[school-discuss] Fwd: [Openslate-brainstorms] USA Today reports on free content

[knowtree@xxxxxxxxx]

Here is a story I posted to my Open Slate mailing list that might interest
some of you. I find it interesting that mainstream media -- USA Today --
ran a story about open-source educational content. Not surprising, they
were more focused on free as in beer than the other kind. Even so, it is a
good sign.

Gary Dunn
Honolulu

Forwarded Message:
> To: "Open Slate Brainstorms" <openslate-brainstorms@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> From: "Gary Dunn" <knowtree@xxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [Openslate-brainstorms] USA Todays reports on free content
> Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2007 15:21 -1000
> -----
> Hardly a day passes that I don't see a story related to Open Slate. Here
is a story that
ran earier this week in USA Today about open-source reading materials for
elementary
schools. Actually it is more of a story about one web site,
Free-Reading.net, and one
teacher who uses it, but that is the style of news these days, no time or
space for
in-depth reporting.
> 
> Still, the author did toss in some juicy tidbits, starting with the
headline, "Free online
materials could save schools billions." The article cites Eduventures in
pegging the
national annual cost of textbooks at $4.4 billion. The same source claims
this is only 1%
of school budgets. This is not good news to me, because part of the appeal
of this project
is the savings in textbook expenditures. This deserves attention, or we
might be proposing
a solution wherein "free" ends up costing more.
> 
> Speaking of free not being free, the reading program was developed by a
commercial
enterprise, Wireless Generation. They say they hope to make money from
teacher training
and tech support. It may look like Wikipedia, but it sounds like a wolf in
sheep's
clothing.
> 
> <http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-11-06-freereading_N.htm>
> -- 
> Gary Dunn, Honolulu
> knowtree@xxxxxxxxx
> http://openslate.sourceforge.net/
> http://e9erust.blogspot.com/
> Sent from a Newton 2100 via Mail V
> 
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