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That project looks great! I'd also like to mention the newly created Arts bookshelf, which currently includes textbooks on topics like Graphic Design, Guitar, and Game Design and Programming. In the future, it'll hopefully include textbooks on Paper Airplanes and LEGO Design. If you're knowledgeable about any of these areas, please contribute!

Here are some other textbooks slashdot readers may be interested in contributing to:
* Bourne Shell Scripting
* Computer Programming
* Intelligence Intensification
* Book for Geeks
* Getting a girl

That project looks great! I'd also like to mention the newly created Arts bookshelf, which currently includes textbooks on topics like Graphic Design, Guitar, and Game Design and Programming. In the future, it'll hopefully include textbooks on Paper Airplanes and LEGO Design. If you're knowledgeable about any of these areas, please contribute!

Here are some other textbooks slashdot readers may be interested in contributing to:
* Bourne Shell Scripting
* Computer Programming
* Intelligence Intensification
* Book for Geeks
* Getting a girl

That project looks great! I'd also like to mention the newly created Arts bookshelf, which currently includes textbooks on topics like Graphic Design, Guitar, and Game Design and Programming. In the future, it'll hopefully include textbooks on Paper Airplanes and LEGO Design. If you're knowledgeable about any of these areas, please contribute!

Here are some other textbooks slashdot readers may be interested in contributing to:
* Bourne Shell Scripting
* Computer Programming
* Intelligence Intensification
* Book for Geeks
* Getting a girl

That project looks great! I'd also like to mention the newly created Arts bookshelf, which currently includes textbooks on topics like Graphic Design, Guitar, and Game Design and Programming. In the future, it'll hopefully include textbooks on Paper Airplanes and LEGO Design. If you're knowledgeable about any of these areas, please contribute!

Here are some other textbooks slashdot readers may be interested in contributing to:
* Bourne Shell Scripting
* Computer Programming
* Intelligence Intensification
* Book for Geeks
* Getting a girl

That project looks great! I'd also like to mention the newly created Arts bookshelf, which currently includes textbooks on topics like Graphic Design, Guitar, and Game Design and Programming. In the future, it'll hopefully include textbooks on Paper Airplanes and LEGO Design. If you're knowledgeable about any of these areas, please contribute!

Here are some other textbooks slashdot readers may be interested in contributing to:
* Bourne Shell Scripting
* Computer Programming
* Intelligence Intensification
* Book for Geeks
* Getting a girl

This project (COSTP/Wikibooks) invites anyone who is expert in World History to contribute. It's an important project because it will prove that a bona fide K-12 textbook *can* be created in open source - and most importantly, gain approval for use by the State Board of education, we would then be able to crack the costly commercial textbook business at the K-12 level.

COSTP has shown that you can have a *printed* textbook come out of open source at a 50% savings over commercial textbooks. California alone spends almost $400M for K-12 textbook in one year. Imagine how much $200M in savings would help California's money-strapped schools. Further, once other states get into the open content idea, many *billions* in savings could be realized.

It's very important that content contributors be willing to maintain strict adherence to the California State Education department Standards. This is the *only* way that a book like this will pass State Board of Education approval. if COSTP can get a few of these in the system, it will eventually open up for alternative histories, and other curriculum areas. Lastly, COSTP is devoted to bringing *printed* textbooks to the K-12 sector, worldwide, by spreading the meme that open content - created by knowledgeable peers, and based on local curriculum standards - can and should be used for basic education

This project (COSTP/Wikibooks) invites anyone who is expert in World History to contribute. It's an important project because it will prove that a bona fide K-12 textbook *can* be created in open source - and most importantly, gain approval for use by the State Board of education, we would then be able to crack the costly commercial textbook business at the K-12 level.

COSTP has shown that you can have a *printed* textbook come out of open source at a 50% savings over commercial textbooks. California alone spends almost $400M for K-12 textbook in one year. Imagine how much $200M in savings would help California's money-strapped schools. Further, once other states get into the open content idea, many *billions* in savings could be realized.

