User talk:Provophys

Human Physiology
Hi, Provophys. Thank you for your contributions and interest in Wikiversity. Wikiversity pages are school courses (with lecture notes and homework asignments), not textbooks, which belong on Wikibooks. I suggest that you move your work to the Human Physiology textbook, so that it is not lost or turned into lecture notes. Feel free to use your own contents instead of the one already in the book. Best of luck on your project, hagindaz 23:14, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip--can I pick your brain?
Hagindaz,

I'm not sure if this is the way to respond to your message or not--I'm hoping you see it. I am a new contributor and have a lot to learn.

I will move to the site you suggested. Here is what I am doing. I am teaching physiology over a camera to a class 90 miles away. I decided that as a class we would make a textbook, since I don't like the one we currently use. I am organizing the class so that at any one time two people will have responsibility for providing content for one chapter and reviewing two chapters. Students will rotate so that over the next 10 weeks they will have personal responsibility for editing 3-5 chapters, but will actively review all chapters. None of the students have contributed to a wiki before, so we will make some mistakes initially. Do you have any suggestions for making the process smoother? Are there rules and procedures that we should read about before getting started? Do you suggest each student create their own login identity, or should we perhaps just have one login per team?

I should have read up more to prepare for this, but I actually only had the idea over the weekend and class started yesterday. Last night and today I have brewed over the logistics and have decided that we will make this the entire emphasis of the course and cut out most of what I had originally intended to do. I'm excited and think we can produce something worthwhile. It will also be fun to see it take on a life of its own as other people discover our efforts.

Thanks, and I look forward to hearing from you.

~Kevin


 * That's great! Many of our best books have been created as collaboration projects. I recommend that each student have his or her own login, so you can track their individual contributions. Make sure that your students understand what they can and can't copy from your textbook and sources on the Internet. You may wish to ask Gerardo.ok who started a similar project at Managing Groups and Teams for advice.


 * Contributing to a wiki is really simple. You only have to know three things: level two/three/four headings, ordered and unordered lists, and bold and italics, which are all explained at Wikipedia's editing help page. In general, formatting should be kept as simple as possible. Level one headings (= Title =), whitespace, and complicated formatting should all be avoided. Pages should be renamed via the "move" link at the top of each page, rather than copy/pasted. Terms should all link to Wikipedia, like this: human physiology.


 * I suggest that you prepare the overall layout so your students won't have to worry about that. The title page should consist of a short introduction and a table of contents, and chapters should be organized by headings, starting with level two: == Title ==. Keep the book structure coherant and link all pages related to the book from a central contents listing.


 * I hope I covered everything. If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask. I look forward to seeing the results of your project! --hagindaz 01:25, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll get started on the structure

 * I'm very excited about this project, and believe that the students will learn more physiology in this process than with any other thing I have tried. Of course, this is really a one-time opportunity--after this there will already be a textbook! I'll be sure to have a basic structure in place for the students so they can focus on content rather than code.


 * I have already explained to my students that they can copy from wikipedia. In regards to published textbooks, I told them that the knowledge and the ideas were not copyrighted, but that the arrangement of words on the page is copyrighted. They need to put things into their own words, and we will do our own organization of ideas. More specifics (such as images) will be covered as we go along. I will definitely contact Gerardo--thanks for the tip.


 * The editing page looks helpful and will be referred to often. ~ Provophys 01:54, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Glad to see you learning the syntax so quickly. (Although you probably wouldn't indent a paragraph right after a heading. :) ) You can find some free images to use at commons:Category:Physiology. w:Wikipedia:School and university projects and its talk page may also contain some useful information (although note that Wikipedia is a separate project with policies and conventions that might not apply to WIkibooks). --hagindaz 05:16, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Human Physiology
I went through the pages in the Human Physiology book, and made a few small edits and fixes concerning the formatting. One of the pages in the book is all capital letters, and I left a note on that page, but i did not fix it. This looks like a very good start to a book, and if you need any help, please send me a message on my user talk page. Good luck! --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:47, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Also, I wanted to point out quickly that the following links both point to exactly the same page:
 * Human Physiology/The Nervous System
 * Human Physiology/The Nervous System
 * The reason for this (the short version at least) is that the pound-sign (#) in a link, and everything after it, is essentially ignored when creating the link. Both of these two links above point to the Human Physiology/The Nervous System page. If you are interested in having two separate pages for information on the nervous system, you must change the links to not include a pound-sign. Otherwise, you could change it to only have one page (because the pages can be as long as you like). Again, if you have any questions, let me know. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:04, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Your Class
That sounds like a wonderful idea! I myself am going to be teaching my first class next semester (I'm going to be a TA), and I have been considering starting a class-wide wikibooks project for my students to work on. As such, I am highly interested in both your methodology (Which seems very well thought-out), and your success.

