Our Microlibrary project got a nice write-up in the Salt Lake Tribune today. Obviously there are other projects using similar technology, but I love our focus on elementary school-age kids. Our “Bound to Read” program takes the Microlibrary out to rural schools to teach kids about the history of writing and printing, to teach them how books are made and bound, and gives each child a book of their choosing. We’ve given away over 100 books since October, and have a goal to give away 5000 books to 4th and 5th graders in rural schools in Northern Utah next year.
If you have some extra money you’re wondering what to do with, please consider making a donation to help fund the cost of paper and toner! =) If you’d like help starting a Bound to Read program in your area, leave a note in the comments and I’ll get back to you.
Steve Jobs gets it right in his recent thoughts on music. In a nutshell:
DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy.
So why bother will all the expense, pain, and interoperability nightmares? (C.f. Engadget’s related post in which they point out that “The only way for DRM to be successful is if it’s painless and seamless, and we get tons of emails from consumers complaining about how hard it is to get Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo Music Unlimited, etc. tracks on to their players, or, god forbid, Macs.”) DRM SIMPLY DOESN’T WORK.
So I have an idea… how bout we stop throwing our money away on something that doesn’t work *and* everybody hates?
Published on
February 1, 2007 in
Uncategorized.
Tags: ocw.
In the most recent issue of Innovate, Stephen reviews the OCWC website. He is generally unimpressed, making a variety of comments about the lack of interactivity offered by the site: “contrary to expectations, there is no discussion or community component,” “if there is a community – and one presumes there is – it is well hidden,” and “it is unfortunate that the main access point to the OpenCourseWare Consortium is an impenetrable barrier.”
Now I happen to know the person at the other end of the email address on the OCWC site, and he does a phenomenal job of responding. But Stephen’s comments are worth considering. Stephen also apparently hasn’t seen the OCWC wiki: http://ohana.mit.edu/ocwc/. It’s unsurprising that he hasn’t heard of it, though. I just asked Google who links there and apparently not a single site on the internet does (until now w00t!). I wonder why that is?
