Straight away I would like to share my life's biggest dream which is: for every person in a world will have a free access to well-organized world's knowledge.
Please note this proposal is a draft for now, which will hopefully be improved
PROBLEMS with current world's education:
- Education access is unequal and unfair, for example, amongst people of different:
- levels of welfare
- country of residence
- gender
- religion
- ethnicity
- etc
- Education is disorganized:
- different countries have different education systems
- courses with the same name can have very different content
- same degrees can contain very different courses
- employers cannot easily compare job candidates
- Education is difficult to access:
- most of the education is based on books, which comparing to electronic format are much more expensive and less portable
- educational materials in some languages can much bigger than in other and are slow to be translated
- Education is closed:
- most educational books are licensed and copy-protected what makes them not-free even in electronic format
- Education is innefficient:
- employers tend to require specific degree which takes more time to get actual relevant for the job courses
- since education is mostly based on books, it's very slow and expensive to modernize it
PROPOSAL
Used terms:
- Package - the whole knowledge repository and software to use it
- Module - piece of knowledge on a topic, e.g. English Verb Formation or Exponentiation with Integer Exponents
Module contains following properties:
- Author(s) - anyone should be able to create a module
- Author organization - some modules will be created by organizations
- Course - subject, e.g. Mathematics, Physics, Arabic language
- Degree - collection of modules. Different degrees will be approved/accepted by different organizations and countries.
PROPERTIES Education Package should have:
- free, equal
- all people should have equally full access without exceptions
- open
- package content should be fully public
- processes which lead to knowledge collection and organization should be fully public
- software, both package and tools, should be open source
- all people should be able to contribute
- universally accessible
- translated to as many languages as possible
- electronic format should be the main one, but should be easily printable for people without electronic devices
- should support as many electronic devices as possible
- should have support for people with disabilities
- simple
- software should be very simple to use for students of all ages
- software should allow to simply create own educational modules
- should be optimized for self-learning since having teachers increase price of education,
of course teachers will help largely in the system, but they should not be required
- standardized, organized, modular
- people should be able to personalize their education by choosing parts they are interested in
- people should have a more clear sense of what parts of world's knowledge they covered and what parts are left
- modules can be made by anyone (see property 'open') but should follow the same predefined style and organization
- there should be a system to rate usefulness of a module including normal votes and experts votes and commentary
- modules can be organized in subpackages as small more precise degrees, different countries and organization can approve different subpackages
PROCESS.
- Student downloads the package or uses latest online version
- Student with possible guidedance of parents and teachers decides what courses to take and what degree(s) aim for.
- Student starts learning.
- Student will have an option to take big supervised (but still possibly online) examination after different levels similarly to annual school exams.
- Supervised exam result will be reflected in person's exam history in the online repository, employers could request from students (alumni) to review the results.
ACTION ITEMS
- Gather feedback (your feedback) to finalize the proposal
- Create a team to found an organization
- Find supporters and sponsors
Possible candidates: Wikimedia Foundation, UNESCO, MIT, Google, 1 Goal
- Create a committee/panel of experts to define standards
- Design software, standard and system
- Implement, release and iterate
ADD YOUR FEEDBACK IN PLACE - [HERE]. THANKS!