Besides the addition of raw content, most of the other "advanced features" available here on wikibooks deal with graphical and navigational enhancements. Some wikibooks offer a "Print Version", which includes all the information of the book into a single webpage for easy printing. Some lucky books even get converted into PDF format, for easy distribution. These issues may not need to be considered so early in your project, but there are exciting options for books that are well-constructed. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:34, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement!
Thanks Whiteknight! I have had a couple of students already asking about inserting images, so hopefully I am giving the right direction--I told them that they should find images at the Commons, or, if they have an image that is free of copyrights they can upload to the Commons, and then they just link to the image on their page. I'm sure that as we get further into this we will need to learn more about using images in different ways. I have also noticed that some books (e.g. Chess) have a nice navigation system which shows the previous and next chapter. We will certainly want to set that up too.

Most of the students are enthusiastic about the project and determined to do a good job. I figure that since we will be trading chapters every 3 weeks that even if one group does not do a good job then others should soon make up for it. I'm excited by the pace of the project--we are going from conception to finished project in 9 weeks. The last 3 weeks we will be contacting physiology teachers at universities all over the place to invite them to review and contribute to the document (and use it in their classes!). I hope that we produce a product of sufficient value that we will see all of the exciting options you refer to! Provophys 00:51, 23 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll try and set up a navigational template that you can use for your book, similar to the one in chess. That should provide a more standardized look and feel to the pages in your book. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:17, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Navigation template
I created a quick navagation template for you Human Physiology book: Human Physiology. I put this template at the top of all the pages that already exist, but you can feel free to insert this navigational aide anywhere on the page that you desire (the bottom of the page is another common location for navigational templates). To add this template to a page, use the following text:



To edit this template, you can CLICK HERE, and change it as you see fit. Any changes that you make to the template will be reflected on every page that the template is used on, so small changes can have a large effect. This was just a quick and dirty effort on my part, and is partly derived from the chess template that you saw earlier. We can change this to look different, if you would like. Let me know if you need any more changes, or if you would like new templates for other uses. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:14, 23 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I saw the navigation at the top of a page when I was checking on a student's work and wondered how it got there. Very cool, and very kind of you to take the time to do it. Provophys 19:48, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Adding a chapter?
I added a chapter on homeostasis, but did not see how to add it to the template. I went to the anatomy category and could not see how to add to that. Also, can we change the name of the Anatomy category to "Anatomy and Physiology?" Often the two subjects are lumped together but they are definitely different so I don't really like a physiology book being in a strictly anatomy category. Provophys 00:45, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll add the chapter to the template. It can be a little confusing, so don't worry about it. The category can't really be renamed, because that would involve changing links on every page the category links to. However, I can create a new category called "Physiology", or even "Human Physiology" specifically for this book and it's pages. I'll work on that now. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:20, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

no problem
Deleting a page is a right reserved for users called "administrators". Luckily for you, I am an administrator, and I can delete the page for you. Do you want me to rename the nervous system from "The Nervous System Part 1" to just "The Nervous System"? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:34, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, that would be a good renaming. Not only are you an administrator, but a very fast one! Provophys 20:39, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikimanners
I also noticed that many of the page names were lumped under "T", but that's not a big deal. Categories serve mostly as an organizational tool, so that we don't lose track of our pages. Most readers for your book will never even look at the category, and of the people who do, most won't even know what it is.

