News.com reports today on the Wikibooks textbook initiative of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikibooks seeks to create the infrastructure for writing, editing, and sharing free and freely distributable textbooks at all grade levels. Anyone can write a Wikibook, and anyone can edit it (with a minimum of technical knowledge). Teachers could even use the editing of existing Wikibooks as a classroom exercise.

I like the idea of Wikis in general, but hesitate when it comes to the idea of anyone in the world being able to edit the books my child is reading in class. The burden is then on the teacher to edit any errors before making the materials available (and, if the materials are accessed from the Wikibooks site, checking to make sure they haven’t been changed back). For conscientious educators, therefore, Wikibooks may provide a useful “getting started” framework they can customize to their needs and make available on their own networks (to avoid the re-editing problem). For others, especially those who are occasionally roped into teaching a subject they know little about, Wikibooks provide little by way of factual verification.

A better idea, I think, might be to create online textbooks that are only open to editing by a verified group of qualified professionals. (Books that are editable by anyone can certainly still exist, for those who prefer that model or don’t have the funds to buy from a professional publisher.) Let’s face it: the advent of online learning resources (Wikibooks or otherwise) is putting pressure on the traditional textbook industry, and publishers should therefore take the initiative in facilitating new textbook models. They could select and verify the authors for a book, and then decide how to price it: as a group license for a school district, on a per-student basis, with or without ongoing yearly upgrades, etc.

There’s a good argument to be made here that at this point publishers are unnecessary, and educators could group themselves together to develop texts. This is true, although I would argue there is still a need for someone to handle the overall editing (to smooth out differences in style among the authors), and marketing of the texts. Whether the marketing is done by traditional sales reps or via an online portal with a rating system (a la Amazon) remains to be seen.

Publishers may not take the electronic threat seriously, though, until electronic texts can reach out to every child, at home and in the classroom. Certainly, electronic texts may even now help schools that cannot afford books for every student, but they create the problem of long lines at the computer. Children also can’t read or practice at home unless their families own computers, which means students in lower-income areas are unfairly penalized.

The venerable Nicholas Negroponte and his team at the MIT Media Lab are addressing these issues. They are designing a laptop that will cost less than $100, and have, at a minimum, a full-color screen, Wi-Fi connection, 500 MHz processor, 1 GB of Flash memory, and a hand crank for generating power in areas without electricity. This, to my mind, is the secret ingredient needed to make electronic textbooks really fly, regardless of who edits them. Once students can have laptops for about the same cost as paper texts, there’s no need for paper any more. At this point, the publishers themselves must e-publish or perish.

Once most students are using electronic textbooks for most of their studies, there will also be need for rethinking the way students themselves annotate texts and take notes. This may be one area where Wikis can really shine: as personal, searchable, access-from-anywhere notepads. (I’m using a nice little online service called pbWiki for keeping notes and to-do lists about this blog, for example.) Additionally, time-honored instruction in how to take notes may be supplemented by sessions on how best to “tag” one’s notes for future reference and study-group sharing.

The Web is changing the way textbooks can be created and used. It is likewise having repercussions in the way professional scientific papers are published. One thing, however, will not change: the need for educators who understand both their subjects and the media they are publishing in, so as to convey their material in the way that best facilitates learning.