I think that the textbook site would be better organized with each book falling into its own place on the site. This is what I mean:
http://wikibooks.org/French_4_Kids/
etc.
That way a page within the Spanish textbook could be named "Infinitives" and a page within any other language textbook could be named the same without conflict. I think that in the long run this will make naming simpler.
We would ideally also have the option to limit searches to one textbook at a time.
About interchangeable modules (that is, using one module for multiple textbooks): this solution may be inideal because the goals of each textbook are different and editing a module for one book will sometimes make it less suited to other books. Even if I were to take my own organic chemistry book and rearrange it I would have to rewrite many parts of it to make sure that supporting ideas arent being thown out there before they have been properly covered.
The advantage to reusing modules is that it saves a little bit of copying and pasting, right ? This is a shortcut that I think sets books up to be more on the generic side than tailored to suit. And when I use a textbook for myself Id rather have the whole thing tailored to suit.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
Op di 12-08-2003, om 18:35 schreef Karl Wick:
We would ideally also have the option to limit searches to one textbook at a time.
Yes.
About interchangeable modules (that is, using one module for multiple textbooks): this solution may be inideal because the goals of each textbook are different
Are the goals different? Or rather the background of the readers and the level of the course?
If I want to learn something about DNA, I just want a part that is suitable to me. The other 300 pages of the book might not interest me.
and editing a module for one book will sometimes make it less suited to other books.
"Books" are a very paper-based concept, just like chapters and pages. In E-learing one talks about "learning units" or "learning objects". Creating a course is then selecting units from a respository.
Just take a look at the Connexions Project. Their courses are made from distinct modules.
Books make a learning experience very linear. By modules you can create different paths, according to the wishes of the targeted audience and the level of learning they want.
Some learners want some very advanced modules if topic X, but just touch slightly upon topic Y. And others vice versa.
Even if I were to take my own organic chemistry book and rearrange it I would have to rewrite many parts of it to make sure that supporting ideas arent being thown out there before they have been properly covered.
If something is not covered why not just provide a link to a relevant modules that does cover it? Mozilla has a nice browser-addon called Dynamic Links: by just control-clicking a word (yes, any word in a html-document), you can sent that word the any search-engine you want, like Google of Wikipedia. With this, you don't even have to provide a link. http://dynamiclinks.mozdev.org/
The advantage to reusing modules is that it saves a little bit of copying and pasting, right ?
David Wiley of Educommons.org wrote his PhD-tesis on reusability and learning objects: http://www.reusability.org/ http://www.reusability.org/read/
Wouter Vanden Hove www.opencursus.be www.open-education.org
--- Karl Wick karlwick@yahoo.com wrote:
I think that the textbook site would be better organized with each book falling into its own place on the site. This is what I mean:
http://wikibooks.org/French_4_Kids/
etc.
That way a page within the Spanish textbook could be named "Infinitives" and a page within any other language textbook could be named the same without conflict. I think that in the long run this will make naming simpler.
We would ideally also have the option to limit searches to one textbook at a time.
About interchangeable modules (that is, using one module for multiple textbooks): this solution may be inideal because the goals of each textbook are different and editing a module for one book will sometimes make it less suited to other books. Even if I were to take my own organic chemistry book and rearrange it I would have to rewrite many parts of it to make sure that supporting ideas arent being thown out there before they have been properly covered.
The advantage to reusing modules is that it saves a little bit of copying and pasting, right ? This is a shortcut that I think sets books up to be more on the generic side than tailored to suit. And when I use a textbook for myself Id rather have the whole thing tailored to suit.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
If this is implimented, it would also be convienent to have certain names shortened, for example wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Foo could change to wikipedia.org/Wikipedia/Foo. It could be the same way with images and talk pages. I think that would look a lot better when writing down URLs, which does happen a lot. LDan
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org