It's very important that content contributors be willing to maintain strict adherence to the California State Education department Standards. This is the *only* way that a book like this will pass State Board of Education approval. if COSTP can get a few of these in the system, it will eventually open up for alternative histories, and other curriculum areas. Lastly, COSTP is devoted to bringing *printed* textbooks to the K-12 sector, worldwide, by spreading the meme that open content - created by knowledgeable peers, and based on local curriculum standards - can and should be used for basic education

Just as a plug, free textbooks can be found over at Wikibooks

(COSTP) - The California Open Source Textbook Project has been collaborating with Wikipedia on a K-12 (public high school) World History project. The project is based on California State Board of Education Framework standards.

The idea is to create a pilot basd on strict curriculum framework adherence, as this is the **only** way to get **any** state board of education to approve the end product for local school district use.

I would encourage anyone who is expert in World History to contribute to this project here Wikipedia World History Project

The goal of this project is to prove the concept. Once that's done, may other curriculum areas can be constructed - including those that deviate from curriculum frameworks.

A further goal is to have the resulting files generate a 'print-on-demand' file because the end product should be a printed text.

COSTP has shown that the cost of an open source K-12 (printed)textbook (hardcover)is 40-50% cheaper than K-12 textbooks published and distributed by commercial publishers.

Lastly, if you want to contribute content to the project, please contribute *only* your own (original)work. Content that is already copyrighted is not welcome/ We want to show State Boards of Education that open source textbook publishing can save the states - collectively - *billions* of dollars. e.g. California spends $400M+ every year on K-12 textbooks, with prices having risen at three times the rate of inflation since 1992.

COSTP is an official collaborator with Creative Commons, and was a recent participant in forging the Creative Commons educational license. Also, we hope in the future to work with the Connexions Project at Rice University, to get further tests piloted.

Wikimedia Foundation, the one that also hosts Wikipedia, has a similar project called Wikibooks. It also runs on the same MediaWiki software as Wikipedia, and the contents are licensed under the GFDL.

Are the two licenses incompatable, or are they just trying to start a competing product? This is a serious question, I've not read the details of either license, and I think competition is good for all involved.

On the other hand, if the licenses are compatable, why not borrow (attributed of course) material back and forth between the two.

It certainly seems (by looking at the two sites) that WikiBooks are quite a bit further along in the game.

Try letting her lose on Wiki software. Start on the basics such as triple quotes and wikitables, then work up on harder stuff such as Templates and Variables. There are hundreds of wiki's about, gov wild! The best wiki's around are the Wikimedia wiki's such as Wikipedia,Wikiquote and Wikibooks. You will have fun, plus you will learn stuff other than programming! Also check out the cool round tab trick, a reason for you IE users to upgrade to firefox already!

Wikipedia's Wikibooks is free, but it is a work in progress.

<a href="http://www.opensourcetext.org">California Open Source Textbook Project</a> (COSTP)(conducting pilot projects)

<a href="http://wikibooks.org/wiki/World_History_Proj ect">Wikipedia World History Project</a> (a beginning K-12 pilot inspired by COSTP and based on strict California State surriculum standards)

<a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html">MIT's OpenCourseWare project</a> (a university-based open curriculum project)

California Open Source Textbook Project (COSTP)(conducting pilot projects)

Wikipedia World History Project (a beginning K-12 pilot inspired by COSTP and based on strict California State surriculum standards)

MIT's OpenCourseWare project (a university-based open curriculum project)

Why have they put Perl in the general puropose languages category, Ruby in the "Object Oriented languages" category and Python under "scripting languages"?

http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:List_of_lang uages

How about open, realtime editing, creation, correcting, and updating of free, GFDL'd textbooks? It's already here: check out wikibooks.

wikibooks.org

Check out Wikibooks.

(Keeping it short cuz I posted about it in a new thread).

