FOR: Edward Mokurai (默雷/निशब्दगर्ज/نشبدگرج) Cherlin
Hi Edward, booki -------- I had a look at booki and have a few of comments. 1. What are you doing to ensure accuracy and prevent abuse of booki generate works? Are you relying on the general community to correct errors and report abuse? 2. Isn't the creation of a new book authoring system asking content producers to do extra work if they also want to use a more wide spread option like EPUB? 3. It isn't clear to me that collaboration can't just be done in the word processor stage. Multiple Languages ---------------------------- In Canada, the Belinda Stronach Foundation has taken the lead in delivery OLPCs to Aboriginal communities, which, I am embarrassed to say, face significant challenges due to a lack of proper diligence by our federal government. Inuktitut and Cree are two major languages here that we have already thought of as logical progressions, certainly in the humanities. I hope to initiate discussions this year with the elders, aboriginal academics, and other stakeholders as to language usage in the sciences which are perhaps best left in English. These languages are all encoded into the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics which work just fine in Firefox. Jsoftware -------------- Thanks for mentioning this one. Will look into it. Not sure how comfortable I am with GPL 3 versus the Creative Commons. A discussion on their relative merits might be interesting. Certainly a CC licence frees you from having to watch over downstream users. Our Content ----------------- Our content will follow two basic streams: PDF and EPUB. The PDF version is essentially the status quo of Canadian textbooks while the EPUB will explore innovations in interactivity. Our process involves taking OER content already available and editing it (i.e., from CK12.ORG) and/or creating content to match Canadian curriculum requirements. Our focus is on providing a tool which matches existing requirements and practices in the classroom. In Canada we will also seek to be approved by the various provincial authorities which approve textbooks, for example the Trillium List <http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/trilliumlist/>. Collaboration -------------------- I would be interested in pursuing a discussion with Sugar Labs on a joint presentation to the Stronach Foundation about content for the XO-1, but I'm sorry to say that the capabilities of the machine are something I have yet to explore. Some of the things I believe are now necessary in a classroom environment are MathML, MusicML, and WebGL. I don't know what the states of these standards are on the XO-1. Of course, an EPUB is just a container for HTML, so any content done as an EPUB is easily moved into a web process. Already OER in the university environment seems to be dropping the artifice of a "book" like a hot potato. "The textbook is dead!" is a phrase I've heard over and over again from Faculties of Education. That said, perhaps the best route to explore for content on OLPC machines is to drop the constraints of an EPUB altogether. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
