[Fhsst-authors] Re: High School Bio stuff

[Mark]

Hi everyone

Recently books on biology and botany were added/or
bulked up significantly on WikiBooks. In preparation
for the finishing of Physics we should think about
what to do next. My feeling is that Biology is very
important - naively I would say that this leads people
to the life science and medicine.

Anyway I asked a friend, Joanne Boulle, who has
an honours degree in the certain life sciences (I forget
which) but has now started teaching, to take a look
and decide if the wikibooks content would be useful and
help speed up the writing of a biology book.

In short she thinks that there is a lot of content there
but it will need editing and additional content.

Here are the relevant sections of her reply:


********

Hi Mark!

I have had a look at the websites. I can only comment
with some authority (??) on the topics I have covered
so far in my teaching because with some of the topics
that I haven't covered, I probably won't be able to
say whether it's aimed at high school or university.
Will need to get to those sections and then see how
much detail they go into. But here are some comments.
Let me know if these are at all useful, and would be
more than happy to take a closer look at specific
things if you would like me to. Just let me know...

- I found that the same topic (e.g. the cell) was
covered in more depth under the "general biology" link
rather than the "cell biology" link. I'm not sure
whether it was written by the same person (probably
not because the style of writing seemed to be
different)

- there are some definite gaps in some parts. The
"cell biology" site seemed to be incomplete. Maybe in
time the writer will add more detail.

- There is a lack of DIAGRAMS, which I think is an
important part of any textbook. For example, under
"mitosis", there is a written description, but it is
very difficult to understand unless you have a picture
in front of you. Again it looks like the authors might
still be working on it...they acknowledged that it was
a complex topic and would be dealt with properly at
some later stage. But just be aware that as it stands
at the moment there is inconsistency in the depth to
which topics are dealt with within one "chapter".

- The level at which some of the stuff is aimed seems
to be first year university level (but maybe we in SA
just don't do as much at school!), although most of it
would be useful to matric students. But definitely
some topics I'm pretty sure are only dealt with at
university level (e.g. the complex chemistry of
reactions and cell processes and structures). But I
would need to look more carefully at the matric
syllabus here to tell you more.

Now that all the negatives are out the way, I think
there is definitely potential for you to use a lot of
the stuff. And where they have included diagrams, they
are very good. Also they include some interesting
extra info e.g. about the specific functions of
different elements within the cell which I don't think
I've seen set out as nicely as that. I think if you
are going to use it, you will need someone to take a
closer look, chapter by chapter and use some, add some
more and take away what is too detailed. I would be
happy to help with sections that I have covered, but
at the moment I can't commit to taking on topics that
would require too much additional reading. At the
moment I am only just keeping my head above water!!
Let me know if there's anything else I can help with.

--- Mark <address@hidden> wrote:

> Thanks sooo much!!
>
> (Hope it doesn't ruin your week!)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mark
>
> Joanne Boulle wrote:
>
> >No problem! Will take a look at them this week and
> get
> >back to you ASAP.
> >
> >Hope all is well over there!!
> >
> >Take care.
> >
> >Jo
> >
> >--- Mark Horner <address@hidden> wrote:
> >
> >  
> >
> >>Hi Jo
> >>
> >>How are you? Hope all is well.
> >>
> >>As you guessed this might not be a truly social
> >>email - sorry about 
> >>that. Its also a bit long but I'll keep it as
> short
> >>as possible.
> >>I have adopted a no-holds-barred policy regarding
> >>the books these days. 
> >>I really just want to get them done.
> >>I won't bore you with any details about the other
> >>books - if you have 
> >>some time http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst has all
> >>the info.
> >>
> >>I need some advice from you about a biology book
> (I
> >>am considering 
> >>starting it as we've broken the back of
> >>physics and a few people have expressed an
> interest
> >>in helping with it).
> >>
> >>A little background is necessary first - we use a
> >>free licence which 
> >>means anyone can print our books, copy them
> >>etc. - even sell them - but they must always be
> >>available for free in 
> >>digital format. Any derivative works must be under
> >>the same licence too - so if someone made new pics
> >>and started to sell 
> >>our books we could demand the source and print
> them
> >>ourselves cheaply - or steal their pics! Thats the
> >>basic idea. 
> >>Relatively recently a large
> website/web-organisation
> >>was created
> >>which uses the same licence. It is called
> WikiMedia.
> >>
> >>More background - a Wiki is a website that anyone
> >>can edit - yep 
> >>potential for chaos but it seems to be working.
> >>WikiMedia run Wikipedia 
> >>- an encyclopaedia
> >>created by people who visit the site - its huge
> and
> >>has tons of content. 
> >>There is also WikiBooks - for people to
> collaborate
> >>on writing
> >>books. Most of these books suck - no flow,
> cohesion
> >>etc.
> >>
> >>Back to Biology - recently two books appeared on
> >>WikiBooks which were 
> >>almost completley written by single authors. In
> >>addition they
> >>are teaching books with lab examples etc. Now we
> can
> >>use anything from 
> >>WikiBooks in our books without problems because we
> >>use the
> >>same free licence. We can literally cut and paste
> >>entire chapters. So 
> >>the idea is to kick-start a bio book by using as
> >>much content from the
> >>other books as possible - they are on Cell Biology
> >>and Botany.
> >>
> >>http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cell_Biology
> >>
> >>http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Botany
> >>
> >>There are also less complete books titled General
> >>Biology and Biology.
> >>
> >>http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Biology
> >>
> >>http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/General_Biology
> >>
> >>But I have NO clue whats in the syllabus or even
> >>whats pitched at a 
> >>reasonable level :(
> >>
> >>So this is where I need your help, if you have
> time
> >>and an internet 
> >>connection, could you look at the books above
> >>and tell me if you think any of the content could
> be
> >>useful? I know its 
> >>a big ask and any advice is really appreciated!
> >>
> >>What I would hope to do is get an outline and then
> >>have my Biology 
> >>enabled volunteers start by stealing all they can
> >>from the books above 
> >>and any others in the Science section
> >>of WikiBooks:
> >>
> >>http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Science_bookshelf
> >>
> >>Other than that I hope the school year is off to a
> >>good start.
> >>
> >>Take care,
> >>
> >>Mark
> >>
> >>-- 
> >>--
> >>Mark Horner                                       
>  
> >>                                                  
>  
> >>          
> >>Jabber/AIM/Yahoo:   marknewlyn                    
>  
> >>                                        
> >>
> >>Co-author:
> >>http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst
> >>http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/fhsst
> >>
> >>"Life is but a seg-fault away ...
> >>
> >>Life received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
> >>0x42074d40 in calloc () from
> /lib/i686/liblife.so.6"
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >            
> >__________________________________ 
> >Do you Yahoo!? 
> >Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn
> more.
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> >
> >  
> >
>
>
> --
> --
> Mark Horner                                         
>                                                     
>           
> Jabber/AIM/Yahoo:   marknewlyn                      
>                                         
>
> Co-author:
> http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst
> http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/fhsst
>
> "Life is but a seg-fault away ...
>
> Life received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
> 0x42074d40 in calloc () from /lib/i686/liblife.so.6"



                
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