Reading groups



Welcome to the Wikiversity content development project where participants create, develop and organize learning resources related to Reading groups.

What are Wikiversity Reading Groups?
Wikiversity Reading Groups are learning projects oriented around generating discussion and notes around specific books, texts, videos, or entire oeuvres that users find of interest.

Starting a Reading Group
Please add to any newly created Reading Group. If the book or text has a page on Wikipedia please consider adding the Wikiversity Template to the appropriate Wikipedia page.

Build connections to sister projects
An easy-to-tap source of participants for Wikiversity reading groups are people who visit Wikipedia. Wikiversity should have a content development project that monitors lists of the best selling books such as the current best sellers (example New York Times Best Seller list) and the historical best sellers (example: List of bestselling novels in the United States in the 2000s). As soon as Wikiversity participants establish a new "Reading Club" they should list it at the directory and start making links to it from related Wikipedia pages.

Template for linking Wikipedia articles to Wikiversity projects
See: w:Template:Wikiversity.

networking and organizing Wikiversity participants
At the moment, it seems that many projects are started, but hardly any of them are really running. I propose to invite all users of the english Wikiversity to join the reading clubs and to specificly ask what topics they would be interested to read and discuss about. Another round of invitations could be dealt with asking people to join reading groups in the most popular reading clubs. The moment these reading clubs get started, its participants need to promise to spend enough time in them, say react once a week for a couple of months untill a set date.

See also: Colloquium

find past editors and participants
Some learning projects such as Hitler's Germany have edit histories that go back even before the launch of Wikiversity as an independent wiki website. Some also have fairly extensive "Class Rosters" or participants lists that have built up over time. It might be possible to contact some of the past editors and participants and rally them all for a new reading/discussion club.

Ideas for topics and books
Post here ideas for topics and books that you want to read and discuss about. Also post a list for those who are interested in joining your book club. A deadline will be set for the final topics after which all Wikiversity users will be contacted to join in any of the topics at hand.

Example
Topic description

Participants:

Present activity:

Education reading group
This reading group is for reading and discussing ideas about the future of education with emphasis on issues expected to be of interest to editors of education-oriented wiki websites.

Now reading:
 * Ivan Illich: Deschooling Society
 * The Diamond Age See also One Laptop Per Child for overview of real world action pursuing the dreams. Hopefully the speculative fiction will provoke of thought regarding ways, means, disbenefits, consequences, etc.  This is important to me personally since I am giving one to my gradeschool nephew and one to some other child somewhere for Christmas.  I hope I am doing more good than harm helping hand out high tech candy to future citizens and terrorists.  I can help provide some supervision and insight to my nephew but I am blindly exposing the other kid to random environmental influences of governments, do gooders, and information grids.  Mirwin 01:20, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Participants:
 * Daanschr
 * Mirwin

Present activity: The book The Diamond Age is being read at the moment by Daanschr and will be read starting january 4th by Mirwin. Debate on the book will be next year after the whole book is read. If you want to join, just get the book and leave a message to me or Mirwin.--Daanschr 21:29, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
 * This activity concluded. Mirwin very disappointed in book and Daanschr reported heavy going as well.  Participants agreed to suspend further activity.   Others welcome to resume with alternate viewpoints.

History or other social sciences related
For all those who are interested in topics related to social sciences, using both fiction and non-fiction literature. This is a very broad reading club. It could include typically natural sciences topics, possibly with its relationship to social sciences.


 * Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War
 * A nice topic would be global history. I have a book in mind to start with, because at has a lot to say about the world. It is "The rise of Modern China" by Immanuel C.Y. Hsu. It tells the story of the history of China from the Manchu conquest in the 17th century to the 1990s. Facts which are of interest are that China didn't have an army in the early 19th century, refused to surrender to countries having an army, was forced to surrender after the burning of the centre of government, tried to modernize the army, which failed due to a conservative antipathy towards industrialization, suffered from warlordism, corporatism and communism and is finally adjusted to the western world nowadays.

Participants:
 * Daanschr
 * Erkan Yilmaz: reading when he has some time a book about the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC). Text for reading or listening here - see also de:Kurs:Der Peloponnesische Krieg, where one task involves extending or creating new articles at other wikimedia projects - this is nothing dramatic, the course was created, to help staying on track. General goal: to deepen knowledge in this area.
 * User:Mirwin Reading online materials and trying to participate in weekly discussion on IRC. Time gather at IRC?

Present activity: Weekly discussion on Chat. We gather at the english Wikiversity and could go to a special Thucydides channel #thucydides. A new user joined as well today.

We are reading aphorisms 51 to 75 from book 1 of Thucydides.

Live audio
To stimulate and supplement text-based wiki discussions, we could do live audio recording of book discussion and also interviews of book authors. See Wiki Campus Radio.

Weekly chat session
There is a weekly chat session in the weekend on chat for social bonding and to discuss the future of the reading groups.

/Organization Brainstorming IRC Session 30 Dec 2007 18:00 CET draft agenda/

Reading groups

 * Noam Chomsky reading group... in progress
 * Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War. Discussion every weekend on IRC.
 * Ivan Illich: Deschooling Society - a reading group on Illichs' 1971 discourse on education.
 * John Seely Brown on new learning contexts
 * Is consciousness a chemical process?
 * Worldpolitics - a reading group on texts dedicted to major issues in worldpolitics: the influence of religion, humanism, depletion of resources, economy.
 * Islamic Feminism: Contemporary Debate
 * Many-worlds interpretation
 * Michel Foucault reading group
 * Molecular Paleontology Reading Group
 * On the Soul: discussion group - a Reading group for Aristotle's On the Soul
 * Darwinism as religion - is evolution taught in schools like a religion?
 * Wikiversity learning model/Reading group - a reading group on the Wikiversity learning model
 * Eric Von Hippel:Democratizing Innovation
 * Yochai Benkler: The Wealth of Networks
 * Romance of the Three Kingdoms (by Luo Guanzhong): a historical novel which plays in China from 168 - 280 AD and is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.
 * Wikiworld: Political Economy and the Promise of Participatory Media
 * Free Culture (book): to study Lessig's Free Culture (book)

See also:

 * Fiction writing support group
 * SLS Reading List