The Wikimedia Foundation announced today that the one millionth article has been published in Wikipedia.
“Started in January 2001, Wikipedia is currently both the world’s largest encyclopedia and its fastest-growing, with articles under active development in over 100 languages. Nearly 2,500 new articles are added to Wikipedia each day, along with ten times as many updates to existing articles.” (Source)
It’s absolutely amazing to me to see how fast this open-publishing based resource has grown.
Alec,
I am including below the text of an email I wrote a few weeks back, announcing an idea/project to some friends/family. I would love to get your thoughts on this.
John Dehlin
Director of Outreach
OSLO Research Group
Utah State University
http://oslo.usu.edu
Subject: Utah OpenTexbooks Project (Project Dyson)
Friends, Family, USU IT Faculty, Grad Students & Alumni,
It’s only in its infancy (pre-conception, you might even say), but I wanted to let you all know about a project that I’ve started to think about, under the guidance/tutelage of Dr. Wiley here at USU.
It is currently called the “Utah OpenTextbooks Project” (codenamed “Project Dyson” by Dr. Wiley)–and I am considering doing my dissertation around it. The basic gist is as follows:
The state of Utah, and other states like it, spend over $20M annually on K-12 textbooks. With that kind of money, and with shrinking educational budgets, a few questions are worth asking:
Are these textbooks worth the $$$? Also, does a brand new U.S. History or Algebra 1 textbook need to be repurchased every few years (at full cost) for whatever few changes may be made?
Do we want a handful of states (New York, California, Florida, Texas) driving the content of textbooks in all the other states (which is basically what happens today, as I’m told)?
Could better, more innovate textbooks be developed in a community/open/wiki style (see http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page and http://www.opensourcetext.org for starters), where the COMMUNITY would retain ownership of the contentâ€â€or better yet, share w/ other states/countries?
Once a textbook has been written by a community, could digital learning objects be built around the text/course and provided as supplements to the textbookâ€â€helping teachers teach better, and learners learn better (think free multimedia clips for lectures, test banks and innovate lesson plans for teachers, or cool multimedia games/self-direct modules for student homework, etc.)
Finally, if we can create “local†(statewide) online communities where teachers, students, and subject matter experts congregate to create textbooks, share lesson plans, and basically socialize in the context of an academic course…can we harness the power of the internet in more positive ways…to far more productive ends (think “replace MTV or Xbox with ‘Utah Math Rocks Internet Plaza’â€Â?
I have attached a very, very rough “Vision Document” that outlines what we have brainstormed, and some early, high-level steps on how we might go about achieving our vision. If you are not comfortable opening attachments from an email (can’t imagine why you would be :) ), feel free to download the document from: http://f4.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/oL1RQdNHDrnawcLP1c-av2v_Y1LRpZ_PL_4Paj7XwHCX0b_09Ppay-jJ0791jStsb2IgwQl1VSP0Rf6L3jpxxg/Utah%20OpenTextbooks%20Project.doc
We need lots of input/ideas/feedback, so if any of you are interested in participating in/supporting this project in any way (even as a silent observer), please feel free to reply w/ feedback, or even join our community at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/utahopentextbooks
Also, if you know anyone interested in Utah Education, or Open Textbooks, please feel free to forward this message to them.
I look forward to collaborating w/ those of you who are interested. It will be a long journey to be sure, but hopefully a worthwhile one.
John Dehlin
Director of Outreach
OSLO Research Group
http://oslo.usu.edu/people/jdehlin
Utah State University