OLPC and CC Free Content Drive

gnujoshua writes "In his blog, SJ Klein, director of community content for OLPC, notes a collaboration among Creative Commons, One Laptop per Child, and TextbookRevolution.org. They are compiling together free and CC-licensed works — and they are asking for people to help them by submitting links to free books, movies, and music. Creative Commons will be burning a LiveDVD to be distributed at South by Southwest; OLPC will be making bundles of books to send all over the world; and Textbook Revolution will be compiling a list of good and free college-level textbooks for the relaunch of their site."

Comments

Good

[Brian Gordon]

We can see who's who in academics- whether publishers will be willing to release work to third-world countries that could never possibly afford to buy it and desperately need it for their education. In America at least they can hoard journals and information and demand payment because that's how the industry works- but I'll be very impressed (and surprised) if they admit that that doesn't apply at all to donating to OLPC..

More important: relevant content by language

[CodeShark]

While all of this sounds great, as far as I can tell most of the stuff being offered is in English. Which is great, but why isn't there more of a movement to recreate the most important bits of knowledge -- public sanitation and mosquito control are two big ones -- as part of an educational program that can be stuffed onto a DVD and shipped out. Why are we only hearing about college textbooks, etc. which -- hello out there? are mostly what those of us who have been in the armed services used to refer to as "chloroform in print" or whose relevancy to real world problems is scant at best?

Simply put -- why aren't we hearing about a focus on education that matters -- in the languages of those who need it most?