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 A new wiki-project has been started at the University of Georgia, which aims to pool knowledge in free online texts. It's an effort to pool the knowledge of university professors and
students around the globe and produce 1,000 university textbooks using
wiki technology. The books will span undergraduate subjects from
biology to literature to computer science.
There are millions of university teachers around the world and tens of
millions of students, whose knowledge could be put to greater use, says
project instigator Rick Watson at the University of Georgia in Athens.
Countless essays and assignments are currently consigned to the waste
bin. "It's an untapped intellectual resource."
Anyone will be able to contribute to the new textbooks, true — but
unlike wikipedia, the online, user-made encyclopedia, only an editor
will be able to approve contributions. Otherwise the texts risk being
wrong, long and hard to follow, with students being able to fall back
on the old "but it's in the text, sir" excuse for wrong answers in
their essays.
The particular goal of this project is to create free books for those
students in developing countries who cannot afford traditional
textbooks, which can cost $100 or more. Most current textbooks cannot
be freely scanned on to the web because they are protected by
copyright. And in fast-moving fields such as computer science, a
printed textbook quickly falls out of date.
Of course, any student can already glean a wealth of information on any
topic from the web. But as every student knows, you can drown in
information without a good text as a guide.
When Watson was asked to teach a course on a type of computer language
called XML. He found no decent textbooks — and so asked his 2004 class
to create one as part of their studies. Others encouraged him to expand
the idea and now, he says, "It's my weekend and evening job".
More than 100 people in 20 countries are now involved, including
Uganda, Ethiopia, India, Columbia and Indonesia. Some teachers in
developing countries have already suggested a particular need for
textbooks in agriculture, public health and wireless technology.
There are many other efforts to try and bring computers and information
to developing countries at low cost — including some by the brains
behind wikipedia. Wikibooks is a collection of openly accessible books
that started in July 2003, and a testing phase was launched for
Wikiversity, an effort to create free learning materials and
activities, in August 2006. But Watson's project differs from these in
having an expert editor in charge of each text.
At the moment, everyone is contributing for free. Ultimately, Watson
hopes to gain corporate sponsorship for the books; one idea is to
approach the world's biggest companies for endorsement. But to succeed,
Watson says that the project needs lots of people and enthusiasm on a
grassroots level — the same fervour that has fuelled the growth of
wikipedia.
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