It is fine with me that you include the author's names at the top of each page, temporarily. Of course you will probably want to delete those markers eventually if you are ever planning on printing or distributing the book to actual readers. As a matter of privacy, (if that is a big issue to you), you might consider replacing the real names with with the usernames. However, there are no hard-and-fast rules concerning this kind of collaborative project, so feel free to do whatever you need to do to get the job done in an organized fashion. Also, you could consider moving the names to the associated talk pages, if you don't like the way they are placed on the module pages. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 11:59, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Human Physiology/Print Version
Your human physiology book is coming along quickly and nicely! by my count, the text of this book takes up over 130 printed pages! To show my appreciation for all your hard work (and the hard work of your students), I have prepared a basic printable version of your book. The print version "transcludes" the other pages of your book, which means that changes on the content pages are automatically reflected in the text of the print version, and no additional work or maintenance is needed by you to keep it "up to date". If you would like to prepare a simple "cover page" for your book (they usually consist of a large, characteristic image, and the title in big letters), I can include that as well, to produce a more complete-looking printable book.

Also, i altered the code of the Human Physiology template, so that it doesn't appear on the "Print Version", which produces text-book pages that look more like printed pages, and less like webpages. Where the navigation template used to be on each page, there is now only two horizontal lines, and a forced page break, so that each new chapter begins on a fresh printed page. The printed version (like i mentioned earlier) is over 130 pages currently, and I am sure it will grow even larger as time goes on. Therefore, loading and editing the print version directly can be time-consuming, especially on computers with slow internet connections. A double edged-sword, perhaps, but it is an invaluable tool if you actually want to print and distribute physical copies of your hard work.

Thanks for all the hard work, tell your students that they are doing well! Let me know if you have any questions. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:34, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Whiteknight, Thanks for all your efforts on our behalf, and your encouragement! I have been impressed with how quickly this book has grown too--it has been less than two weeks since we began! It is exciting to see all the chapters taking shape simultaneously, and to see the collaboration between students. Of course, we are relying heavily on Wikipedia and compiling the hard work of others, so this is a collaboration not just with our class but with all the contributors to those Wikipedia articles. I planned for three distinct phases for this book, and we are still in phase 1--I'm now thinking the book will probably be in very good shape by the end of phase 2. As part of phase 3 I am going to have students contact physiology teachers around the world and invite them to use the textbook in their classes and to contribute to it if they like (I will certainly be using this textbook for my classes). We will also go to all of the source articles on Wikipedia and insert a link to the book in the See Also section.


 * This week's goals: continue to make improvements on the chapters, review each others chapters, and talk about what we want in each chapter to have a consistent feel throughout the book. : I'll be sure to pass on your compliments to the students today! Provophys 15:04, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

A problem
Kevin, I am working on tatse and smell right now. I have found very little useful info online on these topics. So I have been doing alot of research in books. And writing my own content. Right now my work is very basic, but I am working on making it more techincal. I would like you to explain some things for me. I want my text to include why certain things taste or smell the way they do. I don't know this for sure but I am going to assume that for example: a salt partical "fits" into a salty receptor witch inturn sends an impulse to the brain. (I am correct in thinking this?) Can you explain to me why certain particals fit into certain receptors? Also I can't find a good picture of the taste zones of the tounge. But in Wiki Commons I found that almost all of the plates from Grays Anatomy. This might be very useful to our project. Thanks for your help. -Scott H.
 * Scott--If you haven't yet done so, be sure to use information from Wikipedia--anything there can be used freely (you can copy/paste and then edit as you see fit). For instance there are these articles which are applicable: Senses, Sensory System, Gustatory System, Taste, Taste bud, Basic taste categories, Olfaction, Odor, Olfactory receptor neuron, and so forth. The images used in those articles can also be used (they should already be in the Wiki Commons, so you can just click on the image to get its name and then reference it in your article).


 * I'm assuming you will understand things well when you get through those articles and distill them into your chapter, but let me know if you have further questions. In regards to why certain particles fit into certain receptors, keep in mind that we often see things illustrated like puzzle pieces locking together, but that is a metaphor--it is not really a question of physical shape so much as chemical properties. I think the fit is usually a chemical attraction, with formation of weak bonds between receptor and molecule, that triggers an action potential. Provophys 14:40, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

ATP
Kevin, I was reviewing the chapter on muscles and they briefly talk about ATP. I don't know about you but I think that ATP is very inportant topic that needs to be covered in great detail. In what chapter do you want ATP to be talked about in depth? -Scott H.


