Kaizendo.org: Textbooks, the free software way
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| License | CC Attribution 2.0 Belgium: You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor. | |
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SoftwareOpen sourceSocial classLocal GroupFundamental theorem of algebraFormal languageIntegrated development environmentGame theoryContext awarenessWritingCompilerFormal languageSoftware developerIntegrated development environmentFreewareSimilarity (geometry)Social classQuicksortJava appletContext awarenessMereologyAnalytic continuationMultiplication signBitSoftwareOrder (biology)Sound effectMatching (graph theory)Projective planeImplementationRoboticsFeedbackType theoryAuthorizationIdeal (ethics)Modal logicWordComputer animationXMLLecture/Conference
04:09
Mixture modelOpen sourceSoftwareDistribution (mathematics)Reading (process)Software developerFeedbackProgrammschleifeOpen setDisintegrationWikiWebsiteCodeRepository (publishing)Internet forumUtility softwareVideo trackingMessage passingBounded variationLocal ringFreewareTelecommunicationRobotTraffic reportingSoftware bugRepository (publishing)Distribution (mathematics)Process (computing)AuthorizationMixture modelGoodness of fitBitVideo gameEndliche ModelltheorieRevision controlInheritance (object-oriented programming)FeedbackIntegrated development environmentLevel (video gaming)Software developerSoftwareEmailPoint (geometry)Electronic mailing listInsertion lossPairwise comparisonWikiFamilyTrailWeb 2.0FrequencyFile archiverMereologyText editorCombinational logicBounded variationINTEGRALModal logicOrder (biology)Multiplication signProjective planeFlow separationOpen setNatural numberCopyright infringementCommitment schemeCodeMobile WebWritingComputer animationLecture/Conference
10:34
Data modelOpen sourceProjective planeTelecommunicationSoftwareOrder (biology)Process (computing)CodeMultiplication signOnline helpImplementationRight angleComputer animationLecture/Conference
11:56
Bounded variationDigital filterBranch (computer science)Human migrationSoftware frameworkElectric generatorWebsiteSoftwareProcess (computing)Revision controlPhysical systemControl flowOpen setSoftwareInformationProjective planeText editorSoftware bugBounded variationTraffic reportingPatch (Unix)ImplementationRegular graphWeb pageRight angleAuthorizationFlow separationShared memoryBasis <Mathematik>Multiplication signWikiSelectivity (electronic)FreewareNatural numberGame theoryRule of inferenceType theoryPhysical systemFeedbackSoftware frameworkOnline helpWeightE-learningOpen sourceWebsiteComputer iconRevision controlComputer animation
15:58
Open sourceComputer animationXML
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:08
Thank you, that sound is okay a little bit feedback Okay, my name is Alvin Nielsen. I'm from Oslo I'm part here for many reasons and one of them is to give this talk about a little project. I'm trying to start now
00:27
I've Called it kaisendo that quickly means the way of continuous improvement is from Japanese You might have figured that one out It's about textbooks and free software and with textbooks
00:44
We mean schoolbooks if you're not familiar with that word, so what's the problem? We're trying to solve Let's start a little with a situation in in classes Wow textbooks are for
01:00
Classes not pupils which means if you have a special need of some kind The School book will help you a little but not all the way But this could mean if you're colorblind Or you have dyslexia or you come from a literate home
01:21
Which means you learn early how to read quickly Your problem will probably that you're getting through your material quicker than the rest and you're bored half of the time Or you come from a home with lots of distractions You don't find the quietness to read all that's necessary Or you want something more interesting to read. It's it's it's something different would be more fun for you
01:46
chances are you you won't get this certainly not from the textbooks and Yeah, you're a pupil and you should you have to accept this as things are today We should improve this I was thinking one day I've been thinking about this for many years now
02:05
So this is kind of let's try and actually do something about this. Let's try to make Individually customizable textbooks. This is what the project is about. But before we go into that let's take a little bit of a
02:21
Look at the the basics here so we get can get some context If we look at software and textbooks, there are lots of similarities. I've listed a few here there. They are instructions They're written using with the text language and It has a purpose of some sort
02:43
