We’re hacking the CS textbook.. you in?! March 8th 2012!
The open content movement has reached a critical mass. Folks now consider the range of options for licensing their work automatically, as a matter of course. The sharing of educational materials to improve instruction has taken hold. All great strides to shape a more curious culture.
OK, that’s the good part.
Now, if you’ve used open resources before, you know they can be tricky. It’s challenging to keep all the licenses straight. Different resources can vary in quality. It’s hard to get all the topical coverage you want from open materials. And their format can be thorny to work with–some pieces are PDF, some Word, some encoded by a mystery course management system from 1995. Limiting factors, all of them.
We at Flat World Knowledge are trying something new to solve those headaches. We want to take risks to develop high quality, accessible textbooks in higher education.
We’re having a Content Sprint for Open Education Week.
I’m sure you’re familiar with a Hack-a-Thon or a Development Sprint. A Content Sprint is similar in spirit. We’re calling it a Meetup so we all can meet each other and lay out a plan for effective curation and quality content development.
Has this been done before? The FLOSS Manuals folks have developed short volumes of accessible documentation to make things easier to learn.
They’ve demonstrated that a dedicated group of folks can shorten the publishing cycle. We can deliver information faster to folks who need it. And as you know, now more than ever folks need to learn how to program. Heavens to Betsy, I’m one of them.
Here’s a bit about what we had in mind
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy8pQbZ3USw]
The event will happen March 8th, at 6:30 at WorkBar. We’ll supply the burritos and Red Bull. Click here to sign up!
Vanessa Gennarelli is an Editor at Flat World Knowledge, a WorkBar member, and a community member at Peer 2 Peer University. You can find out more about her at vanessagennarelli.com or sent her a tweet at @mozzadrella
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