 * Scott, I agree that we need to discuss ATP. I think it is most appropriate to talk about it in Ch 2 (Cell physiology). You can talk about it in your chapter with an assumption that the reader already understands what you are talking about (i.e. you do not need to re-explain the concept). Provophys 14:22, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Templates for use
Your Human Physiology book looks fantastic! I am very impressed with all the work that is being put into it. Because all your students are getting more advanced with editing here, I wanted to point out some useful templates that wikibooks provides for working with text:

Also, you can create floating text boxes on the left or the right side of the page. The text from your page will automatically wrap around this floating boxes. To create a floating box on the left, use

However, if you want to create a box on the right, you can use the template to put it on the right. Inside a floating box, you can use formatting like normal. Here is a good example:

Also, another handy tool that I've used on some of your pages is the forced line-break. you can create a forced line break by typing. The forced line-break stops images and floating boxes that are too tall from "overflowing" into another section. This can help to keep things lined up properly, and stops things from squishing together. I have used two forced-line-breaks in this message, and you can feel free to experiment by removing them, and seeing what happens. If you need any help, let me know. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:42, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism, etc
On the left-hand side of the screen, there is a link that says "Recent Changes". If you click that link, you can see all the edits that have been made on the server recently. Also, people who know me, and see these problems, are quick to send me messages when this kind of thing starts to happen. Also, when you edit a page, you can click a little box that says "Watch this page", which adds the page to your "watchlist". you can see all the changes that have occured on every page in your watch list by clicking the "My Watchlist" link in the upper-right corner of the screen. Lucky for you, your entire book is in my personal watchlist.

As for the brownies, you don't need to worry about it. However, I might want to direct your attention to Requests for Adminship, where site administrators are elected. Administrators can do some additional things such as block problem users (like our vandals today) and delete pages from the server. I am currently nominated for "CheckUser Rights", which would enable me to see the IP address of a registered user, and therefore be able to block all vandals from the same IP address. If you wouldn't mind casting a vote for me, it would be a big help to the project. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:28, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks very much for the enthusiastic support! let me know if you need any more help. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:47, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Copyright violations
I just wanted to let you know about a small problem that I've cleaned up. There was some material that was copied in from another website, and unfortunately the copied material was under copyright. I had to delete the passage in question for legal reasons. Luckily I found it and deleted it before we ran into any problems: no harm, no foul. You might just want to let your class know that all material submitted on wikibooks must be free from copyright, and that it must be eligible for licensing under the GFDL. If people want to create hyperlinks to outside resources, that's perfectly fine and legal, we just can't copy text/images here.

Let me know if you need anything. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:44, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


 * PS. I just wanted to say congratulations: Your book is now over 285 pages long, by my count. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:49, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

WB:RFA Thanks for voting
I just wanted to let you know that I've just got the necessary 25 votes, and have been given the checkuser rights. You and your class were a key part in that, and I wanted to personally thank all of you for voting. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:08, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Physiology book
Hello

I'll present our projects at the Geneva Forum Towards Global Access to Health in two days. And after I saw your book, I decided it would be the one I will present during the conference, to show that "yes, even an open system can lead to good work being done on medical topics".

Congrats to you and all students. Anthere

US government sources
Yes, if it's published by the US government, it's public domain (have a look at the wikisource page on the subject).

(Just eavesdropping on Whiteknight... hope you don't mind.) -- SB_Johnny | talk 00:45, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Don't mind at all--the question is thus answered. I have always heard "the best ideas are public" and I'm seeing proof of it here. So, are there people who dig through these sites and upload to the Commons? That seems like it would be useful. Also, I assume that these rules apply to text as well as photos? If I were quoting directly from a government source I would want to reference it rather than just copy/paste with no credit. Provophys 01:03, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * P.S. It's awesome that you are an organic farmer!