Textbooks that may might be written in Norwegian or English or and software might be written in in in C or Java or whatever The About the people is there lots of similarities there too. You have an author in one which writes things and or a developer You need people who care this should have been lined up a little bit, but oh well
03:07
And It is the kind of ideals you're striving Towards in order to to write these texts like there's a match between the purpose what you're trying to achieve and the actual Implementation you don't want software which says it it makes
03:24
Makes you robots create something and doesn't do it. It's the same with textbooks and In the act of writing things you have required the same type of Requirements from the environment around you and your tools and there's lots of of things that are required
03:42
And when you actually get down to doing the writing lots of Coming in the cities there to like you write something. Yeah, of course. This is obvious stuff You compile it into something then you distribute it so the user can find it and when the user finds it
04:01
He reads it or runs it in order to achieve some kind of effect say for example learn or be amused or something like that Yay So what? So there are some similarities, okay? This is not perhaps very interesting, but let's try and make it a little bit more interesting
04:21
Let's see if we can add free software to this mixture This is why I'm talking here about this and not that some learners convention because free software is the interesting bits here Let's assume there are something called textbook freedoms like software freedoms so let's take free software foundations for freedoms about reading using changing copying distributing and
04:47
A few more like it's nice to have the publicity of writing free software because you can get easier jobs And it's natural to share stuff But if you put this to the publishing sector
05:01
They will start saying yeah, you guys are pirates. We don't like you to copy and distribute our books So there's luckily some Issues there's that are being solved with creative commons and such so we can think this is at least being solved, but we need to talk about all the free software things like
05:25
the community with the feedback loops like Being able to talk with the developers or the authors or that there's a responsive community around the book or a software project We're This gets a little strange in the publishing world
05:44
Of course sometimes this is things you want, but it's not the natural situation as far as I know the same with the principles of free software release earlier is often or there's a strong integration between the tools that create the good communication in free software community and
06:05
the ways they communicate like IRC channels that have a bot in them that gives commit reports when somebody put something in there called repository This doesn't make sense in the when writing books this is silly and think about all the tools that we're using about bug trackers and wikis and
06:28
searchable web archives for mailing lists Commit mails from the Repository this is silly IRC channeling is the channels with a karma and effort tracking. This is something very common in the pro community where I come from
06:45
this is it doesn't make sense in the publishing world, so If we add free software to the thought process here, it doesn't make sense. It's not a meaningful comparison as It's on the basic level
07:00
Okay, what can we do with that? What how should we interpret this? development Development methods in free on open software It's for lots of people, but writing textbooks. That's a very few people do this by tradition you have the author and perhaps an editor and Perhaps if just a few more people who do a little bit of checking
07:24
So you can use it as it just doesn't make sense to do it as things are today unless we make individually customizable textbooks, then the World changes a little we our an ambition can
07:41
Make things possible Make a difficult and pointless thing into something useful and interesting and with customizable I mean not just I mean variations of each chapter. I mean not just easy or difficult text I'm I mean variations in requirements in what's needed by the pupil
08:02
Say for example teaching styles or pedagogical methods that the teacher can use in order to Convey the knowledge the best for that particular child the abilities of that Charlie is some kids are come from an environment where it's easier to get smart than others and
08:23
It's okay. This is part of life, and we should be able to Make something out of this in my opinion life situation sometimes a family goes through a difficult period Let it be a little bit less to read, but you still get the points and the important bits in the text
08:43
school requirements you have so many hours available during a year or you have a loss that you have to follow and Yes, an available time as I said Okay, how about story variations?
