One of my ever-slowly growing projects is my online textplace for Basic Writing, which I'm working on at a glacial pace. The discussion on the WPA-list has been about this idea of online textbooks and wikis and so forth, and while I won't reproduce everything here, I do want to repost my comment, if for nothing more than to keep track of my ideas. So, here, with some introductory stuff removed, is my thought:
And yet, doing away with textbooks (at least as we know them) disturbs our ideas of authoring and authority, and for that reason, I wonder when such a project would be deemed appropriate by the "higher ups." I mean, do we ever interrogate our reasons for using textbooks? I didn't and still wouldn't be if I hadn't become fascinated with computers and the net. For years I used textbooks because that's what teachers did. Then, after coordinating the BW program and looking at the different, expensive textbooks available, I started to think of finding a cheaper way to give out information.. It was then that I started to question why I needed to use a mass-produced textbook, especially since my writing classes were moving more and more in the direction of using the net for more than research. What textbooks do is pull together activities, essays, explanations and graphics so that anyone can pick them up and teach. But the computer makes it possible for me to create or find open source activities, and so on, and to do so relatively quickly. Okay, relatively steadily, perhaps. The question I'm noodling around these days is to ask what and how information should be presented in an online text: that is, should I supply a framework and links as well as chat spaces, discussion and white boards for students to find out their own answers? I have this vague thought that maybe the goal becomes helping students create their own wiki that they fill with information pertinent to their needs, rather than having those needs presumed ahead of time.
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