[WikiToLearn] Already existing texts

Wed Dec 9 22:46:00 UTC 2015

Hi,

first off, I am sorry this reply took so long. I didn't notice but I had a 
queue of e-mails in my outbox which never got sent, including this one.

On Sunday, November 29, 2015 08:20:26 PM Schremmer Alain wrote:
> I had indeed noticed that there seemed to be a lot more in Italian than in
> English but after checking the English section, I forgot to go back to the
> Italian section.
> > http://it.wikitolearn.org/Fisica_moderna
>
> I just took a look at the above but I am only a mathematician and cannot
> judge Physics contents and the very few pages I looked at in Matematica
> were empty.

Just to give you a taste of what we have, here are a few books of Mathematics 
that you can check out, at various levels of completion:
http://it.wikitolearn.org/Analisi_II
http://it.wikitolearn.org/Analisi_complessa_(Livello_Intermedio)
http://it.wikitolearn.org/Algebra_Lineare

Meanwhile, a professor from Pordenone has just started this draft book for 
high school students:

http://it.wikitolearn.org/Matematica_P

... not much content yet, but we're only three months old, and with a large 
contributor base, so I am confident it will come with a little bit of 
patience. :-)

> Fortunately, by the way, I do not need a translator: While I cannot really
> write Italian, I often read Italian authors in the text for the very
> pleasure.

That is very nice! It might enable you to follow some of the content better, 
given that for now the core of the development happens in this language... 
(we're trying our best to move as much as we can to English, though!)

> > I took the liberty to check out your website, since the domain of your
> > e-mail made me curious. I must say that I really appreciate the work
> > you've been doing! I think it's precious to offer a new approach to
> > Mathematics, which doesn't scare away students, and your manuals offer a
> > pretty complete view on that.
>
> I am not so sure about that but I am reacting to a tendency, here in the US,
> which you can well imagine given the current political climate. But, in
> fact, mathematics education in this country has been devolving for the last
> forty years or so. And, as you saw, I am addressing a population of raw
> beginners. Perhaps more to the point is that my insistence on the contents
> flowing from the real world and making logical sense, while in accord with
> what Hestenes (Of Geometric Algebra fame) said in his Oersted Lecture:
>
> 	"Course content is taken [by many] as given, so the research problem is how
> to teach it most effectively. This approach [...] has produced valuable
> insights and useful results. However, it ignores the possibility of
> improving pedagogy by reconstructing course content."
>
> is totally out of favor at the College introductory level in these days of
> Pearson totalitarianism in which "memorize" unrelated tidbits is the rule.

I totally agree with what you are saying here. I have seen, however, that one 
of the main benefits of content written with the help of students is also 
this. When students have to re-explain to somebody else something that they 
have just learned, they don't focus on memorizing the facts (or merely quoting 
them so that they can be memorized), but they come up with examples and ideas 
that they found helpful for themselves, and will be useful for other newbies 
too.

This can grow to produce clearer explanations than what an "experienced" 
author usually delivers. This only works reliably if we don’t forget, of 
course, some proofreading by those same experienced authors. :-)

> > Since I also saw that you are editing most of your work in LaTeX, I'd like
> > to pose you an interesting question... what do you think about joining
> > forces? Would you like to help us kickstart the English page by
> > contributing with your material? We have realized a LaTeX importer which
> > should make the importing almost painless. :-)
>
> If your group is willing to do the translation, I would be most flattered
> but I am old (I just turned 79 a few days ago) and have gotten slow so that
> I am unwilling to take on more stuff than I am already facing, to wit:
>
> 1. Finish the Rewrite of Reasonable Algebraic Functions
> 2. Rewrite the first two parts of Reasonable Basic Algebra.
> 3. "Animate" mathematical exposition as in
> <http://freemathtexts.org/Practical/Sandbox1.php>.

We can gladly take care of this!
Davide, maintainer of our LaTeX importer, has tried to import the .tex 
document without much success for now (but I will let him elaborate on this 
part). This is probably due to the many custom packages, but we're finding 
ways to work around that....

Something that could help us, in the meantime, is having an archive with all 
of the sources and images, uploaded somewhere or sent via private email. I 
will notify you as soon as we have a preliminary version of one of your books 
imported within WikiToLearn, so that you can can check it out and play with 
it.

Once it is uploaded, I would personally be very happy if you could have a look 
at the finished version and eventually ponder on the idea of continuing your 
refining work directly there, with of course always the possibility of 
downloading a complete PDF from the site with the lastest version of the 
pages.

We would find your feedback very useful to develop the editing tools, and all 
the students would benefit from an always up-to-date manual on reasonable 
math.

> Not all the source is on the site but that is only a result of my laziness.
> I will upload it as soon as you want me to. Of course, I would also always
> be available for help with my LaTeX which, I should warn you, is a bit ad
> hoc, that is the kind that comes from "the end justifying the means".
> > The only thing we would need is, of course, your permission,
>
> That is the exact thing you do *not* need since the license is a GNU FDL
> But, if it makes you feel more comfortable, you hereby have it. :-)

Thank you very much! :-)

> > and eventually the relicensing of the material under CC-BY-SA.
>
> As for this I don't know as I have no idea what a CC-BY-SA is. But I will
> look it up.

CC-BY-SA is Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike (i.e. the same licence of 
Wikipedia). It is identical in the spirit, just has slightly different wording 
which applies better to creative content (such as textbooks) and less to 
documentation.

see also:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

> > I hope I have been explanatory and replied to your concerns!
>
> I wast merely curious and you have been most helpful.
>
> > Please let me/us
> > know your opinion about what we're doing. :-)
>
> No matter what, I think that anything open source is worthwhile. But the
> little bit that I saw of the site seemed rather promising.
>
> So, please let me know what you would want from me.

I think that having the sources would already be a great start for us, and 
will help us populate the English site with some more interesting content!

If you also have some extra time, and contacts in the academical world, it 
would be very nice if you could use your experience to introduce WikiToLearn 
to some other professor or person who shares our ideas on free and accessible 
education.

This means everyone, from the bright student who could be enthusiastic and 
help us work out the kinks in the software, to a researcher with good material 
which could be directly contributed to the content pages. We're open to all 
kind of contributions which go towards liberating great training material. :-)

And in particular, we're just starting to tackle the English section of the 
website, which, as you might imagine, is crucial for most of the world.

Bye,
-Riccardo