[Fcp-general] Some toughts and related projects

[Wouter Vanden Hove]

Hi Peter,  

I guess you're one the few who really understands that the Free Software 
paradigm can be applied to textbooks and other educational content.
I don't understand why all other educational projects, like Ofset, 
Schoolforge, or Debian-edu  focus on only using free software in 
schools. Hardly is there any talk about coöperative curricula-development.

Since august I'm creating a kind of advocacy-site myself on copyleft on 
educational material.
It's geared towards Flemish and Dutch education. But eventually I would 
like to create a full english version of the site.
Perhaps it could become a Free Curricula website, since you don't have 
one. :)

You can take a peak at my site at  http://www.opencursus.be
The most interesting parts:

1) A little list of licenses
http://www.opencursus.be/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=100

2) List of Free courses  (+/- 100)
http://www.opencursus.be/modules.php?name=Downloads
Some are less free, but most are FDL or OPL.

I'm focussing on non-software related Free courses, like sciences, 
philosophy, ...
It has however a large part of Free Software Documentation, but that is 
mainly intended to show
teachers that Free Textbooks are very much an achievable goal, and not 
some far-fetched Utopia.

3) Probably the most interesting part of my website is the linkpage with 
the category "Open Content - Open Course"
http://www.opencursus.be/modules.php?op=modload&name=Web_Links&file=index&l_op=viewlink&cid=8
It has many known and some less known Free Content Projects.

I do not intend to write textbooks myself, I would like to create a kind 
of Free E-learning platform.
Textbooks are a paper-based concept and has paper-based limitations, 
that don't necesarrily exist in digital form.
Rich content, like animations, simulations, java applets, can be 
incorporated in such digital textbooks.

The most promising Project I know of is the Rice "Connexions Project." 
You should definitely check this one out.
Main site: http://cnx.rice.edu/
The Wiki: http://bunker.ece.rice.edu:8080/mntb/wikis/
Modules:  http://cnx.rice.edu/browse/titles?letter=A

They have +/- 1000 "learning modules" in CNML, their educational 
XML-markup language. These content is licensed under the Creative 
Commons "Attribution"-license, which is a kind of BSD/MIT-license. So 
this Project really is Free, unlike MIT Open CourseWare.


Another project worth mentioning is the Harvey Project
http://harveyproject.org
They are focussing on rich content for physiology courses. But only for 
non-commercial purposes.
Some nice ideas, though.

The Gnutemberg Free Documentation Database can be interesting for its 
repository and meta-data.
http://www.gfdd.org/


Wouter Vanden Hove
(°1976, Student Master in Knowledge & Information Management)