Edward Mokurai Cherlin (OSSIE)
Topic:
The GPLed Curriculum
Company:
Earth Treasury
Title:
Founder Edward Mokurai Cherlin is the Founder of Earth Treasury, whose mission is to be the third leg of the stool with One Laptop Per Child and Sugar Labs, finding somebody to do whatever the other two consider out of scope. At present, that means electricity and Internet for villages, linking schools around the world, microfinance for the resulting international business opportunities, and creating the new generation of textbooks, in cooperation with FLOSS Manuals, various researchers, and subject-matter experts. He has been a Peace Corps Volunteer, Buddhist priest, high-tech market analyst, Free Software developer, tech writer, and serial NGO founder.
Abstract:
One Laptop Per Child is transforming education around the world using Free Software and Creative-Commons-licensed content. But what about textbooks? What happens when we integrate Smalltalk, or the digital oscilloscope capabilities in the Measure Activity, into interactive learning systems that can adjust to the student's previous knowledge and learning style? Not just what happens in school, but what happens to the textbook publishing industry, to government education bureaucracies, schools of Education, and so-called Intellectual Property law, all over the world?
What happens to the curriculum when children can learn more advanced concepts, with deeper understanding, at much younger ages? In the long run, we know no better now than Gutenberg could have known about scientific journals and public schools, but we can peer into the next decade or two, and invite some guesses beyond that.