Turning textbooks into wikis

From an article in The New York Times recently, "Macmillan, one of the five largest publishers of trade books and textbooks, is introducing software called DynamicBooks, which will allow college instructors to edit digital editions of textbooks and customize them for their individual classes."

Although the article describes it as "a kind of Wikipedia of textbooks", it seems like it's more like turning each textbook into a wiki itself, with the publisher and/or author as moderator, allowing good suggestions to improve the work much faster than through the current print publication process, while easily avoiding unwanted alterations.

One comment about this article is that the author explains that textbook prices are so high usually because "students usually resell them in the used market for several years before a new edition is released." That is probably true but part of the reason why students don't see the price as being worth paying for is that too often textbooks are not read by the student. Textbooks are purchased on the off chance that they are needed in class, not because the student honestly believes that the content is valuable. Why spend more money on something you don't want inherently in the first place? Hopefully, making the textbooks and their changes more "dynamic", content will improve, or rather student-perceived content will improve and buyers will see them as investments instead of necessary but "rentable" evils.

But do you think this will really improve textbooks? And how many instructors/professors will take or even have the time to make the needed and/or suggested improvements. Some will, yes. But will there be enough?

[ From "Textbooks That Professors Can Rewrite Digitally" by Motoko Rich from The New York Times Media & Advertising section. Discovered via "The new new textbook?" from Against-the-Grain.com ]

Employment equity and time

Despite longstanding employment equity policies and practices, women and First Nations continue to be under­-represented in Canadian higher education...

I fear that when we read something like this we tend to see discrimination and unfairness inherent in the process or the people involved. That may be true but it is not necessarily true.

I am a male librarian. The vast majority of librarians are female. That is not because men are systematically discriminated against in any way (in fact, a larger ratio of men to women are in library administrator positions than in general librarian positions it seems) but for other reasons related more to gender stereotyped perceptions of the profession, lack of education about what we do, and past societal inertia (IMHO).

There must be the same type of pressures on other professions and industries, though certainly not to such an obvious degree. Perhaps university teaching faculty positions simply attract more men, or that not enough time has elapsed to undo the imbalances in the demographic "raw materials" that are needed to result in more representative ratios.

More equitable employment, recruitment and promotion policies have been around for some time but since we've never lived through a process quite like this before, how do we know whether it's taking too long or not. We didn't expect things to change the day after the suffragettes marched down main street, right? Change trickles slowly through a system as complicated as human society. We like change and yet we resist it at the same time.

Then again, perhaps patience is not appropriate. It's often something like impatience that make people stand up and "not take it anymore". Perhaps continued impatience (and the resulting action) is the only thing that keeps change flowing through the system.

What do you think?

[ Quote from "Not Enough Parity on the Academic Career Ladder" from the CAUT Bulletin ]

What are politicians REALLY like?

Some people think that Sarah Palin is playing the simpleton role on purpose. Or at least Alec Baldwin does:

She reads her palm in order to send a message to her anti-Eastern establishment, Obama-hating, OK-You've-Had-Your-Black-President-Experiment, Tea Party types. That message is, "I'm just one person, doing the best I can with what God gave me. Like all y'all out there."

Now, I'm sure that much of what she does is 'calculated' in a way.  Politicians on that end of the spectrum are going with their strength:  appealing to the 'simple folk' in the US, those that don't want a lot of change, and that don't look kindly to those 'academic' types.

But I can't believe that she (and others like her) are that good at acting.  It's too seemless.  I think she's honestly "doing the best [she] can" with what she has and what she knows.  I think that she honestly believes that this is the best thing she can do.  Sure, she probably has doubts now and then but overall, she believes she's right.  Like all of us.  What we think is right is usually based a lot on what we have known growing up.  If you grow up in a conservative world, you'll be conservative.  If you grow up in a liberal world, you'll be liberal.  (By world, I mean whatever environment molded you significantly, so it's somewhat tautological.)  Sometimes people can be broken out of their expected worldview by a major event in their lives but for the most part, you are who your family and/or friends are.

I disagree with much of what she says because it seems to boil down mostly to "guns and force are good" and if you're not American and Christian you've got some work to do.  If I thought that she did not necessarily believe these things wholeheartedly and was instead putting on a political act, I'd see as pretty smart but also somewhat evil instead of merely misguided and dogmatic.  The latter is quite common and perfectly human.  The former scares the hell out of me.