Talk:Biology, Answering the Big Questions of Life/Foreword

A New Learning Paradigm
OK, now it is time for the big concept.

How do we make online books that take advantage of the medium and yet retain the advantages of decades of textbook design?

The modern textbook has many design characteristics that should be transferred to the online textbook. For example, new keywords are bolded and often a glossary definition is included in the margin on the side of the book. We can simulate that by alternate text in the case of short definitions, or pop up definition windows, or links to new pages.

Also, the use of animated gifs, flash animation and other tools allow you to enhance the documents in ways that are superior to books.

Video demonstrations could also be included in the work.

This book is a poor attempt at trying to make that new type of document, the online textbook that teaches the class.

If you have ideas about how to design good online textbooks, feel free to post here. Your comments are appreciated.

A COMPLETE work, not just a Wiki
Books are self contained. The reason for making this a book instead of just using Wikipedia is two-fold.
 * First, this work has a consistent level and structure that makes it easy to navigate and guide yourself to understand topics starting at the lowest level if necessary and going up in complexity until the reader reaches the complexity level of the topic they wish to understand.


 * Second, this work is self-contained, so that it can be downloaded in entirety and it contains a complete and consistent body of information without linkbacks to online works.
 * If you plan to add linkbacks to the internet, please add them as references.

For New Authors. Adding to this book
First, I want to say thank you for trying to keep this book useful and relevant. Please try to be mindful of the philosophy of the book when adding content.

Please start with basic questions about what you are planning to write. If unsure, add your pages first to the :question index as a new question, and start a new page. Later you can add a link to a EASY page for access. Please remember to Add a link back to the main page.

When discussing a topic using advanced language. First write a simple description of the question it answers on a lower page, and then start a new advanced page to discuss the details.

If you need help with cataloging or other things, feel free to add comments in the discussion section of this page. I will try to check back so that I can clean up navigation and help.

Challenges
I've found myself challenged when I try to write this book. Not primarily for the words, but with the format.

navigation
Navigation is a problem for me. I made a navigation bar, but I must enter the order manually each time I make a page. If I add a new page, I must change the numbers on the two pages that it is between. There needs to be a way to automatically generate navigation information.

Also, I have divided each section into easy, intermediate, and hard topics. I would like to have a special navigation method so that you could view only the easy parts if you wanted. In fact, I want a book that reorders itself for the user.

searching
An index is the traditional way to find something in a book. Not only do we need to add useful indexes, but I want to add a search index for this book.

Features
I have begun adding audiofiles. I have started with readings in the photosynthesis section and may add more.