[TW EDU] article on Digital Textbooks

[Greg Davis]

Ran across a link to some resources offered by Infogrid Pacific (IGP), a digital media publisher, on the concept of digital textbooks. Primarily on using Epub3 but still relevant to TiddlyWiki. Thought it might be of interest to those looking to use, or are using, TiddlyWiki for education. Here are links to the article and a couple on content production.

What is a Digital Textbook in 2015: BLOG@IGP
http://www.infogridpacific.com/blog/igp-blog-20150529-what-is-a-digital-textbook-2015.html#comment-2081102978

Image Optimization for Textbooks: BLOG@IGP
http://www.infogridpacific.com/blog/igp-blog-20140109-image-optimization-for-textbooks.html

Audio Compression for Textbooks
http://apex.infogridpacific.com/dcp/audio-textbooks.html

Their blog - Contents: BLOG@IGP
http://www.infogridpacific.com/blog/index.html

Greg

[Felix Küppers]

Very nice, thanks for sharing this Greg.

[Felix Küppers]

Because I am doing a literature review on OER-funding and OER-technology at the moment, I realized how much potential lies in tiddlywiki as a digital, free open source version of a classical text book. Especially because it has the ability to be used online and offline at the same time and can contain various forms of multimedia.

I know Richard Smith and Ed Dixon are involved in education and already explore ways to use tiddlywiki in this realm but maybe there is a possibilty to receive or apply for some sort of funding for TiddlyWiki in terms of its suitability as interactive textbook for e.g. developing countries with no access to internet.

-Felix

[Alex Hough]

I have a project brewing for off-line use: gardening.... toying with a TiddlyWikiGarden project for an entry into Britain in Bloom

Are there any gardeners reading?

best wishes

Alex

[1] https://www.rhs.org.uk/communities/campaigns/britain-in-bloo

On 21 June 2015 at 18:00, Felix Küppers <felixk...@hotmail.de> wrote:

Because I am doing a literature review on OER-funding and OER-technology at the moment, I realized how much potential lies in tiddlywiki as a free open source version of a digital text book. Especially because it has the ability to be used online and offline at the same time and can contain various forms of multimedia.

I know Richard Smith and Ed Dixon are involved in education and already explore ways to use tiddlywiki in this realm but maybe there is a possibilty to receive or apply for some sort of funding for TiddlyWiki in terms of its suitability as interactive textbook for e.g. developing countries with no access to internet.

-Felix

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[HansWobbe]

I have access to a bit of government funding, but it is restricted to work done in Canada.

One of the sources of larger and less restricted sources of funding that I am aware of is the Ford Foundation. I have never applied before, but it seems to me that it is at least worth exploring what might be achieve by applying TW to the challenges of Education.  At the very least, it might be possible to build a TW that show-cases what might be achieved as part of an application.

Done properly, it might even be possible to fork some of the fundamental work into a crowd-source funded development.

There are additional challenges would have to be considered such as how to "manage" a distributed project with sufficient rigor to satisfy any granting agency, but concerns like that can be deffer until after there is at least an established effort to construct an application.

Cheers,
Hans

[Jed Carty]

Alex,

I grew up on a truck farm here in the US, so I have a bit of experience in that area. When I move to Paris I am going to try growing things there. I will be in the middle of Paris and probably limited to my apartment so it will be small scale urban horticulture but I would be very happy to work with you on a TiddlyWikiGarden project.

[Mark S.]

My garden tends to resemble a small cemetery for plants, alas.

With the old TWC, I had things set up so some tiddlers represented seed packets including information in data field sections about number of days to germinate and to yield. Other tiddlers represented planting activities. I could cross-link them like a relational database to get a report that would show me every thing planted and expected germination date. This helped me decide when I should do replantings. Once a plant had germinated, I could plug that information in and get an expected yield date. With my brown thumb (or chromium-laced soil), my yields tended to be off by a week to a year.

A different report would just show the seed packets, which then helps when you're ordering seeds for the coming year.

I think this cross-linked thing would be much harder with TW5, since there isn't the equivalent of the javascript plugin yet. Adding dates would require someone to roll a widget that could add days to a date.

