Making Quality Education Universally Available

Ok, back to the “But what happens to all of the knowledge these teachers have when they decide to retire? And what about teachers still in the profession – how do we open up the binders on their desks and start sharing their magic? And what would happen if those heroes were able to start sharing their best practices with each other and start brainstorming on the perfect way to teach the Pythagorean theorem? And what if any great group of teachers could put together a textbook And what if any teacher with access to a computer anywhere in the world could get access to this?”

Could this make a dent in some of the staggering problems we see in education? 100 million children without access to primary school, in India 40% of children will not complete 4 years of school, in the US 40% of students in the lowest economic quartile drop out by high school

Curriki is all about solving this “Education Divide” by delivering quality learning resources developed, published and continuously improved by those that have the biggest stake in education – the education community themselves.

The Curriki mission is simple. Empower people worldwide through OSC (Open Source Curriculum) to eliminate the Education Divide by moving learning into the Participation Age. This curricula will range from K-12 to higher education and lifelong and life skill learning. The initial focus will be on K-12 curricula in the areas of literacy, languages, mathematics, science and technology; and universities and organizations that develop curricula for K-12.

It was founded by Sun Microsystems in 2004 and became an independent 501(c)(3) organization in 2006 – renaming itself from GELC to Curriki. Scott McNealy, Sun’s founder, has some great ideas on education and put together an extremely talented team with depth in publishing, education technology and teaching to make this vision a reality.

And how do we make the movement happen?

Create a portal with publishing and collaboration tools
Build a community of educators at the grass-roots level and with ministries/departments of education
Build a repository of open source curricula
Engage a global community

Sounds simple.

But complex with so many user types – public, private and not-for-profit administrators, teachers, students, parents, university professors and students, independent publishers, for-profit publishers – from anywhere in the world. How to generate awareness to all of these constituents? How to create a system that meets all of their needs? How to motivate other partners to publish their own IP and help close the Education Divide?

How do we increase computer access worldwide to reach those most in need? How do we develop new business models to motivate the Big 4 publishers (who own 90% of the revenue) to participate? How do we develop new intellectual property licenses to support the vision?

Any ideas? Please comment...