million dollar idea

Well, it's not really a million-dollar idea. If it was, do you think I'd be sharing it with you?

It is an idea, though, and one that I've been moving around in my brain room for a couple weeks now. Maybe some of you will have some input.

But I need to show you something else so you'll understand my idea. Take a look at the Wikipedia. Cool word, huh? This is one of my favorite things about the internet. The Wikipedia. It's an online encyclopedia written and edited by average Joes like you and me. Written and edited. In fact, you can go there right now, look up any subject you want (they have over 230,000 entries) click on the words "edit this page" and just . . . edit. You can delete words, change words, capitalize words, correct the spelling, or just put in your own two cents. You can even start your own new entry. (Go ahead, you can come back here when you're finished.)

The most impressive thing about the Wikipedia is that it's really good. You would think that with all of these "average Joes" running around changing things that it would be a useless pile of garbage. Quite the contrary. It's really a very thorough, high-quality body of work.

But the concept is staggering! Imagine what we're capable of doing, as a culture -- as a species! -- when we collaborate like this.

My brothers have this Playstation 2 game called SoCom. They live about three hours apart, but they still play this game together. They plug their TVs into the internet, put on a headset, and play SoCom with 14 other people from around the world. They talk in real-time, shoot in real time, and do whatever else counter-terrorism SEAL teams do . . . in real time. Amazing.

When I think about that, and then I think about something like the Wikipedia, my eyes get all starry. Why aren't we using this stuff to improve our crappy education system?!?!?! We obviously have the technology. Why aren't we putting it to work?

So here's my idea, for starters:

A website built on the Wikipedia engine (which is available for FREE, by the way) but devoted to teacher lesson plans. Any teacher, anywhere, can submit lesson plans to the website, and they will all be editable by everyone else. It will be divided into obvious categories (Math, History, Religion, etc.) and then into smaller subcategories that will help break the subjects down into more common semester-long courses.

Within the religion category, for instance (where I would be contributing) we might have a subcategory for courses on the Old Testament. My class just finished a project where they made videos based on different sections of Exodus. Each group had to do a television show in a different style, depending on the part of Exodus they were assigned: cooking show, crime drama, home improvement show, etc.

So I would post all of the work I did for this project under maybe a subcategory in the Old Testament section for "Exodus". Other teachers would also post assignments they used in Exodus, and before long, we would start to have a huge resource for anyone teaching that subject. And the most beautiful thing about the Wiki-concept is that the entries would keep evolving over time. They wouldn't remain stagnant like so many other parts of the internet. They could grow and change with the times, with new research, with new standards of learning, etc.

So think about it. Any teachers out there who might be interested in participating? Probably not a million-dollar idea, but it just might take us a step closer to something . . .

Posted: Fri - March 26, 2004 at 12:08 AM

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million dollar idea

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