 * I would apologize for not responding sooner, but it looks like you got your answer anyway! As is my understanding, the CDC and HHS (and any other government organizations) release their information and images into the public domain. I don't know the scope of this law, but the CDC and HHS should be fine. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:16, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

homeostasis help
Hey kevin, I don't know if you have recieved my e-mail, but i think i understood your question about our pathways but need a little bit of help. Take a look(discussion page), and if you have any ideas that would be awesome.--Jami_7 18:57, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Human Physiology
I took some artistic liberty, and rearranged the front page of your book. I moved the image to the right, and lined things up a little differently. If you don't like it, i can change it back lickity split. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:19, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Hey, the reason I chose that image is because the artist took some artistic liberty in explaining the functioning of the human body. I think your arrangement looks good. I don't see the class again until Wed (due to the holiday), at which point we will start actively promoting the book. We are going to send emails to physiology teachers, mostly in the U.S. and Canada. On Friday I am going to Provo College and will actually meet the students in person (finally). There are plenty of problems with it still, but I'm really impressed with what the class has accomplished in such a short time. I'm excited to see what happens when we bring the book to everyone's attention. Provophys 21:50, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Email
Hi Kevin aka Provophys, can you please ask Natalie (aka, Trisha (aka Trisha83) and Tori (aka ) to email me... my email address is [mailto:laurenwhitmarsh@stockportuk.com laurenwhitmarsh@stockportuk.com] - thanks, it would be helpful if they contacted me. Lauren


 * N.B.: You might want to look at the contribs of the person who left this message before replying: Special:Contributions/One-shot_account. -- SB_Johnny | talk 23:33, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
 * SBJohnny, Thanks for the tip. I don't really understand what the one-shot account business is all about. I guess this is kind of a wiki-spam? Provophys 20:56, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Creepy is what it is. BTW, you can't see all the edits of this user, as some was pagemove vandalism, and the pages were deleted. I have blocked both the sockpuppets and the IP address. -- SB_Johnny | talk 14:28, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Re: Fan club
Hello Kevin, I'm glad to hear about my "fan club". Mostly, I am just happy that I have been helpful to you and your class, and hopefully the experiance will encourage some of your students to continue to contribute to your book, and possibly even other books on the wikibooks project. It is my opinion that wikibooks has a strong potential to benefit people: Not just college students in america, but also students of all ages from around the world, especially places that may not be able to afford traditional textbooks. Imagine that instead of spending hundreds of dollars on books for each student (or worse yet, not providing enough textbooks at all), schools and libraries would be able to print enough books only for the cost of ink and paper! I am gladened by the thought that your Human Physiology book could inspire future generations of doctors, nurses, paramedics and other healthcare workers in places where such dreams must seem so far out of reach.

As for me, I am 23 years old, I live in philadelphia, and I am a new graduate student. My mother is a nurse, and her mother before her. Despite my background in healthcare, however, I decided to pursue engineering instead. Nobody is perfect, I suppose :)

If any of your students are interested in continuing to contribute after your class project is over, I know there are plenty of other books on the Health science bookshelf that they may find interesting or helpful. As always, if you need any help at all, please let me know. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:19, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

immunity chapter
Do you have someone to write the immunity chapter? if not, I would be interested.
 * Not sure who wrote this, but I would be delighted for you to take on the immunity chapter. Provophys 01:53, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Guidelines for class projects
Hello! sorry I haven't been as helpful lately, i've been busy with school projects of my own. Your book looks very good now, I hope all your students get good grades!

In response to your project, and several other classroom-related projects recently, we have started drafting a set of guidelines for future class and group projects here. Since you were an instructor for a particularly successfull project, I would ask if you could provide some input, so that these guidelines could help future groups and classes be equally successful here.


 * 1) Are there specific things that you think project leaders such as yourself could do in the future to make their projects run more smoothly? Is there a certain amount of planning that you did that was helpful to you? Was there certain things that you didn't plan but you should have?
 * 2) Are there things that you think the wikibooks community could do to help projects like this flourish?
 * 3) Are there resources that you wish you had (more help pages, tutorials, guidelines, contact information for community members), or that you did have and that you appreciated?

