Hi David (et al),
Given the number of posts in my inbox (we lost internet for a little over 24 hours), I suspect that many have already responded to this, but let me throw in my initial 2 cents and see how it lines up.
When I first read the blog post and even the first couple of ideas on the KA website I thought... what a bunch of baloney, but after going through the whole website I realize now that this is quite a remarkable project. As I understand it, the founder created all the videos himself? That's quite a commitment. Given that he attracted Bill Gates' attention, it stands to reason that he sees something in this fellows efforts.
Having praised it however, I find that there are significant failing as
well. One cannot have a single position on education. What I mean by this is, he's making the assumption that everyone can learn from this site and seems to see learning with a singular purpose. That's frankly not quite right. Different people learn differently and with different goals. That is the beauty of a good teacher. They don't teach all students the same way. They adjust their methods to suit the student's NEEDS. Now... given that this forum is more concerned with OS related to schools... let me actually focus on your initial comments rather than a philosophical discussion on how teaching could or should be conducted.
Scratch an Itch: Yes and yes... but I think the second one is most important. I am doing very well so far because a fellow Canadian (Les) is helping me out in working on the OS software. Most schools where I have either had children attending or worked either have very focused IT folks who have
precious little time to learn additional skills... thus unless you have an incredibly resourceful administration... it's windows or mac and the technology is 5-10 years old. Ironically, as we all know, using OS would save so much money, but there needs to be an initial catalyst that also provides a strong enough bond to the creator(s) of the software to show both the effectiveness of the software and the cost benefits. It is one thing to have software and it is another thing for people to be able to use it. The province of BC in Canada just decided after spending an enormous amount of money to get rid of their province-wide system within 5 years. There is currently no plan to replace it. Interesting opportunity I would say... but there needs to be a scalable example to demonstrate that it not only works, but that the IT resources on hand can handle it... otherwise, OS is just something to "twitter" about.
Users are developers: I
think this is a tremendous idea for computer science, math and science teachers. For the most part however I see the arts areas as very technophobic unless we can demonstrate that digital art... is just as "techy". The problem here is that most use Photoshop and will rarely if ever see the light of day (with respect to code). For most science teachers, they are caught in the world of labs and thus have precious little time... this leaves mostly the math and the obvious choice of computer science teachers... The problem here is... that's great for secondary, but leaves primary schools (and to some degree middle schools) in the breech... Thus I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to come up with models at school district levels that allow teams to rotate/work together on evolving projects. This would not be entirely unlike the way major software vendors like Microsoft or Adobe currently run projects 24 hours a day using international teams who simply pass
work on to the next person/team in the next "time zone". I think in some ways this would be even more exciting because it allows schools to develop international partnerships and REALLY learn about global differences and means of acceptance... at minimal cost if you will. Sorry, if you are already doing this, but keep in mind... I'm new to the forum.
Release early and often: Agreed... with easy to understand details about what's in the release without overwhelming the receiver
Make what we produce available in the most free and open ways we can dream up: Absolutely.
So... now that I've addressed your comments, let me also suggest that Jeremy's idea seems to be a very practical one. First, not everyone can run videos. The KA website seems to imply that this is possible but either because one might have older technology or as we are in a place that can't access the videos (regardless of his claim that we can)... it might not be possible. Books on the other hand might not be accessible in digital form, but they can be printed and THEN brought to the student that needs it... (I recognize we're trying to get away from bulky books but... at this point it is good to be able to make them).
On the digital side
of things I noticed that David questioned why not software... part of this COULD be the readers or "library management tools" that students/parents/teachers etc need when the number of books gets to be too many for a simply search.
James, I'm happy to assist. I don't know how flexible people are... but may I suggest we begin by considering the depth of our collective expertise, then consider a target audience for the texts, and then project outline for their development? I do apologize if this is something you folks have already taken into consideration. Again, I fall back on my excuse that is likely soon to get old "I'm new to the community".
Cheers
Jim