On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 08:59:33PM -0700, [email protected] wrote: > > But, then I reflected on your mention of a specific chapter. In that > case a forum could have an area for the textbook with a sub-area for > each chapter. A mailing list would require each originator of a > thread on a particular chapter to put a keyword, such as [Code], in > the mail subject field to subdivide the textbook mailing list into > sub-areas based on chapters. I view that as the less convenient > (training required) method. Thank you for focusing my thinking.
This is one of our challenges in the FOSS world. When we follow "the UNIX model of many small programs tied loosely together", sometimes the connecting pieces are humans. So, we should still consider this mailing list to be the canonical location for Teaching Open Source discussions, and major conversations about course materials is part of that. Myself, I'm a FOSS geek. My favorite writing collaborations are with strong tools (Publican/DocBook XML for example, with Emacs as a full-featured integrated writing environment) over strong communication structures (git and a mailing list that receives git commit emails.) But the barriers to entry there are rather high. Lots of people concur, either trying to get over that barrier or being over it and struggling to help others over it. A web-based forum is a very low barrier to entry, and not just in the form of making comments in a controlled set of threads. It also allows for spontaneous thread creation (and merging, etc.) so the people in the community have strong control over the discussion. The result is always a bit more chaotic, which is the trade-off. So, as you all said, having a specific thread per chapter really helps people go right to what interests them without having to sort through the other chapters. In the first year we'll get, in my estimation, 10x to 20x the quantity and quality of discussion around the textbook compared to this mailing list -- discussion by the very people who are experts in using textbooks (students) as well as other courseware experts. It is the role of those of us who write and maintain the upstream content (the wiki) to take discussions from the world (blogs, StatusNet (identi.ca), twitter.com, forums.tos.org, IRC, etc.) and make sure it gets to where it needs to go - the wiki and this mailing list, primarily. We'll have to work to filter things a bit, for example, "The direction of this chapter has changed in i) one, ii) two, and iii) three ways, as a result of these discussions: URLs." - Karsten -- name: Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Community Gardener team: Red Hat Community Architecture uri: http://TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki gpg: AD0E0C41
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