Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2003/August

Writing a Textbook
Well, I think this needs some discussion. I am afraid some might think that writing a textbook is very much similar to writing a larger Wikipedia article or making a Wikipedia project. In my opinion this is a dangerous misconception. We all, I suppose, have read dozens of textbooks. We can tell the difference between a good textbook and a collection of dead trees. It is much more than just putting into writing some accurate, factual information and making it readable. Writing a good textbook is hard work, I guess (I haven't written any). It takes a brilliant concept, a good design, thoughtful methodology and a good dose of multimedia. A good textbook talks to students, explains, guides them etc Perhaps before actually writing we should spend some more time on planning, ideas and design ? Kpjas 20:58 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * We might as well try free-form growth to see if it can produce a decent textbook. After all some people argued that you couldn't write an encyclopedia with free-form growth. --Imran


 * I think both are important - just as we are doing now (see textbook planning). Plans will be modified by and evolve with the experience we gain by creating test cases. We do, of course, need a wiki way of assembling and reorganizing books (hard coding navigational aids is not wiki). --mav


 * Whether of not hard coding navigational aids is "wiki", its a lot of work and I'd love to be able to automate the process. Karl Wick


 * In my opinion good text books (especially for languages) encourage a lot of dialogs/cooperation between students. So an idea would be to enrich the textbook exercises with tables where people can place/respond to requests for study partners (for example setting up times for an irc/icq chat in a foreign language). I would like to hear your opinions on that. Thanks. Thomas


 * I think it is a good idea especially for online version of (language) textbooks. The problem is how to persuade not to fall back to English at some point ;-) Kpjas


 * Hm. Sounds like that would be a good thing to have in a subdomain; the Wikibooks Classroom at http://classroom.wikibooks.org (different languages would have different translations of the word "classroom". We could also create tools for instructors to use to make lesson plans, activities and, of course, have dialogs with their students (and student to student interaction). But here, IMO, we should concentrate on textbook and related material development. Just thinking out loud - all that will require some pretty serious software that we simply don't have yet. Still an interesting thing to keep in mind for future planning. --mav 07:59 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * What if we set up a mailing list, maybe Wikimediateacher-l or something like that, where people looking for teachers for to go along with wikibooks material or just plain old wikipedia could find a teacher, also a member of the list. Once your teacher is found or you are sufficiently paired up with a student, you start an email and IM correspondance and quit the list, unless you want more teachers or students. The whole thing could be completely pseudonomous, just like the rest of Wikimedia, unless the individual users want to divulge their real name. LittleDan 17:08 7 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * I like the idea of having a specialized Wiki classroom project (maybe WikiCourses?) with its own subdomain. Before I heard of Wikipedia's textbook project I was actually searching the internet for Wiki sites that are doing this kind of project (but pretty much all of the 'e-learning' sites where forums about e-learning and not actually offering courses). It seems to me that once the Wikibook project is matured a little more (which shouldn't take too long hopefully ;) we can start off the Wiki course/classroom project with its own subdomain and administration & collaboration tools. Thomas

Public domain books
OK, I'm up with insomnia right now thinking about all things Wikibook. Since our focus is to create the world's best resource for educational material I believe we should import as many literary classics that are in the public domain as possible. In addition to benefiting from the TOC/modularization concept talked about on the mailing list, we can wikify these old texts using en: interwiki links to encyclopedia articles and we could devise an annotation markup such as ... .

Here is how it would work; In the Origin of Species by Darwin we can have his wikified text on the left 2/3rds of the the wikitext area of a module and the annotation on the right third of the module. That annotation will be placed according to where the ... pair is placed; so if it is placed after heading 3 then that is where the annotation starts.

We could also do this with modules but that would be more complicated (but may be worth it ; that way the annotation could be different for different contexts). I do not think that a public domain resource like that would be viable on its own (such as the long proposed but never enacted ProjectSourceburg). Furthermore the WikiQuote community did not like the idea of expanding their focus to cover public domain books (they reluctantly agreed to host speeches, though - but we can have those here too). Also, the annotation function will also be useful in textbooks - print textbooks very often have a narrow column for images and notes.