For those of you who are interested in free (as in speech and beer) textbooks, please check out Wikibooks. It's a Wiki, like the Wikipedia, but wholly devoted to offering free books (primarily textbooks).

I'm not involved in running Wikibooks, I just use it and contribute to it, and I think it's a great project worth spreading the word about; plus, the more people contribute to it, the better it is.

And even better, use free (as in freedom) text books from wikibooks on the laptops.

Wikibooks has free (beer / freedom) books and textbooks that anyone can edit, by the makers of Wikipedia. A whole list of projects are found here at Wikimedia (yes they like the word Wiki alot ;-) ).

And even better, use free (as in freedom) text books from wikibooks on the laptops.

Wikibooks has free (beer / freedom) books and textbooks that anyone can edit, by the makers of Wikipedia. A whole list of projects are found here at Wikimedia (yes they like the word Wiki alot ;-) ).

"More interestingly, the story mentions that despite increases in funding for libraries, spending on books has sharply declined"

And the libraries probably don't know about Project Gutenberg, Baen WikiBooks or the Wikipedia. They're just using it to check their hotmail accounts.

Put a decent printer like in the Internet Bookmobile, and they could have a pretty big collection of books available. But no, it's 10p per sheet on an inket.

Libraries in the UK are even selling shareware, probably not even realising the quality of software that they could give away for free if they wished.

MediaWiki in particular implements many ideas that were already envisioned by Ted Nelson and Doug Engelbart. It does show backlinks, but perhaps more importantly, it also allows dynamic inclusion of any page in the current development version. For example, you could have a header and footer in your documentation that is the same for every page. What's more, you can add parameters to these templates to dynamically search and replace patterns of text in the template before transcluding it. This will allow us to replace the currently statically hacked Wikipedia infoboxes with dynamically included and parametrized templates, for example. One long term feature that might be worth hacking on top of this would be transclusion of labeled sections from another page, or interwiki transclusion.

Check out the current feature list and the development roadmap. Subscribe to wikitech-l to help us in improving the software. In true wiki spirit, we are fairly liberal at handing out CVS access (over 40 developers with CVS access at present), so please do ask if you want to work on a larger project.

There are many other wiki engines that are worth working on, such as TWiki and MoinMoin. Their main deficiency, in my opinion, is that they do rely primarily on the traditional wiki link pattern of CamelCase, which is nice for geeks but very ugly for everyone else, and also useless for search engines. MediaWiki uses [[free links]] instead, which are harder to type, but look just like normal links to the reader. Still, working on any other wiki engine is a lot better than starting yet another one.

A collaborative tool which is badly needed is a free software clone of SubEthaEdit. Combine wikis with real-time editing and the fun really begins. I imagine something like that might be hackable on top of a powerful graphical editor like Kate. For now WebDAV-support for MediaWiki would also be very cool, as Kate/KDE already supports editing WebDAV resources. So many worthwhile hacks, so little time.

This is an area where open source coders can make a big difference while corporations are still bewildered by the fact that open wikis can produce useful content. So please, let's work together on these tools.

"statistics references would be more helpful"

Only just started, but you can update the book if you're in a "let's help someone" mood one night:

http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Statistics

The Calculus book at Wikibooks is another Free (as in freedom) calculus book. It's well-written, if incomplete.

The Calculus book at Wikibooks is another Free (as in freedom) calculus book. It's well-written, if incomplete.

The Wikipedia group has started a wiki textbook site, though the ones I've looked at are not very far along yet.

However, if you've got expertise you'd like to contribute to the public, that might be an easy place for you to do it.

or the wiki cookbook...

I don't like the advice on the front page there... I've never successfully made a roux, their "featured recipe", and am therefore not competent to write a replacement article. Having tried, though, I believe this recipe is missing a LOT of information. For example, you have to stir it obsessively to prevent any of the flour particles from sticking to the bottom and burning. If it burns, it's all over (supposedly), and it's easy to burn it. Also, being hot AND glutinous oil, it will melt your skin if it splatters on you.