Your answers to these questions (and anything else that you have to add) will be most helpful to us, and to all the projects that we host in the future. Thank you very much in advance, and I will talk to you later. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:19, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry to be slow in responding. Provo College is on an unusual schedule and the class ended in late September (hence the sudden drop in activity). We have moved on to microbiology, and I was not ready to jump into another wikibook. I need to spend more time thinking about this, and also adding in what students had to say, but here are some quick thoughts:


 * 1) We divided the work up so that all chapters were being worked on simultaneously. I really liked seeing all sections of the book take place at once, and it was nice for groups to have independence. The downside was that everyone was working on something different so there was no real way to test, or even to lecture very effectively. Even if the work is divided up, if I were to do it again I would require all students to study the material sequentially and we would have tests as we went along.
 * 2) I had students change chapters 3 times. I think I would instead just let each group keep their one chapter for the entire time, and just contribute to other sections through reviewing them. I would try to establish certain criteria that had to be met by certain dates so that the book took shape and improved consistently across chapters over time.
 * 3) Grading was a real mess! I had a hard time keeping up with what the different groups were accomplishing. I did not have clear criteria for grading--was it quantity of material, clearness of writing, time spent in research and writing? Since I allowed students to take material from Wikipedia, I also could not tell how much original contribution students were making and how much was copy/paste. I would have more tests as part of the grade, but would make writing a major portion (or at least close to half) of the grade.
 * 4) In the end the students did not learn physiology as well as I would have liked them to through this experience. Some of them certainly learned a lot more than in a traditional class, but others learned only the basics of the chapters they worked on directly. I think if the above measures were taken and we were all together as a class that would have improved the outcome.
 * 5) The positive peer pressure of others reviewing your work was great. Since each group's work was visible to everyone, students really encouraged and helped each other. The excitement and energy for the project was greatest during the first few weeks, but it took about 6 weeks for the chapters to look really good.
 * 6) I am anxious to teach physiology again. Now that we have a book, the next class will improve upon it. We will use the book and go through it chapter by chapter. I will divide the class into groups and each group will be responsible for improving a specific chapter--but this will only be 10-20% of the grade.

Like I said, I need to write more, but that's all for now. Is there a single place where people have been discussing these guidelines? Provophys 02:52, 31 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the response! This has been very helpful for me. I wouldn't say that anybody is "discussing" this topic as much as I am "unilaterally drafting" a proposal. I think the community is starting to realize the need for such guidelines, because we are currently hosting at least 1 really messy class project that is in desperate need of some guidelines. If you would like to see the current state of the draft, you can go to Guidelines for class projects. If you would like to discuss it, you can do so at Wikibooks talk:Guidelines for class projects.
 * Also, I would like to go through your book in the next week or so, do some final cleanup tasks, and possibly create a PDF version of your book, that you can distribute to your class. I'll let you know how that project is going, as I make some progress. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 03:22, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Audio version
Professor, I understand that this was a one shot project for the construction of this wikibook, but are you intending to expand and continue to revise this work? Perhaps by incorporating a module of each subsequent class that expands and revises this book? I ask because I would very much like to see someone take a continued interest.

I am a volunteer with Librivox, who record audiobooks out of Public Domain materials. I also volunteer with the wikipedia project which is recording spoken word versions of feature articles. I would like to read and record your collaborative work on Human Physiology. I consider it the most worthy 'completed' work as of now. Medicine and science are the topics that will best serve humanity through wikibooks.

All librivox recordings are in the public domain. I will probably upload what I record both here and to Librivox. Every location and media that information is encoded with the more people it has a chance to reach.

I will be talking with WhiteKnight, who seems to be the defacto admin for this wikibook and discussing various ways of incorporating my recording into your text. Right now I am thinking about a simple sub-version system X.Y; X=PDF revision number, Y=My recording version. As new edits are made, and new sections are added, I would very much like to record new versions and new sections.

Thank you for your contribution professor, Sethwoodworth 20:25, 11 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Wow, that sounds fascinating--I had not heard about Librivox before. I am honored that you are so pleased with our book. I will pass the compliment on to the students (I have most of them now in a microbiology class). And yes, Whiteknight is the defacto admin for this book--he has helped in every stage.


 * To answer your question, yes, I plan on expanding and improving upon this book each time I teach physiology. I will teach it again this spring (Feb 20-Apr 27), and this will be our only textbook. The first time through everyone worked on different sections simultaneously. Next time we will all work on improving each chapter as we go along. I also hope to make some study notes--an outline that can accompany each chapter.


