Leading Silicon Valley innovator takes up Dryden idea
Auckland author Gordon Dryden has a pleased smile on his face this week.

His late 2008 book, Unlimited (“The new learning revolution and the seven keys to unlock it”), co-authored with Jeannette Vos, ended it with a chapter on “How to globalize the digital revolution”.
It included a strong argument to establish a free global curriculum similar to the higher-priced International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Program: co-created by the world’s most innovative teachers and students — just as Wikipedia has been co-created as the world’s biggest encyclopedia by far:
“The International Baccalaureate and many of the other model schools already reported in this book, plus Scott McNealy’s Global Educational and Learning Network, could easily be combined into a best-of-the-best global program for schools.”
Now Silicon Valley pioneer Scott McNeally has announced his plans to do something very similar:
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_15902614?nclick_check=1

McNealy is the former CEO and one of the founders of SUN Microsystems (SUN from the initials of Stanford University network), which was sold last year to Larry Ellison’s Oracle Corporation for US7.4 billion in cash. Six years ago McNealy founded and funded the Curriki Foundation (from “Curriculum Wiki”): http://www.curriki.org/

Dryden emailed him soon after raise the concept, and then, at McNealy’s invitation, talked with the then-new Foundation CEO. “At that stage they were more interested in expanding their own project, which they have done brilliantly. And my initial idea was to encourage a giant not-for-profit foundation to provide a big annual donation to the International Baccalaureate to make its PYP available free on line to students and schools in poor countries.”
By coincidence, the IB itself will this week open its own online global “collaborative classroom” project in which students at IB-licensed schools can use as an open-forum with students studying the same “inquiry topics”. (Each IB primary-class year is divided into six- or seven-week projects where students collaborate to research a global topics such as “Planets of the universe”, “Endangered species” or “Great explorers and explorations”.
All other “traditional subjects”, such as literacy, numeracy and, are blended into each “inquiry”. In this way

Dryden has also offered any reader of this blog a free pdf of the final chapter of Unlimited, by emailing: gordon@learningweb.co.nz

The book’s opening pages are also available free at :

http://www.thelearningweb.co.nz/