There is more to wiki then Wikipedia

Wikipedia is by no means the only Wiki project there is. There are many wikis - some more important, some less, some closely affiliated with Wikipedia, others completly different. Here is one of Wikipedia sister projects, very closely related to my 'Wikipedia as a teaching tool' project:

Wikibooks

Wikibooks is a collection of open-content textbooks - where a textbook is a book which is actually usable in an existing class. In other words, it is a project for collaboratively writing textbooks and related non-fiction books (with supporting books and booklets; such as annotated literary and other classics) about different subjects.

Wikibooks's goal is to create a free instructional resource—indeed, the largest instructional resource in history, both in terms of breadth and depth, to become a reliable resource. It's an ambitious goal which will probably take many years to achieve - but in the wiki world, we don't think small :) Currently the project, started in July 2003, has over 12,000 books and although it is not close to Wikipedia 800,000-something articles, this number is growing exponentialy just as Wikipedia was - so imagine that in 4 years it will have 800,000 free online textbooks...feel the ramifications?

"The big one is to get students involved in producing materials (and) also vetting materials (and) also adding elaboration to materials." Steven Brewer writes. He envisions teachers--at any level--asking students to examine existing Wikibooks entries for accuracy and relevancy and then appending their findings to those entries. That would allow the project to become a teaching tool and a work in progress all at once. "Increasingly, we're going to see classes where students do that kind of work," Brewer said, "and I think that at that point we're going to see Wikibooks really take off."

Reading is simple. Go to the Main Page, find a Wikibook that looks interesting, and start exploring. There's also a search box at the top of every page.

f you read something, and you like it, why not drop a note on the module's talk page? First select the discussion tab, to get to the talk page, and then select the edit tab on the talk page. We always love to get a bit of positive feedback.

If there's something we don't cover, or you're having difficulty finding what you're after, just ask the school librarian, or add the topic to our list of requested Wikibooks.

And of coure you can edit any textbook or start a new one, just as with articles on Wikipedia.

Wiki revolution is coming.