 * I'm not sure yet how we are going to organize ourselves for the next revision. Some chapters need a lot more work than other chapters, there are different types of tasks that are needed, and I need to be able to assign grades to people's efforts (the hardest part). I'll bet some students would really enjoy reading some of the chapters for Librivox if that was an option. If you wanted to coordinate the effort and give guidance to them, I could help provide additional voices to speed the project along. It's fine with me if you make recordings prior to February. As much as I would like to work on it more, I doubt I will do serious revisions before then. Provophys 01:56, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Welcome back!!
That you and your class are coming back to wikibooks is the best peice of news I've heard all day. I'm very glad to hear about it.

I will fly through there right now (or very soon), and make sure all the page links are fixed and working for you. I'll give everything else a run-through too, to make sure no other changes (specifically bad ones) have happened since you were last here. please let me know how i can help! --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:44, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * That you are still patrolling wikibooks and still available to help is the good news I needed to hear! I'm needing to put together the syllabus for the course, and am currently dealing with issues of grading (once again), and how to allocate the workload. I'm excited to go through the book chapter by chapter--I think by the time we finish it this time it will really be great. One new thing I hope to do this time is recruit doctors or physiology professors to act as mentors, basically to check on our work and to give us feedback as to what they think might be most important for the book. Maybe I'll offer students extra credit if they can recruit a health professional to "adopt a chapter." While the focus this time will be on really polishing the book, I'm already thinking about the third time through the book (which will happen when I start a class in July). At that time I want to figure out what types of material belong at wikiversity and how we can create learning modules or a course outline and tie wikiversity into this wikibook. I noticed that even within Wikibooks, if you browse the Biology_bookshelf the link for physiology is empty--how should our book be tied into that?


 * On a separate note, I am going to mentor a student doing an independent study conservation biology class. She is interested in starting a conservation biology book here (it appears there is none). It will only be the two of us (mainly her), and I have suggested that we create the basic outline of what we think would be a good book, then focus on one chapter to flesh out. Would you suggest anything different? Provophys 15:45, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Your plans are very impressive, and I think there is a strong potential here to make a truly wonderful, free physiology textbook. Some members of the community, including myself, have been hashing out plans for a standing "editorial board", where combined groups of wikibookians and subject-experts (hopefully recruited from outside the project) can work to make a book suitable for publication and distribution. Your idea of finding volunteer health professionals to "adopt" chapters in your book is a very similar idea. Any changes to policy here at wikibooks are typically very slow, but hopefully your project can be the catalyst we need to not only make your book great, but also to make a whole series of great books.
 * About your last point, I've written a large number of books by myself so far (well over 20 and counting), and have even written an essay on the topic from my experiences. While this essay may be longer then you or your student care to read, it has helped other people who have tried to start a new book. In short, however, it is a very good idea to outline a book before you write any content. Many of my outlines have been in the "planning" stage for months now. I doubt you need that much time to get started, but a little preplanning will work wonders on the final product. I would be very happy to work on that project as well,please let me know what you need. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:58, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Re:Anatomy/Physiology
The request to merge the Anatomy and Human Anatomy books is a very old request, we simply haven't had anybody volunteer to complete the task. I've been very busy myself lately, both with my master's thesis and the courses I am teaching, so I am not able to do the leg work on that project.

If you want the integumentary system chapter moved, I will certainly take care of that for you. I will try to do it either tonight or tomorrow.

Good luck with your class, let me know if you need anything. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:08, 19 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I just started teaching my first class this week as well, and I now know first hand that it can be very difficult. It is tough to gauge student's enthusiasm and interest, even when you are standing right in front of them!
 * It's not that i'm necessarily too busy, i just keep promising to do all sorts of little tasks for people. I'm slowly working down my checklist, and will eventually get to the integumentary chapter for you. I plan on spending several hours in front of wikibooks tomorrow, so expect for pages to be moved then. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:18, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Re:Watchlists
This is a surprisingly common question, especially since the answer is not immediately obvious. The watchlist only shows the last edit made on each page, not every edit made. This means that if 10 people edit a page, your watchlist will only show you the 10th edit.