09:00
We're talking about books here and the books have a middle and a beginning a middle and the end And they tell a story preferably except when you're looking at at references The stories like how was World War two World War two for the Belgians the Dutch the Swedes the Chinese told from the viewpoint of the Belgians the Dutch or the Chinese or or whoever and
09:24
How about if the textbook helped you understand it then and there What's easy to learn is another thing like? integrals several ways of telling how integrals work and Some ways might map better to the mind model of the child and all this and you nice to choose
09:44
And when you choose one the rest of the textbooks follow that mind model that way of telling how things work based on on this How about Executive summaries hey Business people should love it. Can you help me with my homework?
10:01
Who has children here? Yeah, this would be nice to be able to say I'll just pick up the little bits of stuff that I don't remember now But I can refresh this is a short version just for parents. I would like to see this there's a problem and we're talking about lots of combinations of abilities of a text and
10:21
To choose what's necessary for that child. I've just tried to give you a picture here This is a lot to write. It's way too much to write It's it's so much that It's expensive and this is one of the reasons these kinds of books do not exist even if it's nice
10:46
There is no publisher in the world who would want to make a book that Perhaps costs 20 times as much to create in order just to Sell a 20th of the amount. It's it's cost. We do it of that what they would expect to sell it for
11:04
All right But we know free software and how it works and the processes of creating code and the communication all around this and this is what the project is about and that's why I'm here and to tell you and Figure out if any of you are interested in helping. This is the website
11:26
There's more how much time do I live have left ah Okay, I can go into a little more details This is just not the pitch anymore. It's some thoughts on how to implement it This of course is a kind of a blue skies
11:43
We would like to do something thing as no code involved right now it's more finding people who are interested in in this topic and see if there's If we can make this happen, this is what I'm going to do. Let's look at some thoughts on implementation Here's a wall of text
12:04
We have all kinds of things that need to be done in foreign things to make this happen represent the text in some way making an annotation system so that regular usage can Give feedback on the text. That's what the open source thing is about
12:22
You don't write the whole book and everybody writes it like the Wikibooks project But you write keep it as one text with an editor but you get feedback almost like bug reports or even patches or Complaints on the IRC channel that this sucks. This is actually useful information
12:44
There's all kinds of stuff that is useful and people who know tools and would like to make them fit into this framework and help things actually stick together and become useful and distributable and We'd like to see that one very useful tool. There is called Comte. It's French project of
13:05
from a person called Philippe Agren and his gang of people in Paris. It's behind the site called comment.net which is basically select this text and start a discussion about the text selection and what is selected and the amount of discussion around that text gets a
13:27
yellow background on the text and Orange and red and black depending on how much text how much discussion is around that phrase This is based on the free software foundations
13:40
Discussion around GPL 3 they had a tool called step which tested this and it worked really well And they made something more Thought through and working. Git is obviously there the branching and emerging is something which looks similar to
14:00
Having different variations of a chapter. So it's kind of natural natural to put something in there like this But there's no rules right now. We're in the beginning of the project if you'd like to help then bring your suggestions Having said this tools are not enough. We're talking about writing books here. So we need people who write textbooks
14:24
but there is a Good way of doing this is actually thinking We have a book and there are several books out there or that you can start with which have a free software type license like creative comments share like
14:40
version of that You will find those On wiki books on several other web pages is in Norway, which I'm very familiar with this a project called the national digital learning arena MDLA Which basically has bought a bunch of books?
15:02
teaching material for kids up to 18 years old I think All kinds of topics and release them with the share like license and creative comments Using that as a basis you can start improving one chapter at the time after Whatever is required by the way the people and the icons on the right you see over there. That's a way of
15:26
just an Illustration on how a discussion between the users and and the authors of a book might happen Another interesting little tidbit is that even the Americans are thinking about free software books
15:43
This is an actual thing going on In the Congress as out there right now So there will be enough textbooks. That's a big thing if you're interested talk with me. I'll be hanging out outside I'll be at the pro time. Thank you very much