hey all,
I think many on the list know I manage a community called FLOSS Manuals,
and we create free documentation about free software. Recently I have
been considering the development of free (libre) educational materials -
specifically getting the current FM materials used in existing courses,
or developing new text books.
The possibilities for free textbooks are enormous and exciting. Not only
can libre texts flow from one educational institute to another, but they
can also be easily reused, recontextualised, translated, improved and
updated.
It would be very interesting, for example to consider integrating free
textbooks into coursework where students improve textbooks for the next
years intake etc.
So, its a big area, but one that we are currently prepared for since we
have now 1100+ members (800 in English, 300+ associated with other FM
languages), strong collaborative partnerships with the FSF, Wikimedia
Foundation, OLPC, Sugar, Mozilla Foundation, Sesawe (partially the
Berkman Institute) plus numerous 'smaller' Free Software organisations
such as Inkscape, Aspiration Technology and Xiph etc. So we have the
members and alliances to help create something like this however, quite
frankly, I don't know how to get a started getting educators or
educational institutes involved.
So, I am writing to the list to see if there might be anyone working in
the tertiary education sector that might consider working with us to
develop a textbook suitable for their curriculum?
It would be preferable if the topic related to material we already
have...so, in other words, a software related course would be more
easily within our grasp than other subjects...We already have, for
example, great books on Design (Digital Foundations -
http://en.flossmanuals.net/DigitalFoundations), The Command Line
(
http://en.flossmanuals.net/gnulinux), and Inkscape
(
http://en.flossmanuals.net/Inkscape) amongst others...
Once we have one book adopted, the road ahead might open up considerably
which could lead to some very interesting possibilities...
adam
--
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
German mobile : + 49 15 2230 54563
Email : adam(a)flossmanuals.net
irc:
irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals
"Free manuals for free software"
http://www.flossmanuals.net/about