Pinoy uses wiki model to make textbooks for public schools
By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 16:18:00 02/03/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- Greg Moreno, 31, hopes to supply textbooks to all Filipino public school students. As his e-mail signature aptly declares: “Libro para sa bawat Batang Pilipino (A book for every Filipino child).”
A product of a public school system from elementary to college, Moreno has been doing school-related projects and services like the recent Schoolpad, a free web service that allows public schools to create websites.
Last December 2007, he penned an essay and an idea hit him. Why not use a community of volunteers, an act which is described in Filipino as “bayanihan,” to produce content, and then allow textbook publishers to bid for content that will eventually be ready for printing. Thus the initiative called “Bayanihan Books” emerged.
“Since the materials from the Bayanihan Books are royalty-free, there is no need for publishers to pay the authors. The publishers will only shoulder the printing costs. Given that there are 17.5 million students enrolled in public schools, I’m sure publishers can earn millions of pesos with a low-margin, high volume, guaranteed payment scheme. The government needs less money to spend, more students get the complete books, and the publishers earn lots of money. Everyone is happy,” Moreno wrote in bayanihanbooks.org blog.
To date, his initiative has attracted several volunteers. It also started working with another group hammering out a Creative Common license specific to the Philippines to allow content to be shared. This license is currently a “work in progress,” said Moreno.
“Bayanihan Books are licensed using Creative Commons that explicitly allows the use of these materials by any publishers. Therefore, more publishers bidding for the government (like the Department of Education) contract results in more competition and avoid the monopoly of a few big name publishers,” he said in his blog.
Moreno admits his project is bordering on ambitious, as he says it will take some time for the idea to produce results. But in two years, he hopes to produce a textbook for at least one level in the elementary grade.
In the meantime, he’s out recruiting more authors.
The Bayanihan Books idea, which is like “crowd sourcing,” aims to improve the quality of textbooks through open and collaborative writing and review of content, which is similar to what is being done in Wikipedia, he said.
The project also hopes to eventually solve the textbook shortage problem in the country through the royalty-free licensing system that it will adopt. At least two textbooks have also been uploaded in the Bayanihan Book’s wiki site.
A wiki is an online collaborative tool where people can share, add and edit content.
People are required to register to participate in the book projects. One book deals with Mathematics for Grade one elementary students and another on Next Generation Health Governance.
Moreno said that Bayanihan Book has more than 20 members on its mailing list, which includes writers, reviewers, lawyers, and other volunteers. Bayanihan Books will also stick with Department of Education guidelines. The only big difference is that content is no longer controlled by publishers.
“But they can still bid for the printing,” he said.
The project also intends to partner with pilot schools where textbooks produced by Bayanihan Books will be made available.
Asked what challenges the project faces, Moreno said finding the right licensing terms to allow commercial printing of a shared content is one.
“I created this last December after it hit me that we can use the concept of Wikipedia to address the problems in textbooks. But unlike Wikipedia, our goal is to produce the printed content,” he said.
Bayanihan Books will soon seek support from government, in particular the Department of Education.
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