Will has focused another conversation for me here, on another gloomy morning on the red dirt island. Although my kitten is desperately trying to flay the flesh from my thighs (that or she’s trying to jump up on my lap to find out what all the clicking is about). Will’s post is about the feedbooks less blog focused sister, the wikibook. I’m going to try and tap out a few ideas…
single author
I worry about the loss of the ability to read a single author. Maybe this is my sacred artifact that I can’t let go but it seems to be there’s something in the single voiced bard/storyteller that needs a certain literacy that students will lost without that (Eric Hobsbawm comes to mind (Will’s comments a couple of days ago about not reading books anymore strikes an even deeper chord).
current textbooks
Of course, most textbooks are already really multivoiced, which is why they are so dead sounding. They’re written to deadline, see bunches of editor/censors and are designed, for the most part, to toe the line. Not very inspiring stuff.
wikibooks once the big guys get involved
I think that the wiki-stuff will be BETTER researched than the textbooks, especially after a year or so, once everyone has edited out the errors, gotten rid of the boringly written parts, and added the best annecdotes from hundreds of teachers around the world. Imagine it, all the coolest stories made up of the experience of all those teachers…
deep knowledge
As to deep knowledge. Wikipedia isn’t designed that way. Not too difficult to get an expert driven wikibook. Imagine if Eric Hobsbawm started an FOAF community to ‘writing’(sic) the definitive wikibook. Sound pretty cool to me.
