Customizable textbooks

Imagine a schoolbook where the pupil and her teacher can choose the topic depth, clarity of text and homework difficulty as needed and necessary.

Add alternatives for teachers (supporting different instructional methods, teaching styles), schools (variations in chapter content based on time constraints or policy) and parents (having a topic summary to read before helping with homework.) This is what we mean with customizable textbooks.

Kaizendo.org - from Kaizen-do, "the way of incremental improvement" - is a project for making these books possible.

How can I find out more about Kaizendo?

• Start by reading the introduction (under construction)
• Check out our Drumbeat.org pages
• Read our reports from places we've been to present and work on Kaizendo:
  • Iceland in April 2010
  • YAPC::EU in August 2010
  • FSCONS in November 2010
  • More reports to come at The NUUG Foundation (Drumbeat Festival and FSCONS)
• Look at our presentations from different conferences.
• Get in touch! :)

How can I help?

• Subscribe to the Kaizendoers mailing list and tell us what's on your mind
• Get in touch with the devs on IRC: #kaizendo on irc.freenode.net
• Check out our Drumbeat.org pages and vote for the project
• Look at our code on Github and send us your improvements with a pull request
• Look at our presentations and tell us how they can be improved (through mail or IRC – see the two topmost items.)
• We want to get in touch with
  • Teachers and textbook authors who would like to experiment with new ways of doing collaborative authoring.
  • Programmers who would like to help us build this!

The project is currently in "bootstrap" mode, meaning we're still in the very early stages, figuring out the best ways to go about creating this tool. Your support is greatly appreciated!