lauantai 29. syyskuuta 2012

A group of Finnish math teachers write an open textbook in a weekend hackathon

A group of Finnish mathematics researchers, teachers and students write an upper secondary mathematics textbook in a booksprint. The event started on Friday 28th September at 9:00 (GMT+3) and the book will be (hopefully) ready on Sunday evening. The book is written in Finnish.

The result — LaTeX source code and the pdf — is published with open CC-BY-license.

As far as we know, this is the first time a course textbook is written in three-day hackathon. The hackathon approach has been used earlier mainly for coding open source software and writing manuals for open source software.

If you want to follow the progress, visit the repository at Github or our Facebook page (the conversation is mainly in Finnish, but you are welcome to comment and we will gladly answer in English).

37 kommenttia:

  1. Great initiative, Vesa - glad to have a colleague like you!

    VastaaPoista
  2. Ihan loistavaa, an excellent job!

    VastaaPoista
  3. Where can I see the...Finnished product?

    VastaaPoista
  4. KUDOS to you Vesa .... what a GREAT example you are setting !

    VastaaPoista
  5. Why is it written in Finnish. Sure - the authors are Finnish, but I can only read English. Not much use to me now is it. You need to think more about your fellow man before doing something so selfish.

    VastaaPoista
    Vastaukset
    1. Because the book is directed to Finnish students and schools which we know best. I am absolutely sure we'd be glad to work in English as well, but this was first priority. :)

      Poista
    2. Just gran one extra guy to do an english translation of the finished book when you do MAA2 ;)

      Poista
  6. I wanna take a look. I like the suomi language but I dont understand to much; its better to me english or spanish. Do you need some help to translate the material?

    VastaaPoista
  7. Great work, teaching materials have to be free!
    An English version would be a great source for way more translations. :-)

    VastaaPoista
  8. We follow the same approach in South Africa for our school textbooks. If you wanted the English LaTeX source for any of our books you can download it from the table of contents page for the books on www.everythingscience.co.za and www.everythingmaths.co.za - also CC-BY.

    Our teachers aren't comfortable with LaTeX so we author on Google Docs and use the oerpub.org site to turn then Docs into XML and from there we convert to LaTeX to do our layout.

    Cheers
    Mark

    VastaaPoista
    Vastaukset
    1. Sounds great! Do you have written any articles about the process and best practices in it? I'm preparing one.

      Poista
  9. This is an absolutely brilliant idea, I wish you good speed!

    VastaaPoista
  10. Well done - congratulations of this project.

    VastaaPoista
  11. Well done - congratulations of this project. [2]

    VastaaPoista
  12. Excellent work - and another request for an English translation, which could reach millions worldwide, with English being the lingua franca; also a Spanish translation?

    VastaaPoista
  13. This is inspiring stuff! So much so, that I'm looking to do something similar to create a new English & Literacy book/resource package for the Scottish Curriculum (http://pedagoobook.wikispaces.com/).

    I'd love a chance to ask you some questions once you have finished and had time to reflect on the experience.

    Anyway, good luck, and stop reading this and get busy finishing your book!

    VastaaPoista
  14. Tätä kirjaa lukee mieluummin kuin romaaneja, toivottavasti kirjoitatte lisää oppikirjoja suomeksi.

    VastaaPoista
  15. Pity it wasn't written in HTML and converted to PDF later.

    VastaaPoista
  16. I offer myself for a Spanish translation.

    VastaaPoista
    Vastaukset
    1. Great! Are you willing to translate from English to Spanish or from Finnish to Spanish?

      Poista
  17. Wish my finnish was better so that i could help supporting translation of this great project. Only understand about 50% of what i read. But love the project and have been promoting this idea to a bunch of teatcherstudents that i know for quite some time.

    VastaaPoista
    Vastaukset
    1. Thank you! I think we will proceed so that we:
      * improve the Finnish version a couple of weeks
      * then translate it in English
      * then native (or at least better than us :-) English speakers can improve the translation

      Poista
  18. Erm.
    I would like to build the book to have a look at it.
    Which TeX file should I compile?

    VastaaPoista
  19. Hyvää ja ansiokasta työtä!

    Tätä työtä pitäisi jatkaa hartiavoimin peruskoulun ala-asteen ympäristöopin oppimateriaaliin. Kaikki kunnia kaupallisten oppikirjojen tekijöille, mutta sisältö ja laatu on ala-arvoista koululaisen vanhemman ja veronmaksajan näkökulmasta. Ympäristöopin pääpaino näyttää olevan poliittisessa maantiedossa.

    Yläasteen fysiikan kirjoistakin on poistettu laskut, koska koululaiset eivät osaa matematiikkaa?

    Suomenkielellä on vaikea löytää kiinnostavaa ja kokonaisuuksia rakentavaa fysiikan alkeita. Monia referenssikirjoja on englanniksi, mutta sielläkin alkeet tahtovat olla sirpaleisia määritelmiä asioista.

    Nyt kun OPSit vielä kirjoitetaan uusiksi niin uhkana todella on, että fysiikan ja kemian opintojen aloittaminen siirtyy yläasteelle tulevaisuudessa. Ja suomalaisten kun piti olla ympäristötietoisia kansalaisia myös tulevaisuudessa nykyisen hallitusohjelman mukaan...

    VastaaPoista
  20. Hello Vesa,

    Awesome post and I am waiting for its English translation.give me update like this in future.

    Thanks for sharing.
    ---------------------

    VastaaPoista
  21. I'm totally disappointed man!! There should be an English version of this book as I cannot read Finnish language. I’ll have to wait for the English version now. :(

    VastaaPoista
  22. I just tried to access the GitHub repository but only get a 404.

    VastaaPoista
    Vastaukset
    1. Oh, check our new repo at:
      https://github.com/avoimet-oppimateriaalit-ry/vapaa-matikka

      Poista