Vote to Fund Free On-line Education/Support Homeschooling

collegealum314 · 10-01-2009, 02:37 AM

Google recently had a contest (Project 10^100) in which they solicited ideas to help change the world. Google has committed 10 million dollars to fund up to five of these ideas. Out of 154,000 entries, they have selected 16 potential finalists which are now up for a vote by the general public.

One of these ideas is to make educational content available on-line for free, an idea that would really help the homeschooling movement. One of the proposed implementations of this idea is to put video lectures on the web for every subject and grade level, sort of like an expanded version of MIT’s OpenCourseware. Many of us have stories where we were not able to get what they needed educationally due to financially strapped or generally unsupportive schools. This simple idea could solve this problem.

You can vote by going to this link: Project 10 to the 100
The idea is listed under the heading, "Make Educational Content Online for Free." Voting is only for 2 weeks (ends October 8), so your vote really would make a difference.

This is a complete description of this idea on the Project 10^100 website:

Quote:

Make educational content available online for free
Vote for this idea

Education
Make educational and course materials more accessible online to students worldwide. Lots of educational content is not indexed or accessible on the public web. Various users have proposed finding ways to help content owners put formerly exclusive content online, including offline materials (lectures, textbooks, videotaped workshops) and limited-access materials (scholarly papers, research dissertations); help teachers themselves become more available online (access to online profs, 24/7 homework help, cross-country study groups); and to make all this material and academic help accessible through both computer and mobile platforms.
Suggestions that inspired this idea
1. Collaborate with top schools around the world to make their lectures freely accessible online
2. Create an online educational platform that provides free training and education as part of a worldwide, officially accepted degree
3. Provide free online lectures and textbooks for every subject and grade level
4. Facilitate information exchange among students around the world, including cross-country "study groups" on specific topics