If it was possible, I could imagine one way to beautify the project would be to use thumbnail images from the seed packets in the generated report.
 
Mark

[Alex Hough]

@Jed, Thanks for the offer-- I'd like to take you up on it. I've added it to the project's wiki [1]. It will blow the minds of the locals that the first volunteer is from New Mexico and moving to Paris! The following is pasted from the wiki

The wiki is brand new, I've cloned the latest hangout TW – love that background. I wanted to start today, on the longest day of the year.

The basic idea is that "wiki gardening", expressed in Ward Cunningham's Gardening Metaphor can be combined with a community gardening project, inspired by the TiddlyWiki community and documented on aTiddlyWiki.

The larger context here is that the project is one of many planned by Alsager Placemaking Initiative... it is hoped that the project will help Alsager become a better place to live.

It goes without saying that TiddlyWikiGarden is a "garden for the next 25 years" and it's an Open Sourceproject. It also happens to have a pond, there mayeb is one lone tiddler remaining (a goldfish).... there have been sightings of Newts and a Heron.

@Felix: a friend is involved a startup concerning open learning here in Manchester: I can introduce you if you like. One of the partners (there are three of them) is a physics teacher in a secondary school: I can put you in contact, they are in very early stages...

Alex

[1] http://tiddlywikigarden.tiddlyspot.com/

Ward Cunningham's Gardening Metaphor  - http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GardeningMetaphor

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/2f085f51-d3fa-49a3-a5d2-89dc6e6dfa56%40googlegroups.com.

[Greg Davis]

Hi Felix,

Sorry, don't have any ideas on funding like that, my development was internal corporate work. However, on presenting in low tech environments, just ran across this old thread on setting up small hotspots. Thought it might be an area you would want to include if you were not aware of it already.

Sharing Tiddly wiki without internet? - Google Groups
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/TiddlyWiki/spot|sort:relevance/tiddlywiki/Z9tArRrAbrI/vz4Lns5Jmh4J

openwrt:diy [ PIRATEBOX ] http://piratebox.cc/openwrt:diy#piratebox_10_openwrt_diy

LibraryBox http://librarybox.us/

Greg

[RichardWilliamSmith]

Hi Felix,

Did you come across my project page at www.didaxy.net? Your idea sounds very similar to what I have been thinking about for some time - I've done quite a lot of research and have some ideas about how to make a start, which I'd love to share if you're interested. I am a very keen proponent for widespread OER use and I think tiddlywiki is important because it provides a way to structure/compose OERs that already exist, as well as authoring new ones.

The work that Ed Dixon and I were doing around the xAPI has morphed into participation in the dev4x 'moonshot education' project - http://www.dev4x.com/#moonshot-education-project and the 'hot spot school' project - http://hotspotschool.org/ - both of which are open-source and aimed at helping young children.

Regards,

Richard

[RichardWilliamSmith]

As far as funding goes, I agree - the plan that Jeremy and I kicked around a few months ago was to put together an application for the Shuttleworth foundation, who back open source efforts in many different fields. I was a bit disheartened recently, when I checked back at their site to find that they are offering specific advice against pitching them OER projects;

We’ve invested in OERs, education platforms and re-imagining peer learning before. Although this remains important in the world, it no longer automatically meets our criteria. We will need considerable evidence of innovation.:"

Not that I'm suggesting we don't have a truly innovative proposition, but it's evidence that the 'education space' is rapidly filling up with many uninspired offerings from startups all over the world.

I haven't looked at the Ford foundation - I'll do that soon - and there's also the Knight foundation. 

I am really keen to be involved in a project like this and it would be great to see if we could all work together in some way.

[Felix Küppers]

Hi Richard

Did you come across my project page at www.didaxy.net? Your idea sounds very similar to what I have been thinking about for some time - I've done quite a lot of research and have some ideas about how to make a start, which I'd love to share if you're interested.

didaxy appears really well made (in terms of the vision that is communicated and the layout). The statements you make there are very reasonable and I share the same point of view that edit wars and the common fear of not being able to keep the material in its original form due to other participants changing it does not exist with the tiddlywiki way of cherry picking content by drag n drop and then republishing it again.
 

