[Textbook-l] Global Text Project

[Robert Scott Horning]

Erik Moeller wrote:

>FYI - we need to talk to these people.
>
>http://globaltext.org/
>
>Global Text Project
>
>    * The goal is to create a free library of 1,000 electronic
>textbooks for students in the developing world
>  
>

For myself, I strongly suspect anything that starts with "students in 
the developing world" and doesn't acknowledge disadvantaged individuals 
even in supposedly "first world" countries to be more or less a scam and 
something to stay away from.  If their overall goal is to bring benefits 
to people in specific countries but also benefit other people in the 
process, I'm much more likly to support such a general project.

Of course, that is why I also consider the OLPC project to be something 
of a scam as well, on the same grounds.  They don't mind selling these 
laptops to kids in Nairobi, but have a real problem trying to sell the 
same thing to kids in New Orleans housing projects.

If instead the stated goal was simply "to create a free library of 1,000 
electronic textbooks for students" I wouldn't have nearly the problem 
with what is obviously a group of extra-ordinarily condescending 
individuals.


BTW, Wikibooks has over 1000 different book titles currently.  That is 
not a goal.  That is a fact.  While I will admit that effective 
textbooks that are useful for teaching a class are considerably fewer, 
this is a group that needs to work with Wikibooks if only to help 
coordinate and develop content that may be mutually useful, and the 
Wikibooks project already had a team of volunteers willing to get 
content developed and actual examples to show for its effort.

I wouldn't even call the XML book to be necessarily the best of 
Wikibooks either.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning