And they’re off
well, it looks like the wikitext is off and running. my core team of professors who teach the same course i teach are all on board. we’re scheduled to meet and discuss how this might best work and how this can be an improvement over our current textbook (which i helped write, fwiw). i am going to spend some time explaining how the wiki works and how folks can contribute to our project.
one of the instructors asked me why we don’t just start with wikibooks. that’s a valid question, but i think our immediate efforts are sort of selfish. we want a textbook that meets our teaching objectives. the State of Michigan has standards that will be unique to Michigan schools. then again, our standards differ from the national ISTE (NETS-T) standards very little. so, we’ll donate our efforts to wikibooks when we’re satisfied. but, i want to be able to mess up along the way and not worry about the world community misinterpreting our progress and veering us off in a different direction. i want to try content and let it sit for 2 weeks and then replace it completely if it doesn’t fit. wikipedia doesn’t seem like a collaboration as much as it is many individuals trying to independently come together and produce quality work and i want our wiki to be more of a team project. i guess what i am saying is that i don’t want to be completely responsible to the world just yet. i do want to let MACUL members know that we’re starting this project because other university instructors in Michigan could potentially benefit from our version of the text and they might choose to help, which would be nice.
there are just so many little steps that keep creeping up that i am sure this project will not move as quickly as i had hoped. on top of that, our college of education is undergoing major discussions for restructuring in our university. this restructuring effort could have major implications for the computers in education course i teach . . . and, thus the wikitext. that being said, i am committed to making this project work.
in other news, i just upgraded to WordPress 2.0. this is quite a nice upgrade. i was nervous because the upgrade notes indicated that i shouldn’t upgrade if i had altered themes and/or installed any plugins. i have done both. i backed up prior to the upgrade, but i quickly realized that nothing was ruined upon upgrading. whew!
February 9th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
I’ve added a new feature to my blog and to my blogging experience. It’s called coComment. It’s an application that is a bookmarklet and I call it into action any time I respond to a comment on any blog I am reading. The application allows me to track the various comments I make around the Internet and see related comments, etc. and I can visit their site to see all of my comments and discussions. This way, I don’t have try and remember where I posted because the app will keep me updated. Plus, I can also see the comments back on my own blog (upper right), which is a neat extras feature.
http://www.cocomment.com/
February 9th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
grr… invitation only. I want it! i want to be invited too!
October 19th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
[…] previously wrote about wikitextbooks as back as early 2006 here (Feb.) and here (Jan.). i tried hard to get a wikitextbook off of the ground and running, but i just […]