I am a very keen proponent for widespread OER use and I think tiddlywiki is important because it provides a way to structure/compose OERs that already exist, as well as authoring new ones.

Very true
 

The work that Ed Dixon and I were doing around the xAPI has morphed into participation in the dev4x 'moonshot education' project - http://www.dev4x.com/#moonshot-education-project and the 'hot spot school' project - http://hotspotschool.org/ - both of which are open-source and aimed at helping young children.

Thanks for sharing this. I think you guys go a bit further than what my original comment aimed at (see my post here: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/tiddlywiki/2D7GzBP7Fjw/0E6Jq1ZbNAQJ)

-Felix

[Felix Küppers]

Not that I'm suggesting we don't have a truly innovative proposition, but it's evidence that the 'education space' is rapidly filling up with many uninspired offerings from startups all over the world.

Well, I think TiddlyWiki is highly relevant and innovative but of course if professional companies manage to sell their (maybe inferior) products better, it is hard to go against that.
 

I am really keen to be involved in a project like this and it would be great to see if we could all work together in some way.

I'll report back to this thread if I stumble upon an interesting idea related to OER in the course of my work...

-Felix

[Felix Küppers]

Hi Greg,

Thanks for pointing out the related resources to me :)

-Felix

[Felix Küppers]

Hi Alex

@Felix: a friend is involved a startup concerning open learning here in Manchester: I can introduce you if you like. One of the partners (there are three of them) is a physics teacher in a secondary school: I can put you in contact, they are in very early stages...

Thank you for this proposal. I am caught up in so much work at the moment that it is impossible to me to take part in any new project :(
But I appreciate the offer! Maybe they consider TiddlyWiki as a plattform they can use for their work, I think it makes much sense in field of open learning!

-Felix

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/CALc1hYfqm8Cdb%3D%2BuQEjm5E1OGdGujBMnH-nc8%2BGe93kaE9nfQA%40mail.gmail.com.

[RichardWilliamSmith]

Hi Alex,

@Felix: a friend is involved a startup concerning open learning here in Manchester: I can introduce you if you like. One of the partners (there are three of them) is a physics teacher in a secondary school: I can put you in contact, they are in very early stages...

Could you put me in touch with them? I'm also a (lapsed) physics teacher with an interest in open learning and I'd be very happy to help them out if I can? You could point them at www.didaxy.net and ask if it seems to line up? My email is richardwi...@gmail.com

Cheers,

Richard

[Alex Hough]

Forwarded!

Alex

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[Felix Küppers]

@Richard

Forgot to say that your textbook examples are really well made, I'll
definitely have a closer look at them.

[Greg Davis]

What others are doing in education

EduKart Lands $1M To Increase Access To Education And Learning In India | TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/22/edukart-1-million-india/

"The startup was established in 2011 to help make education more accessible in India. Rather than bring learning online, such as MOOCs like Coursera, Udemy and others, Edukart is an enrollment service that aggregates and compiles lists of courses from physical education institutes across the country. Right now, it claims to have over 2,000 course from 90-plus education centers on its platform — they vary from K12, to coaching courses, graduate, and undergraduate studies across multiple disciplines."

[Felix Küppers]

Hi Hans,

At the very least, it might be possible to build a TW that show-cases what might be achieved as part of an application.

Good idea. What Richard pointed to (www.didaxy.net) is already a great example imo but of course there is always room for improvements especially since tiddlywiki is actively developed.
 

Done properly, it might even be possible to fork some of the fundamental work into a crowd-source funded development.

That's definitely an idea worth exploring
 

There are additional challenges would have to be considered such as how to "manage" a distributed project with sufficient rigor to satisfy any granting agency, but concerns like that can be deffer until after there is at least an established effort to construct an application.

Yes, this is another issue. Of course there always needs to be a "core team" somehow that is immediately involved with a project...

I have access to a bit of government funding, but it is restricted to work done in Canada.

Guess we have to move to Canada then :)

-Felix

[HansWobbe]

Felix:

Thanks for the response. 

I will have a bit of time next week to try fleshing out some of these topics further.

Regards
Hans