This PREP workshop was made possible by the NSF grant DUE: 0341481

From Prep08Wiki

Contents 1 Wikibooks 2 Why create a Math and Art wikibook 3 The Plan 4 Concerns

Wikibooks

Wikibooks is a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit. It is part of the astoundingly successful Wikipedia organization. For more details, see [1].

Wikibooks have high visibility. Because they are freely available, they can play a valuable role in education. Because they are electronic, there are no limitations on length or media.

Wikibooks are likely to last well into the future. The hosting hardware and MediaWiki software are maintained by professionals who will update books as technology changes. The association with Wikipedia makes this platform unlikely to lose relevance.

Anyone can edit Wikibooks, even anonymously. As Wikipedia has proved, this has tremendous advantages but also some drawbacks. In particular, teaching a course out of such a book raises concerns.

The content of Wikibooks is free. It can be reused elsewhere. In addition, all images in Wikibooks must be free of copyright.

Why create a Math and Art wikibook

1. There is a tremendous amount of information about art and mathematics on the web. However, the situation is dismal - many sites are limited to one or two interesting tidbits, have misinformation, and have gone unchanged for years. There is also massive duplication.
2. There is a demand for material for Interdisciplinary courses, and in particular for mathematics courses more suited for education and liberal arts majors
3. There is a lack of quality textbooks appropriate for math courses built around art.

The Plan

In the near (< 1 year) future, we propose to create a Wikibook titled "Mathematics and Art" intended to cover all mathematical topics with a relation to art. The initial material will come from the Math and the Art of M.C. Escher wiki. With permission from participants, some material developed during this PREP workshop will also be used as source material.

Hopefully, by the free and open nature of Wikibooks, this project will attract contributions from many of the people now hosting their own math and art related web sites. The goal for the project is to be a complete text, appropriate for math and art curricula ranging from short units to full courses.

Concerns

• Teaching a course out of a text that may change from one day to the next is probably intolerable. One can imagine students changing the text or homework questions either maliciously or simply to have a good excuse. This probably can be addressed by a revisioning system, where a course would be taught out of a static, known revision. The editable version would be editioned periodically.
• Some material must be restricted to instructors only, for example sample exam questions or solutions to exercises. It is not clear Wikibooks is set up to do this, but possibly this information can be stored off site.
• A book on Math and Art must necessarily include quite a bit of artwork. Much of this artwork is under copyright.