Pledge “textbook”
"I will Author a science text-book, and donate the copyright to Oxfam so they can distribute it to the third world but only if 10 other budding scientists will help."
— Darren Grover, Crazy International Scientist
Deadline to sign up by: 1st October 2006
17 people signed up (7 over target)
More details
A major problem with regard to education in the developing world is access to copyrighted, and therefore expensive textbooks and materials. I propose to produce a general-science text book with the aim of covering upto GCSE-level standard and I am prepared to hand-over the copyright to Oxfam, so they can both make money from it, and distribute the text book to developing nations.
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Current signatories (
= they've done it)
Darren Grover, the Pledge Creator, joined by:
- Michelle Dumont
- Gianluca Campanella
- Hannah
- Mike Loftus
- Emilie Yerby
- John Pipet
- Mathew Moore
- John Angliss
- Dr Tajamal (Taj) Bhutta
- John Cross
- Simon James freethy
- 6 people who did not want to give their names
Comments on this pledge
Hannah xxx
From MIT with it university level courses:
http://ocw.mit.edu
Schools science under creative commons license:
http://teacherslounge.editme.com/hsscience
Maybe you should build on these projects, or set up similar open colaborative projects that produce materials that can be freely reproduced and distributed by anyone, rather than have Oxfam handle the rights to the work which maybe more than burden than a help for them.
Also there are many issues to consider with science text books such as how they fit a school curriculum, with all sorts of vested interests pushing their free materials.
http://www.schoolscience.co.uk/content/i...
btw for your interest I myself studied Biology, Chemistry and Physics up to A level. And went on to study Chemical Engineering at University.
In some respects, I totally agree with you. In that the services you link to are flexible, accessible, and of course, free for all.
However, in both examples, they are far from complete. In agreement with part of your comment, I would support the expansion of these, possibly as part of this project.
However, provision of educational services through the internet makes some assumptions that are unlikely, firstly, that the audience have internet access. Secondly, they have resources to obtain information in a useable form, and thirdly, they are aware of the resouce.
Another problem with both resources is the lack of formality or consistency. In that, yes they are excellent materials support learning, but they lack the structure
Of your comment, the part I find most interesting is the idea of the creative commons license. I hadn't thought about that. This will definately be something I shall investigate - having looked on the website, I see there is a special license for work which is for use in developing nations.
Thanks for your comments!
Taj
I'm currently entering into my third year of an undergraduate masters degree in physics and will be happy to help as much as i can on any sections related to maths or physics.
Many thanks,
Darren
Free High School Science Texts (www.fhsst.org) - we are finishing off Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry content for Grades 10 - 12 for the South African curriculum. Please consider helping us finish off our texts, they are free (GFDL) and people can use them as a starting point for other countries/districts.
I pledge to help you use any of our stuff to speed up your work.
Mark