers to a
>comprehensive encyclopaedia on everything.
>But this is /context/, not the /essence/ of NPOV.
That's the only thing I wanted to change, yes (well, that and some refactoring
of the text to make it more readable). The reason I called it something
different is so that people won't get confused between the
comprehensive-based NPOV used in Wikipedia and a more focused-based NPOV
needed for textbooks. This is especially important because the Wikipedia
implementation of NPOV often tends to result in articles that have everything
in them but the kitchen sink ([[abortion]] for example is mostly about the
controversy and history with relatively little by the way of explaining the
various medical procedures).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
I aggree that we should get some strucuture out there from
the beginning.
Would it be possible to have the option to have some books
and pages edited only by signed-in users and others open to
everyone ? And leave the choice open to the person who
starts the book or is the administrator or someone else who
would have a reason to decide ? I'd imagine that some
people would feel a lot better about contributing if they
had more control over it that way, and others wouldnt care.
Or maybe, in very special cases, modules on the site which
are editable only by the original author ...
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Jimmy,
I got your last email about POVs after I just sent mine,
and I guess it made my comments irrelevent. I have no
disaggreements with you on what you wrote, and certainly
wouldnt try to find any excuse to support poor or biases
writing.
Karl
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>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).
Yeah, yeah !!
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[The post that I'm replying to appeared on <wikiEN-L>.
Replies whould go to <textbook-L.>]
Anthere wrote in part:
>Maveric149 wrote:
>>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.
>There are some aspects, even of technical education,
>that require understanding of politics, that require
>ethical information. A book limiting itself to the
>pure technical gestures to apply is *bad*. Very bad.
>This is particularly true in the biological domain you
>cite. Teaching abortion just from the technical
>procedure is an error. If only because abortion is
>allowed in some places, not allowed in others, and
>this should be known. Also because an abortion is a
>terrible act for most women to undergo, and *no*
>doctor should know it only from the tech point of
>view. He should be aware of the psychological impact
>of such a gesture, if he wants to propose and to
>proceed with such an act with the physical and
>psychological consent of the mother-to-be. Also
>because he should be aware of all the limits to such
>an act from a religious point of view.
Medical ethics is important in medical education.
Thus any medical textbook should speak of (or refer to)
discussion of the ethical concerns of a controversial procedure.
Abortion definitely qualifies for this
(even though /I/ have no ethical concerns about it).
>Offering bare technical teaching is wrong.
>Similarly, in agriculture, it makes no sense to *just*
>understand how fertilization works, if you do not
>understand the pollution it creates, the CAP rules
>about N uses and the incentives. Just providing the
>tech info is just giving enough information for
>survival, not for thinking and making good decisions.
Similarly, the potential pollutive effects of agriculture
are necessary for any complete education in agriculture
(although I don't know if there's a professional history of this
as there is in the case of medicine).
These examples are not the same thing as creationism.
-- Toby
IMO writing a textbook (which I have done, on a very small scale;
nothing to buy in a shop;-) takes a more organized approach than
wikipedia. If we just start writing like on the 'pedia, we'll recreate
it. So, what we need is
* Structure
By which I mean a table of content. That can be altered, fine-tuned and
subdivided during writing, but we need a structured
* list of topics
to cover. *Then*, we can start filling in the pages. Because unlike
wikipedia, where everyone writes about a random topic and interconnects
it with the rest, there has to be a "what we want, what we need" kind of
thing.
As Karl and others already said, we'll need to create "stable" versions.
This is something any software developer should be used to. Therefore,
we have to say, at some point, "this is complete". That could be a fixed
date, but I think it will be hard to meet a deadline in a wiki environment.
So, my suggestion is that we freeze the table of contents (TOC) instead.
It could still be open for minor adjustments, but we should decide early
about
* what our first release should cover
We should keep track of the status of each page on both its talk page
and the TOC. I'd say if you find a page to be OK for release, you add
your signature to the talk page. If you're the third (or tenth;-) to
sign, you put an "OK" on the TOC at that topic.
Once all topics are marked OK, we take a few days going through it again
(here we could set a deadline!), then dump the whole thing into HTML
pages (I can do that, if you like), and put it somewhere (as an online
or ZIPped HTML collection, as RTF, PDF, or whatever).
Karl mentioned scattered attempts for free non-wiki textbooks on the
web. Once the site is up, we should try to go through these web pages
and ask the authors to join us, or to release their attempts under GFDL.
This could be organized on the site so we don't bother the same guy 20
times (like "declined", "donated his texts", "joined" etc.)
One more thing (more like a personal request): I would like to limit
editing to logged-in people only. Now calm down, I don't try to rip the
wiki principle apart. I just think that since this will be a more
organized effort than wikipedia, and as I'd rather not spent my time
cleaning up vandals on the textbook wiki all the time as well, I think
it might be a good idea to prevent bypassing vandals from inserting "yo
mom's stupid". Everyone would be free to get a user account, just like
on wikipedia. Just an extension: "You can edit this page right now. Just
get a free user account first". People who'd like to invest serious time
here will most certainly do that.
Magnus
Hey LDan,
Thanks for your comments.
I agree completely that we will need some kind of mechanism
to make a static version of a textbook for it to be used in
a classroom setting.
An early brainstorm that I had was to make a special
service for this purpose, where an individual teacher could
take a "public" version of a wiki textbook and make it into
a limited-editability version for their class. So for that
subset of the information, anyone else could see and copy
the text materials but to modify it would have to set it up
in a different spot. Thats one way I imagined that we could
give a bit of stability to the prof ... my dad is an
educator so I know how much teachers and schools demand
control over their materials, especially in the k-12.
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On the English mailing list it was suggested that we would
be developing static textbooks from dynamic Wikipedia
resources. I'd like to talk about that because I dont think
that is how it will be ...
I see the textbooks growing the same way WP grows .. first
to get the basic information in there and then to modify
that information to make it easier to understand and to
include the changes and advancements in each field. Then,
multiple textbooks could arise on one subject but with
different goals or target audiences.
The textbooks will be able to use some WP material but
probably in modified form to suit the different goals. Plus
the textbooks will need lots of original material that was
not at home in the encyclopedia format and/or has not yet
been developed.
A couple of goals:
I think that we will see our first adoption by students who
are looking for quick free information. In time, my hope is
that we will have materials so good that they will be used
officially in schools to accompany and then replace
traditional textbook materials.
This site should be the center on the WWW for collaborative
textbook development. I have seen some scattered efforts to
do free textbooks out there but none (but --April's) using
a wiki. I think if we give them a place and make it
friendly that people will use it and our site will grow to
be the standard setter. So lets make it friendly to
teachers and other people who can be power contributers.
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