Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Schools, Branding and Open Educational Repositories

Who is BetterLesson? Well, it is a guy from MATCH Charter School. Which is more interesting, a website, or a successful charter school? CK12? Who cares? Well, they're working with High Tech High, so I'm interested.

But why do we need these intermediaries at all? Why do I have to remember which schools go with which websites, like trying to figure out whether I can see last week's Mad Men on Hulu or iTunes? Who has a deal with AMC? Who cares? First place I look is the AMC website anyhow, so if it is anywhere, it should be there. And if it is good open content, it should be everywhere.

Why doesn't one of the foundations that funds these schools just cough up a few millions of dollars to send people to these successful schools, document and publish their complete curriculum on the school's website under a free content license? Then repositories like BetterLesson and CK12 can package and publish it however they want. But the branding and processes right now are all wrong -- it should be around successful school brands, not websites.

Partly in response to Dan. Also, good lord, that BetterLesson guy is full of himself.

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