Yes of course, don't buy the copyrighted material. I like the idea of lobying for new (fair) copyright laws but I think this is implicitly outside of the range of the offer. So, let's stick with things we can do.
Fund the production of quality etextbooks in all of the major fields (and yes we're including music, art and the like) for all of the levels of eduction pre-uni/college. We could even try to split it up according to country and language by the number of current wiki entries for each language (meaning, we would try to make an effort to involve all of the languages of Wikipedia and decrease our bias to do it all in English). This of course leaves open the not insignificant question of the selection of the authors for said entries and attempting to find true "authorities" on the topics who are also good at communicating their knowledge in writing, etc., etc. Ideas on solved the said problem welcome.
I'm going to second the suggestion to include lectures on topics and raise it to support any sort of multi-media collaborations that work towards the promotion of education (videos are cool in that they could simply be dubbed in different languages using the original footage for all of them).
The great thing about a wiki is that it is editable. With a large support base these coursebooks should remain up to date. The foundation is of course important, but there is nothing but room for growth upon that. Actually, the larger the support base of qualified teachers and educators working with the texts day in and day out should lead to an extremely polished set of materials. But do we need to start worrying about homogeneity then? Perhaps we should separated the very notion of "textbook" into smaller modules of learning on certain topics. I can imagine how a textbook for English literature would be served by allowing for an individual teacher to select certain material of his own interest/knowledge or that fell in line with the particular school district's plan, etc. I think this could help in many courses and emphasise the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge in the internet age. Things like history, art, literature, and, yes, even science and medicine, are all interrelated and should be allowed at least some room to venture into each other's territory.
I think the promotion of science is laudable, but we've got bigger fish to fry here (meaning, let's think about EVERYBODY). Not everyone who goes to wikipedia is a slashdot reader:)
My last word and a pet peeve: it's Finnegans Wake (no apostrophe please!!)
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Yes of course, don't buy the copyrighted material. I like the idea of lobying for new (fair) copyright laws but I think this is implicitly outside of the range of the offer. So, let's stick with things we can do. Fund the production of quality etextbooks in all of the major fields (and yes we're including music, art and the like) for all of the levels of eduction pre-uni/college. We could even try to split it up according to country and language by the number of current wiki entries for each language (meaning, we would try to make an effort to involve all of the languages of Wikipedia and decrease our bias to do it all in English). This of course leaves open the not insignificant question of the selection of the authors for said entries and attempting to find true "authorities" on the topics who are also good at communicating their knowledge in writing, etc., etc. Ideas on solved the said problem welcome. I'm going to second the suggestion to include lectures on topics and raise it to support any sort of multi-media collaborations that work towards the promotion of education (videos are cool in that they could simply be dubbed in different languages using the original footage for all of them). The great thing about a wiki is that it is editable. With a large support base these coursebooks should remain up to date. The foundation is of course important, but there is nothing but room for growth upon that. Actually, the larger the support base of qualified teachers and educators working with the texts day in and day out should lead to an extremely polished set of materials. But do we need to start worrying about homogeneity then? Perhaps we should separated the very notion of "textbook" into smaller modules of learning on certain topics. I can imagine how a textbook for English literature would be served by allowing for an individual teacher to select certain material of his own interest/knowledge or that fell in line with the particular school district's plan, etc. I think this could help in many courses and emphasise the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge in the internet age. Things like history, art, literature, and, yes, even science and medicine, are all interrelated and should be allowed at least some room to venture into each other's territory. I think the promotion of science is laudable, but we've got bigger fish to fry here (meaning, let's think about EVERYBODY). Not everyone who goes to wikipedia is a slashdot reader :)
My last word and a pet peeve: it's Finnegans Wake (no apostrophe please!!)