Hi Leigh, Good question --- Why not use Wikibooks as an established platform?
First off -- WikiEducator is not in competition with any of the freedom culture projects, including all the projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. Rather, we are working collaboratively with all the OER content developers in the world. Hopefully in the near future -- assuming the discussions and pending decisions regarding WMF's migration to a CC-BY-SA license -- we'll see more remixing and mash- ups among our respective projects. WE already has an established history of both meaningful and successful collaborations with WMF. A good example is the Mediawiki Collections extension which produces pdf collections. The Commonwealth of Learning co-invested in the development of this open source technology as a collaboration between WE and WMF. In fact, Wikibooks launched the beta test of the wiki to odt export before WikiEducator! Any work which WikiEducator will be doing in the future to refine the Mediawiki software and or develop new extensions that better serve the needs of educators will be released under the GPL --- so our work does not have an exclusive WE focus. As active members of the open source and OER community we encourage and support the essential freedoms -- and that includes the freedom for educators to host their content developments with those projects which best meet their needs. That said, there are reasons why educators may choose to host with WikiEducator -- for example: 1) WikiEducator is a community of educators rather than a general public wiki -- 73% of our registered users are teachers. lecturers and trainers working in the formal education sector. As educators are needs are more focused on educational priorities within the day-to-day operation of educational institutions which are not necessarily the same as those of a general public project 2) WikiEducator is better positioned to respond to the unique institutional requirements associated with traditional peer review, which would be more difficult to implement in a project like Wikibooks 3) We are better positioned to prioritise the development of Mediawiki extensions for the needs of educators. For example, WE makes extensive use of structured pages and WE has implemented an extension which enables us to easily change the display title on a wiki page -- see for example: http://www.wikieducator.org/Template:MyTitle. Flagged Revisions is a Mediawiki extension that shows considerable promise in assisting with peer review of content -- (See: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FlaggedRevs ). However, in both examples we cannot expect or request the WMF to refine these technology features for the specific requirements of educators. 4) In building a sustainable eco-system for published OERs -- we will need to engage and negotiate with the academic publishing industry -- it is unlikely and unreasonable to expect that the WMF will prioritise these kinds of arrangements in their operations. 5) WE does not make an arbitrary distinction among the form of educational "content". We include a range of forms, including "textbooks", research papers, learning activities, handouts etc. In the case of WMF projects, if you're developing an encyclopaedia article -- that goes to Wikipedia, If you're developing a book -- that goes to Wikibooks etc. There are benefits to having a focused educational project which host multiple forms of educational resources. Given my experience in the academy -- I do see numerous benefits for WikiEducator having a clear focus on building a sustainable eco-system for educational "texts". Cheers Wayne On Dec 3, 1:26 pm, "Leigh Blackall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Why would we use Wikieducator to develop "text books"? > > Seems to me that Wikibooks is already established as the platform for this. > > Perhaps your proposal isn't to specifically use Wikieducator but to use > multiple platforms. But it does sound as though it will be a Wikieducator > focus... > > > > On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 7:38 AM, Maria Droujkova <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'd like to ask a naive question: why use the "genre" of textbook at all? > > Isn't the very genre a bit... outdated? > > > A definition from Wikipedia: "A *textbook* is a manual of instruction or a > > standard book in any branch of study. They are produced according to the > > demand of educational institutions." > > > A standard implies something long-term (permanent?), constant, closed. The > > demands are also centralized. > > > Do textbooks allow per-student customization, semi-automated in smart > > social ways (at least as well as Amazon does for book recommendations)? > > Daily or hourly, dynamic changes of content based on who creates what in the > > world? User-generated content in general? Interactivity? Sound and video? No > > and no and no. And the question is, if we get "all that" from other places, > > what is the place of a textbook, then - if any? > > > I see two somewhat modern parts in Wayne's list of generic questions: peer > > collaboration and print-on-demand. > > > -- > > Cheers, > > MariaD > > > Make math your own, to make your own math. > > > naturalmath.com: a sketch of a social math site > > groups.google.com/group/naturalmath: a mailing list about math maker > > activities > > groups.google.com/group/multiplicationstudy the family multiplication > > study > > -- > -- > Leigh Blackall > +64(0)21736539 > skype - leigh_blackall > SL - Leroy > Goalposthttp://learnonline.wordpress.comhttp://www.wikieducator.org/User:Leighblackall --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. 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