Talk:Spanish by Choice

Welcome!
Hello, if you want to add a page for a particular podcast please let me know and I'll be happy to help you with it. In fact, if necessary I'll do the converting and uploading of the audio file and the Wiki-formatting of your text page. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, feel free to discuss them here or write me a message. --Martin Kraus (talk) 10:52, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Discussions about Parts
Note that alreading existing parts of this wikibook should be discussed on the respective discussion pages (Talk:Spanish by Choice/SpanishPod lessons and Talk:Spanish by Choice/Novelas Cortas). --Martin Kraus (talk) 15:11, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Blog about this Wikibook
I started a blog about this wikibook. The idea is to post some more personal thoughts, speculations, and background information about the development of this wikibook. I'm not sure how often I'm going to write something but it's fun anyways. :) --Martin Kraus (talk) 14:41, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I removed the blog because my web hosting plan no longer includes blogs.Martin Kraus (discuss • contribs) 07:51, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Growing beyond the book format
My name is Ian and I'm from a project called Wikiotics, where we build free software tools for language instruction. We are starting to build collections of interactive language lessons that can serve as textbook replacements for students and this wikibook seems like a great place to start.

If there is anyone here who is interested in expanding this content beyond a traditional text-based book format or who would like to incorporate interactive lessons we build based on the outline of this book, just chime in here or contact us at contact AT wikiotics DOT org or in irc at #wikiotics on freenode.

As example of the kind of new materials you can make with our tools, here are examples our current lesson types:
 * Picture choice lesson (http://wikiotics.org/en/Introduction),
 * Re-mixable Podcast (http://wikiotics.org/user/ian/FSI-Mandarin-Module01-Unit01),
 * Text multiple choice lesson (http://wikiotics.org/en/WANY_Hospital_grammar)
 * new Storybook lesson [coming soon](http://laurent.dev.wikiotics.net/en/storybook1).

Wikiotics (discuss • contribs) 15:06, 13 June 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't see any technical features that aren't supported by Wikibooks (using image maps, audio files, and quizzes). Thus, I don't know what the point of extending a wikibook at Wikiotics would be. --Martin Kraus (discuss • contribs) 11:47, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

There are a few technical features that are relevant here. The big ones that come to mind are:

Structured lessons Lessons on Wikiotics are actually structured documents build out of multimedia building blocks. While it might be technically possible to build a picture choice lesson out of dozens of individual pages, each with an image map that either links to the next map or triggers a transition to fade out incorrect answers, doing so would be cumbersome and inflexible. Because our lessons are structured it is simple to create new views of a lesson that support different kinds of practice, for example randomizing the question order, prompting with the pictures and using audio clips as the answers, or viewing the whole lesson as a series of individual flash cards.

Divergent editing It is not obvious at first look but Wikiotics is built on a git-like revision model that supports easy forking of lessons. This makes it possible for teachers and students to build customized lessons and other practice material that work for them without cluttering up a wikibook with hundreds of variants. For example, using pictures I choose when representing different vocabulary in a picture choice lesson or using my language partner's voice for the native speaker lines in a podcast would be really useful for me. I would never make those changes to a series of wikibook pages because they might actually make the community resources less useful to other people. On wikiotics, those community resources become a reusable base for building personalized learning materials.

BY-SA Multimedia hosting Trying to build heavily picture or audio based instruction material is somewhat outside the scope of wikimedia commons. If you want to build hours of podcast lessons or a hundred picture choice lessons, getting around the 20mb audio file limit and the selectivity for picture uploading would be difficult. While this may not be a technical limitation, the discussions I've seen in other wikibook discussion pages about external hosting options for podcast lessons lead me to conclude that it has been a structural hurdle for people trying to incorporate these kinds of materials into wikibook curriculum. We actively support building these materials and are designed to freely host as much of it as people want to build. Additionally, since all of the material we host has to be CC-BY-SA, authors know that any lessons built at wikiotics are able to be freely used, modified, or redistributed under the same terms as the wikibook itself.

Wikiotics (discuss • contribs) 15:56, 14 June 2012 (UTC)


 * OK, I guess you have some points there. I wish you good luck with your project but don't count on many wikibook authors joining it. (Just consider that the quiz extension and the possibility to integrate podcasts has hardly ever been used in language wikibooks. Apparently, there is not much demand for such features.) --Martin Kraus (discuss • contribs) 17:57, 14 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks Martin. I know there is a lot of demand for these kinds of materials from the community of teachers and students. Maybe once we have more exemplar materials and people using them to learn we can help expand and reinvigorate some of the language wikibooks. Anyone who is interested in experimenting or helping with that work is welcome to come over and try things out. And keep up the great work building open language wikibooks either way! Wikiotics (discuss • contribs) 19:35, 14 June 2012 (UTC)