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Global Text Project – Wiki Textbooks

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the let-1000-textbooks-bloom dept.

Grooves writes, "A new initiative spearheaded by a University of Georgia professor aims to produce a library of 1,000 wiki textbooks by tapping the collaborative power of wiki. Inspiration for the project came from a computer science course that wrote its own textbook on XML when no suitable commercial offerings were available. From the article: 'The Global Text Project will work a bit differently from most wikis. Each chapter of each book will be overseen by an academic with knowledge of that field. Although the site will allow anyone to make changes, these will not become "official" until an editor signs off on them.' Textbooks free as in speech, and beer? Sign me up."

6 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. With OLPC/CM1 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Will this work with the One Laptop Per Child program (OLPC)? I thought I had heard that the OLPC planned to use wiki technology for books as one of its goals. A major need of that program is free, open, but accurate and factual content, not just technology.

  2. Re:Good by gwjenkins · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Can I put in a vote for Highschool textbooks as well as University. There is one wikibook so far that looks particularly good for students http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Algebra_I_in_Simple_E nglish. Clear, highschool level textbooks would be just fantastic. Cheers.

    --
    -- Just a boy in a beard
  3. This ain't Wikipedia - this is real knowledge by DiamondGeezer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From the article: 'The Global Text Project will work a bit differently from most wikis. Each chapter of each book will be overseen by an academic with knowledge of that field.

    This is excellent.

    Free knowledge written by experts. Sweet.

    --
    Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
    1. Re:This ain't Wikipedia - this is real knowledge by dayhiker · · Score: 2, Interesting

      But the experts have to participate. Professors generally review textbooks for money or academic credit. Plus, folks in academia do not like wiki's in the first place, and will not give scholarly credit for promotions/tenure for this work (too bad, it is worthwhile). It seems to me full online textbooks written by a small group of professors or experts seems more likely to reverse the high cost of textbooks. There is a good start at www.textbookrevolution.org with this idea.

  4. Re:Wikibooks? Wikiversity? by maxwell+demon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    But what about starting the work on Wikibooks, and then after there's enough material, make an "academic version" where the academics go over the whole text, correct any mistakes there may be, and (besides adding those improvements on Wikibooks) publish that separately (which they of course are allowed to do under the GFDL). The separate version would have the advantage of stability, and you could be sure that academics have approved all of it. I think this way you would get the best of both worlds.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  5. Wiki edit on Green's Theorem by autophile · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The number of integrals in Green's Theorem has tripled over the past year.

    --Rob

    --
    Towards the Singularity.