The Curriki website is the online home of a project to build open source curricula for K-12 students. The site uses the wiki format, that allows the site's users to create and edit parts of the website's content. Users are invited to add content and edit the site to provide the community with resources for teaching.
This is a model that could work just as well for higher learning. And so it's worth investigating.
Not only is the model interesting, the support it's getting is worth noting. When you have someone of the caliber of Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Micro Systems, on your board of directors, as Curriki does, you have a certain measure of credibility.
I've only just had my first look at Curriki. It seems to be chock full of resources, to have good design and lots of tools for navigating the content, but to my mind it's a bit jumbled; maybe a lot jumbled. There's a lot of coursework and related materials to sort through, but my first impression is that it's not very intuitive. It's kinda like some one says to you, here's a really comprehensive list of the parts that make up an automobile, now go forth and build yourself a car.
How about some help making an overall plan for the project?
Often when I find an interesting website I do a quick search on alexa.com to see what kind, and how much traffic the website in question is getting. curriki.com compares in traffic to homeschool.com, which I take to be a major website in this area of interest. Of even more interest is the fact that Curriki has a lot of international traffic. Apparently people in India, Pakistan and Indonesia are interested in the english language curricula served up at curriki.com. When some of the most motivated students in the world take an interest in something education-related it may be a good sign that a closer look is in order. Which I will be doing.
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