Wiki-Textbooks

Wiki-wiki-what?

(I know, it's the same thing from Wiki-wiki-what? The Philosophy of the Remix Links to an external site., but I just love it because it makes me think of vinyl records being re-purposefully scratched.)

One of the most common criticisms of wikis (most notably Wikipedia Links to an external site.) is that they can't be trusted because anyone with an account (any user, really) can add or adjust content without editorial oversight or peer review.  By traditional standards, this is true.  Any user can make changes and create pages and, next thing you know (by fallacious slippery-slope logic), it's all B.S.  I found a screencapture of Wikipedia's page on Greek philosopher Plato Links to an external site. online a few years ago, which described the thinker as (among other things) a surfer, a student of Barney the Purple Dinosaur, and particularly fond of his dog (which the page informed me was named "Cutie").  I also heard about how, one time, somebody edited the Wikipedia page about Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates Links to an external site. so that the portrait image of him was accoutred by devilish horns and goatee.  Just a few years ago, I myself was researching Yosemite National Park Links to an external site. as a potential family vacation site and was surprised to find it described as annually visited by many people, including among them one man in particular whose name I do not recall but who was in the article described as "currently the worst person alive."  So, yes, there is such a thing as Wikipedia vandalism Links to an external site..  However, if you click on any of the links in this paragraph, you'll find that the errors have been long since corrected (provided that no new vandals are at the gates--puns not intended, but now that I see it, I'm down).  The point is that wikis are susceptible to a kind of real-time trial-and-error to which traditionally-published materials have never been subjected.  Does this make them fallible?  Yes, but are traditional publications infallible?

Well, that's a discussion to have.  Presently relevant, however, is how we might use the concept of the wiki to involve students in the creation of their own textbooks--or at least something like what we've always thought textbooks were. 

Byte:  Students can work toward mastery by contributing to wikis that will serve at once as emerging models of knowledge and texts to be improved upon.

The basic idea is simple: rather than relying on a textbook as a source of information, the wiki model makes direct engagement with the concepts not only possible but inescapable.  Students, with appropriate oversight by ostensibly-knowledgeable instructor(s), work with existing open-licensed resources and their own experiences and creative thinking to manage an ever-changing and always-vital relevant text. 

Here are some examples:

This may be an emerging model, but it's very interesting.

Breaking Away from Proprietary Texts

Imagine, for example, a world wherein students of computer software literacy aren't required to purchase an expansive and expensive text every time a new update to the software hits the market.  Instead of buying the book, maybe they are involved in writing the textbook based on their playful and methodical interaction with the software?

Similarly, imagine that instead of trying to apply the basic principles of rhetoric by consuming a (perhaps very well-written) book and then analyzing a given text by composing an essay, students are asked to discover definitions and examples and then determine some way to apply those concepts to a rhetorical situation that is significant to their professional or personal life.

In each of these cases, the wiki format makes these explorations shareable and perennially adaptable.