What say you? Aside: Wikimedia is probably going to have to start a fiction wiki soon (something I am calling "wiktion") so that people can create their own books of fiction. But that would not prevent us from having wikified and annotated public domain fiction here - so long as it has an educational purpose, then that would be fine (such as The Scarlet Letter). I'm really excited about all this! --mav 09:38 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * I don't think wikibook should include public domain texts, as I think the gains would be outweighed by the disadvantanges, especially as many other projects already exist which do that kind of thing. Annotated texts however are a different matter all together, and I think they would prove useful, especially as we could annotate many books for which annotated versions are not otherwise commercially viable.


 * I think a good example of what we could do is what the site http://www.pepysdiary.com/ is doing for Samuel Pepys' diary. --Imran 15:48 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)~


 * Making annotation easy is the whole point and, IMO, simply having the books Wikified (pointing to Wikipedia articles) makes them much, much more useful and fun to read than 'just another website with plain text Chaucer.' If we want to be a full educational resource then we need to have the many of these books - they will get more and more annotated through time. --mav


 * I think that wiktion could go right in wikibooks: it's a book, isn't it? And where do we draw the line on annotated fiction works? Just put all the books here. LittleDan 15:21 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)
 * PS. Wiktion sounds too much like Wiktionary.


 * No. Absolutely not. We should not be in the business of creating our own fictional worlds. We are here to create educational resources for the student not to make things up! Having fiction, as you suggest, is incompatible with that goal - just because Wiktion would use some of the same software features doesn't mean the projects should be in the same wiki. At the very least the fiction section should be in a sub-domain (if you don't like my name choice and cannot think of something different). But the type of community culture in a educational-oriented project, like Wikibooks, and a project aimed at creating its own fictional realms, like Wiktion, are too different to exist side-by-side. --mav 17:34 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Guitar textbook?
Is there any interest in a textbook on guitar playing? I'd need some help, as my focus would be mainly on death metal; and I have a limited knowledge of music theory, but I can definitely do the basics like forming chords, basic scales, holding the pick &c. -- Jimregan 02:25, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * IMHO a textbook on playing guitar would "totally rock" !! Just start it and other guitar fans will get on there and add what they know. ( I always wanted to learn guitar). --Karl Wick


 * I won't have time to get started until Tuesday evening; I forgot to add that, as a death metal guitarist, most of the stuff I would write would go over most guitarists heads; I haven't always listened to death metal though, I can probably do basic stuff about fingerpicking, as well as tapping, arpeggio shredding &c. -- Jimregan 02:36, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * Is video an OK thing to have? I can probably arrange a digital camera, and can easily do audio examples, but would (short) video clips be too much? And if not, what format, MPEG? -- Jimregan 02:39, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * MPEG-1 is the closest thing to a standard that everyone can play. Quality can leave something to be desired, though... I'm not sure of the patent situation.


 * Note that we currently limit uploads to 2 megabytes. --Brion VIBBER 07:29, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * I think MPEG-2 is the only one with a patent problem, maybe MPEG-4, but I've never heard of MPEG-1 patent problems. I don't think the upload limit would be a problem, I'm just talking about short clips (5 seconds max) to demonstrate techniques -- Jimregan 08:06, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * Perhaps use a series of GIFs instead? Or very low FPS animated GIF or something like that? Or would GIF require licensing? Also, where is the link to the textbook? i visited it before, but that was through Recent Changes, and i can't find it now. Search gives me the wikipedia guitar article. -- Kasperl 18:30, 18 April 04

Computer drafting (AutoCAD)
I'd like to do a basic intoruduction to computer drafting using AutoCAD. What is the method for starting a new set of modules? Should I come up with a list of relevant module topics and start editing? - Tobin Richard 07:46, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)


 * Add the name of your book to the Technology section on the Main Page, then use that edit link to create your table of contents. At that point, start creating modules. Welcome aboard! --mav 08:38, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)