Education ministries all over the world should look at open-sourcing their textbooks, teaching aids, instructional materials and assessment tools, said Sun Microsystems chairman and chief executive officer Scott McNealy. A community driven process could get the best teachers, academics, researchers, authors, corporate trainers, administrators, public officials and students from around the world involved in creating the finest textbooks that are up to date, he said. The Santa Clara, California-based company wants everyone to get involved in creating online educational materials so that it can be made available for free to schools from any part of the world to use in any way they see fit. Sun already has an online community called the Global Education and Learning Community (GELC) working to produce curriculum materials such as online textbooks for kindergarten through secondary school. To date, China's education ministry and Korea's Education and Research Information Service have joined the GELC....GELC's mission is to improve global education by empowering teachers, students and parents with self-paced, web-based, free and open content combined with best practices for advancing student achievement worldwide.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/14/2005 04:53:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
