| | |
Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy thinks the principles of open source software development can improve education. Under his aegis, Sun is spinning out its Global Education and Learning Community (GELC) as a nonprofit organization intended to improve education through the sharing of open content and best practices via the internet. GELC is a growing worldwide community for developers, teachers, and ministries of education in different countries. The organization claims that such parties are now collaborating on 324 projects, especially in the areas of middle-school math and science.
It is not yet clear what impact efforts like GELC might have on commercial publishers. Given the high cost of textbooks and the beginnings of a move away from using them in the classroom, efforts like GELC might empower educators to collaborate on new forms of teaching materials, using broad-based networks to author, edit, update, and supplement such works.
| |  |
