I want to point out here that there is a sort of
disconnect between the
typical users and participants of Wikibooks and those who are involved
with academia. The books that have been most popular on Wikibooks in
terms of content development either have a strong technological
orientation to them
I would argue that many of the technology and computer-related books are
poorly organized, and are in severe need of help (even if they contain alot
of content, and are numerous). A look at the list of the "books near
completion" and [[b:Featured books]] shows a much more homogenous
distribution across the various disciplines. Many people are inclined to
start new books on technology subjects, but we don't have enough authors
with enough expertise in those topics to really get the books to a
near-completed status.
Even then, there is some final polish and meeting
specific curriculum
requirements that would prove to be useful if were to use these as
formal textbooks.
Perhaps it would benefit everybody to list specifically what the standards
are? This would make an excellent addition to [[b:Wikistudy]], to list not
only books that meet specific standards, but also list the standards
themselves from around the world.
So the question comes on how can Wikibooks be used to
help push forward
the development and publication of a K-12 school textbook. I do believe
that some changes could take place on a number of pages on Wikibooks
(mainly introduction pages and perhaps even the front page) that would
help encourage Wikibooks participants to try and meet specific academic
requirements.
A good solution perhaps would be to write books with a large amount of
general information on a topic, and then prepare different
Tables-Of-Contents and "Printable versions" of each book that would be
targeted at different audiences. In essence, we could transclude the
existing pages in different orders. This would save us from having to write
multiple versions of the same books. Each different jurisdiction then can
simply specify which subjects, and in which order to have the information
presented.
As far as finding ways to get physical publication of
content
accomplished, that is certainly something that I think applies not just
to school textbooks, but almost all open source content in general.
It does seem like a waste to prepare "printable versions" of a book, if we
can't find an organized way to actually print and distribute them. If copies
are distributed at the cost of materials, and there is no profit, I don't
quite see how there would be any complications from the distribution
process. Do we have/could we get support from the WMF to actually use
Wikimedia logos/trademarks in these distributed works? I seem to remember
that was a major hangup last time.
--Andrew Whitworth
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