On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 08:32, Glenn Ross <[email protected]> wrote: > 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?
We have had no significant abuse. We do have a vigilant community, very protective of its work, and we keep the complete edit history of our projects so that we can roll them back if necessary. Editing is only permitted for logged-in users, both in order to guarantee correct copyright attributions, and for security against vandalism. > 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? Booki and its forthcoming replacement BookType offer EPUB as one of several output formats. The question is whether other tools offer a similar variety of outputs (including print-on-demand) and whether they are as powerful, both in terms of tools for creating and editing, and in terms of collaboration. As is the way of Free Software, we do not demand that others use our tools; but since our source code is publicly available, we do demand that competing tools be as good as ours. > 3. It isn't clear to me that collaboration can't just be done in the word > processor stage. It can be, but with a much greater effort. It cannot be done live in word processors. I have used that process extensively as a Senior Technical Writer, mostly in Silicon Valley. One person must be the primary author, distributing copies to others to edit, and receiving the edited versions in order to merge changes. In booki and BookType, the moment one author or editor closes a chapter, all others on line at the time are notified in real time, and can immediately examine and edit the most recent changes or begin to add other content. At face-to-face book sprints, this is augmented by talking together. > 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. Sugar Labs supports localizing our Sugar education software into any language where the user community is willing to do the work. We would be happy to host Cree, Inuktitut, or any other language of interest. I have worked on the Haitian Kreyòl and Cambodian Khmer projects as an administrator, primarily doing recruiting and training, since I speak neither language. http://translate.sugarlabs.org > These languages are all encoded into the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics which > work just fine in Firefox. I have done extensive work with Unicode, and I am familiar with CAS. See, for example, the entry for Susan Aglukark/ᓱᓴᓐ ᐊᒡᓗᒃᑲᖅ at http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode-example.html a page that I have contributed to. > 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. GPL is for software, and Creative Commons is for content, including music, videos, art, and documents. Both sets of licenses require some care to make sure that any published reuse is under the same licenses, including any requirements for availability of source code and source content, and that authorship is properly acknowledged. > 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. I would be very interested to hear more, since I was not aware of interactive EPUBs. Sugar makes extensive use of the Python, Smalltalk, and Logo programming languages, and I am working to add J. It is highly practical to write learning materials within these languages, and I would like to be able to embed such materials in other documents. > Our process involves taking OER content already available and editing it > (i.e., from CK12.ORG) Have you looked at the resources listed on my OER page? There are well over 100,000 items just at OER Recommender. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Open_Education_Resources > 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. This is very reasonable for the first round, and I would be happy to work with you on it, but at some point the education community needs to discuss what we can make of the curriculum when every student has access to substantial computing power and the entire range of Free Software. All of the pencil and paper drudgery in mathematics and the sciences should go by the board, and we should think about how to deepen understanding. See, for example, the algebra textbook that I have been working on, now at http://booktype-demo.sourcefabric.org/algebra-an-algorithmic-treatment/ In addition, our Sugar software has collaboration designed in, and we need to restructure homework to take advantage of the new capabilities. Also, when students have access to all of the information (and misinformation) on the Internet, teaching strategies must adapt again. This also means a complete rethinking of teacher training, and a new direction in education research. > In Canada we will also seek to > be approved by the various provincial authorities which approve textbooks, > for example the Trillium List. > > > 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. You can run the Sugar education software on any x86 computer that boots from USB, or in VirtualBox. Let me know if you need any assistance getting started. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick Sugar on a Stick is a Fedora® Spin Live USB operating system featuring the award-winning Sugar Learning Platform and designed to fit on an ordinary USB thumbdrive ("stick"). http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/VirtualBox With VirtualBox® one can run Sugar on Microsoft Windows, Intel-based Apple Macintosh, or Linux host computers from within a virtual machine window. Sugar education activities are available for download to any Sugar installation from http://activities.sugarlabs.org//en-US/sugar/ Sugar provides general-purpose tools such as Web browsing, spreadsheet, word processor, several programming languages, and multimedia editing. In addition it includes targeted activities in art, music, math, science, and other areas. The Sugar on a Stick and VirtualBox appliances for Sugar communicate with a Jabber server so that users can connect with others and test the collaboration features. I would be happy to get on at the same time as you and give you a demo. > 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. Sugar includes Firefox. I see that it is supposed to support all three, although I have not tested these assertions myself, and do not know how well they are supported. > 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. Similarly in our Replacing Textbooks program. > That said, perhaps the best route to explore for > content on OLPC machines is to drop the constraints of an EPUB altogether. We support EPUB format in the Read activity, and there is an EPUB plugin for Firefox, so that shouldn't be an issue. -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/निशब्दगर्ज/نشبدگرج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks -- 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]
