[TOS] textbook outline

[Ralph Morelli]

I don't know if this is the right thread to reply on but:

+1 for FOSS textbook. I would also like to contribute.
+1 for easy mix-and-match
+1 for collaborative authoring.  Should students have any role??
+1 for case studies.  I've used Sahana as an accessible case study.

I won't have any time to devote to this over the summer. But I will be
teaching a FOSS course here at Trinity College in the fall, which will
present an opportunity to develop course materials for possible inclusion in
the text.

I second Tridge's idea to have a look at CNX as a possible platform. I've
also seen the impressive TED video on it:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/lang/eng/richard_baraniuk_on_open_source_learning.html

Best,
-- ralph

On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Clif Kussmaul <clif at kussmaul.org> wrote:

> +1 for FOSS textbook. I would like to contribute.
>
> +1 for making it easy to mix and match pieces,
> since teachers use multiple approaches.
> For example, my school has one software engineering course,
> for sophomores, in which I try to cover general SE, FOSS,
> and entrepreneurship - it's also a writing intensive course :-)
> That's very different from a course with a SE prereq,
> or a course with no prereqs at all.
>
> +1 for Tridge's comments on topic sequencing.
> I struggled with similar issues in my course, until I
> finally did a critical path analysis in OpenWorkbench :-)
> Helping teachers navigate these dependencies
> may be almost as useful as the actual content,
> particularly given the variety of ways people will use it.
> The book should have a diagram showing dependencies
> between topics in the book, and topics NOT in the book.
> It could also suggest different paths through the content.
>
> +1 for collaborative authoring (using CNX or a wiki),
> and for an easy feedback mechanism.
> In a wiki it would be easy to tag assumed prerequisites for each topic,
> which could be helpful in (dynamically?) creating dependency diagrams.
> and in encouraging high cohesion and low coupling (for mix and match).
>
> It's good to have some real examples,
> but there are dramatic differences across projects.
> Could/should we choose 3-5 projects to use
> as extended case studies for continuity?
>
> Clif
>
> Clif Kussmaul  clif at kussmaul.org  484-431-0722
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 14:18:15 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Greg Dekoenigsberg <gdk at redhat.com>
> Subject: [TOS] Textbook outline
> To: tos at teachingopensource.org
> Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.00.0905121414180.4119 at localhost.localdomain>
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>
>
> So first, everyone agrees on a structure.
>
> As I said before, I like the structure of Tridge's course, and I think
> that it would translate quite nicely to a textbook structure.  So I stole
> it.  I also stole some of the work that Chris Tyler and Dave Humphrey have
> been preparing for POSSE.
>
> Here's the first cut of the first version of an outline of
> an outline of a textbook:
>
> http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/User:Gregdek/Textbook
>
> Let's hear it, profs.  Right idea?  Wrong idea?
>
> Please advice, because at some point, I'm just gonna start writing and
> soliciting writers, and if we're wasting our time, that would be great to
> know up front.  :)
>
> --g
>
> --
> Computer Science professors should be teaching open source.
> Help make it happen.   Visit http://teachingopensource.org.
>
>
>
>
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