Global Text Project – Wiki Textbooks

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."

Comments

Good

[PrinceAshitaka]

I am looing forward to this. While MIT's attempts to open up thier classes on the internet seemed novel, it was not the resource I was hoping it would be. I was hoping it would be a good reference place when I needed to remember something from my college days as all my textbooks from college are buried in storage. This shows promise but I will reserve my judgement for it's usefullness for now.

With OLPC/CM1

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

wikibooks - 2003

[Colin Smith]

Wiki based educational books on just about everything.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

Too early to say

[arun_s]

While the idea is interesting, the project is still in its early stages (only 3 books are available, 2 are incomplete).
Wikibooks has progressed farther, but as TFA notes, this one operates on slightly stricter policies that might be useful for academic books.

Re:Its been done

[legoburner]

The reason nobody has heard of it is probably the evil college bookstore cartel. They will break your hands with hammers if they find out you have been using free textbooks instead of the ones they sell. Not to mention what happens to professors that dont require a textbook which costs at least $50 for a course... let's just say they are not usually teaching by the summer semester.

Moo

[Chacham]

Class, wait a momnet, as i revert your textbooks to the previous edit...

Re:Its been done

[StupendousMan]

I am a university professor. I don't require my students to purchase textbooks for the introductory physics courses I teach. I provide my complete lecture notes online, and permit students to use older textbooks if they wish; after all, the material we're covering hasn't changed in the past few hundred years, so _any_ textbook they can find will serve as a useful reference.

I write my own homework problems so that my students won't have to purchase a textbook simply for that purpose.

The bookstore hasn't broken my hands, nor has the university reprimanded me. We've just started a new fall quarter this week, and I'm still teaching.

So, in brief, your statement is not correct.

Where do I sign up?

[Rob T Firefly]

I'd like to be the one to doodle futuristic cars in all the margins.

This ain't Wikipedia - this is real knowledge

[DiamondGeezer]

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.