To fix this, if you want to change it, you can click on My preferences. On the "Watchlist" Tab, you can click the "Expand to show all edits" checkbox. This will show you every edit that is made on all the pages in your watchlist. This should solve your problem. Let me know if you need anything else. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:24, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Horomone Chart
I am really hoping that you can help... I did a chart for hormones and I have checked and double checked, I know I did it right but it's not graphing like the other graphs I did- would you mind checking it for me? I am really confused as to what I did wrong Stephanie greenwood 01:45, 6 April 2007 (UTC) Never mind I realized that its a quotation mark not two apostraphes to make the table Stephanie greenwood 01:51, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Book Featured
Congratulations, your book has been listed as a "featured book" by the community. Apparently alot of other people thought that your book was really good. It is currently listed on the Main Page (although it will be rotated on and off periodically) and it is also listed at Featured books. I also took the liberty of putting a notice on the front of the main page there, to alert all readers about how good the book is. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Provophys - I apologize I did not get back to you after you left a message on my talk page (a year ago!) Sorry. It looks like your project came along very, very nicely! congrats! Gerardo.ok 20:18, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Moving things
Hi - apologies I was away! Anyway to "move" anything somewhere else just hit the "move" tab at the top of the page and put in the new name/place you want it to be in. If you need any other help, let me know - cheers -- Herby talk thyme 12:42, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Question regarding the sense of sound.
The last line of the first paragraph of the Inner Ear portion of Sound states that the opening of the cochlea is responsible for high frequency detection and the apex for low. This sounds backwards to me. Similar to how the tuba has a lower freq range than the flute (due to it's wider opening), I imagine that the cochlea would resonate according to wavelength. If this is wrong and you have a reference as to why, please list it. I would love to know.

Citation
I'm giving a presentation in march about Wikibooks to a group of writers, and I want to quote you to make a point about the ease of editing. The quote I would like to use is:
 * I was new to editing wikis, as were my students, but I guess that is what makes wikis so great -- we can all participate, regardless of our level

I want to properly attribute this quote to you, but I don't know if you are a PhD or not. I searched the Provo College and Utah State websites, but I couldn't find any definitive answers either way. Should it it "Dr. Kevin Young" or just "Kevin Young"? I don't really expect to hear from you between now and then (too busy to check this page every day, I'm sure). I'll flip a coin on it. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:02, 6 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply! It's always good to hear from you. I didn't end up using that quotation in my presentation, so I didn't accidentally exaggerate your credentials.
 * I'm glad that the wetpaint wiki is meeting your needs so well. Wikibooks certainly isnt the best venue for all projects big and small, but we are trying to make things better. There are certain technological hurdles that we need to cross (a better, more graphical editor is high up on the wishlist) so that we can be a better tool for new students.
 * I don't have any more recent numbers for you, unfortunately the edit counter has been broken for some time now. As soon as the counter is operational again, I'll post you an update.
 * As for resources on using Wikis in education, I have to admit that I don't know too much. [] probably has some materials, and Wikiversity is bound to have some as well. Plus, many of the active and enthusiastic members at Wikiversity are wiki-based education proponents and so would be better equiped to help you then I am. I'll ask around and see if I can find more information for you, and post you an update if I find any.
 * Good luck with your classes, and let me know how things are going for you! --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:51, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Medical Physiology
Hi Kevin, I'm trying to get the Medical Physiology pages going, and I would be glad of your advice - you've done such a great job with human physiology! Do you teach medical students? Do you have a feel for the level of complexity that is appropriate? Most of my teaching was at the post-grad level. I'm now retired, so have plenty of time!--Boumphreyfr (talk) 00:29, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi there! I have not worked on this book in a long time but am glad to see it getting used! I'm happy to visit with you about the medical physiology book project. I actually do not have a physiology background, and was teaching beginning undergraduate students. I just figured we could learn by putting together a book! The project was a mess in some ways (what do you do in class when students are working on 18 different chapters at once?). I could never have done this if I did not have a class of students (there were about 35-40 of us if I remember). Anyway, please contact me over email, and we can exchange phone numbers. My email is kevin (dot) young (at) usu (dot) edu (I'm trying to write it in such a way that spam programs won't pick it up!) Provophys (talk) 18:07, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Update: I now teach at Arizona Western College, and my email is kevin dot young at azwestern.edu Provophys (discuss • contribs) 23:51, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Update: I am back at Utah State University and can be reached at kevin.young@usu.edu once again. Provophys (discuss • contribs) 19:51, 9 November 2020 (UTC)