Kathy,
Thank you for your passion! You, like Sanford, are exactly the type of person that I have dreamed about getting involved in the Wikibooks world.
When Wikibooks was created, it was intended (by me) to be a home to the creation of free, open-content textbooks and other learning materials. Curriculum is a natural extension of that.
Some time later, a sister site called Wikiversity was created, which is the home to pretty much everything else related to teaching and education that is not textbooks.
Both sites are housed under the Wikimedia umbrella that was started by Jimmy Wales. So Jimmy's overall goal is to facilitate the creation of those complete curricula and textbooks for all levels in all languages. And to speak for him, the plan is organized this way:
Textbooks are developed and housed on Wikibooks ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page ). Curricula and other learning materials, including multimedia, are to be developed and hosted on the Wikiversity site ( http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page ).
Thank you again for your zeal and please let me know if I can help clear up any other questions.
Karl Wick, Wikibooks co-founder
On 5/11/07, KH kathy@teachernotes.org wrote:
I agree, but I sure wish Jimbo would then redefine what he meant because his blog post (I believe it is his as he was filling in for Lessig) and/or presentation is what lead me to wikibooks.org. Just any old person saying that wouldn't hold water with me but one of the founders? If I was led to the understanding, there might be others.
Again, Mr. Wales needs to intervene and either denounce what he said/wrote or help us with the issue.
-kathy
-----Original Message----- From: Florence Devouard [mailto:Anthere9@yahoo.com] Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 3:45 PM To: textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] [Foundation-l] Rethinking brands
KH wrote:
I was under the impression that wikibooks would also include textbooks for k-12. Normally, k-3 don't have traditional texts because many are still learning to read. Later, they read to learn. So much of the "textbook" is really worksheets, pictures, and planned lectures and activities. Actually, a better word to use for k-3 is curriculum, not textbooks. But I've read we are not supposed to do curriculum.
Soooo, I'm not sure what wikibooks really is. Here is where I got my
info:
http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003069.shtml
Although dated 8/05, it seems Mr. Wales had a definite vision:
"The second thing that will be free is a complete curriculum (in all languages) from Kindergarten through the University level. There are several projects underway to make this a reality, including our own Wikibooks project, but of course this is a much bigger job than the encyclopedia, and it will take much longer."
Curriculum, by definition, is a package. It can include textbooks but certain goes beyond that to worksheets, teacher planning, activities,
etc.
I would love to redo the SRA Direct Instruction curriculum in wikibooks so that parents AND teachers have an option for scientificially based curriculum. But according to new definitions, I'm not sure wikibooks is an appropriate place. Under the old definition from the website listed above, it is.
-Kathy
Hmmm This looks like one of the 10 points of his presentation last year at Wikimania (10 things to become free). I am not sure it is a blog afterwards, or actually the transcript of his presentation. You should be able to find a video of it somewhere on the wikimania 2006 site (or somewhere else...)
This said, wikibooks was created long before than presentation. I certainly do not think a presentation done in 2006 define the goal of a project created 2 years earlier roughly.
Ant
Textbook-l mailing list Textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
Textbook-l mailing list Textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l