Compare this description: http://www.gumbopages.com/food/ingred.html

I do like their description of garlic, though. :-)

The article links the the Wikipedia list of recipes but not to the Wikibooks cookbook.. There is not much there at the moment but as soon as people start dropping by and adding a recipe or two it should grow.

And why isn't there a larger open cookbook on the net?

Like this?

Greetings earthling.

You seem to be under the impression that slashdot is one huge monolithic ball of opinion.

Yes, there are people on slashdot who bitch about Microsoft software being retarded security wise.

There are also people who are bitching about them bundling a virus scanner.

There is no evidence to say that there is a significant overlap in these groups.

For more information, see Discrete Mathematics.

"which could be useful to subsidise low cost environments such as open source content projects e.g. wikipedia."

Wikipedia sounds like the right sort of idea. The only internet content I've paid for in the last year (apart from the cost of maintaining my own website) is a donation to Wikimedia (and not using PayPal either)

You could buy a subscription to some other reference source instead, but the best bit about giving the money to an open site is that everyone can benefit from your donation. In fact for the cost of a bookshelf of encyclopediae, you could get one which never becomes out of date.

If you're looking for a dictionary, try updating the wiki once you find out what a new word means, and we should soon get a decent dictionary too.

Of course, school teachers and parents might prefer to spend their money on textbooks

/me looks around to see if there are any Linux gurus here :)

Check it out. Contribute if you like. My motivation in starting it in the first place was to learn enough to pass the exam myself, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

cheers!
minderaser

MediaWiki is also used by non-Wikimedia projects. Among the more interesting ones is Disinfopedia, an encyclopedia of propaganda, and Wikitravel, a travel guide. Star Trek fans will want to take a look at Memory Alpha.

Because of Wikipedia's constant server problems, MediaWiki has been refined to be very scalable. It caches almost everything and uses Livejournal's memcached to keep important data in memory. It also has support for Squid proxy servers. Aside from that MediaWiki comes with a huge set of features, many of which are found in few other wikis:

• section editing - edit not a whole page, but just a small subsection of it (great for large pages)
• automatic image rescaling
• LaTeX support for mathematic formulas
• message transclusion - create messages that can be used
• namespaces to separate article content, user pages, image descriptions and discussions; message notification for user-to-user messages
• plenty of query functions to examine the relationships between articles (articles which have many links to them but don't exist, articles which have no links to them, very long/short articles etc.)

I agree, wikimedia (makers of wikipedia) have online free, as in freedom, text books. Why not use free text books that have been created by a collaboritve effort by the best minds?

The link like the parent said is here:

http://wikibooks.org/

Here are some links I dredged up last time this subject rolled through.

Wiki Textbooks
Light and Matter: Open physics textbooks.
An open math textbook
Project Gutenberg, for all the English majors out there.

There are also a lot of books out there which are freely downloadable, but not modifiable. Has anyone here used a free (in either sense) textbook as their primary learning tool in a college class? If so, what was your experience?

Using expensive traditional PCs in classrooms just does not work. Using LTSP based thin-clients does. K12LTSP.org is the answer to the cost issues raised in this article.

Wikibooks.org is a new project that could save millions. Can you say open source textbooks? ;-)

Finally, there are valid points on how PCs are used in the classroom. After 22 years of teaching, here's what I think about it.

• The Wikipedia project has spun off the Wikibooks, the free textbook project.
• MIT offers the OpenCourseWare initiative
• the venerable Project Gutenberg offers e-texts of public domain books
• The University of Pennsylvania complements Gutenberg with the Online Books Page
• and numerous other authors, universities, and organizations are jumping on the bandwagon

In any event, it would be simple - a book is created and is available for modification so as long as the modifications are submitted back to the original author. The text would evolve into something that could not be purchased from *any* publisher.

Check out Wikibooks. They are a sister project of Wikipedia and are doing just that without the "noncommercial" limitation of the MIT license. Anyone can contribute directly too.