About This Site

This site started out as what I hoped would be a collaborative effort to provide a course reference source and course guide for teaching design -primarily architectural design- using SketchUp.  It was meant to be, roughly, the Web 2.0 equivalent of a traditional textbook (see below for more on this concept). Since this concept did not catch on, I modified the site into a blog-like record of my design efforts using SketchUp.




About Infowikis.

It is not an exact equivalent because computers and the Internet are very different from books. Textbooks are slow to be developed, are meant to authoritative, change infrequently, and represent the viewpoint of one or a few authors as filtered through a publisher's editorial process that will remove anything that might offend any of the major potential customers. Infowikis can be developed quickly, are unlikely to be authoritative, are always evolving, and ideally represent the unfiltered viewpoints of many contributors.

In this day and age there is no reason teachers should need to keep reinventing curricular wheels. (Sometimes there are sound pedagogical reasons for reinventing things, but it should be a conscious choice to do so, not a choice made because of a lack of access to already invented things.) If a secondary school teacher in Arizona comes up with a great SketchUp project for her CAD class, or a great way to  teach a difficult concept (such as the Follow Me tool), then why not share that information with other teachers from around the world. Those teachers will in turn be sharing their discoveries and those shared discoveries will benefit that teacher back in Arizona. In other words, we all benefit by sharing our knowledge.

It is not yet clear what this infowiki will develop into. To be valuable it must be much more than a collection of links and syllabi. It must develop a voice, a character, a narrative, a soul. If you are interested in participating in this groundbreaking project please register, spend some time exploring the wiki to get a sense of the character and style, and then look for a place to make a contribution.

Thanks