The Giraffe Project

[Cleisthenis]

There are many different aspects of the giraffe project. We need to debate and decide which elements will be grouped together:

1. An exhaustive and comprehensive listing of all the schools, institutes, universities and colleges around the world.
   note: This is a massive task and should have an open sourced development.
2. A cross-indexing of all the faculties, departments and fields within that index of schools. Essentially a blend between the Wikiversity concept and the index above.
3. A plug-in of the plebisite software which allows users to intuitively search the school and research index above, as well as submit articles into the framework - (ala` wiki?)
4. An agreement to make all published papers, articles, research and materials available for free in the public domain using the proper creative commons license, however not neccessarily published through the plebisite software itself.
5. A collectively developed international curriculum available for free, with resources and guides on modifying the content and methods for local classrooms.
6. A lobbying structure to formally adopt this new curriculum within school districts around the globe.

It's worth mentioning that each of these could be 'phased-in' or integrated separately or in conjunction. In addition to discussing specific details of each of these, can we think of any other aspects worth adding to this list?

This post has been edited by jschroder on Nov 12 2004, 05:36 AM

[mking]

I stumbled onto this site omidyar.net through an article I read in Esquire magazine. J-you may already be aware of this via creative commons, but I think this is something to explore.
The Omidyar Network is a project of Pierre Omidyar, the creator of ebay. It really sounds like he is very in tune with the kind of collaborative creation that we are attempting here.
From the article interview "Remember we want people to discover their own power to make good things happen, not just talk about them or suggest others do something about it. -Pierre Omidyar (Esquire Dec 2004 p 238)"
Basically this network has supported a whole bunch of projects such as; creative commons, new voters project, and a host of other democratically minded projects that aim to benefit society. To view just click on the "people we're working with" link off the homepage.
The site is very low key, from what I gather from the article this is due to Omidyar's personal feeling that he wants to stay out of the limelight, he feels that this is a good way for him to find things to fund with his millions. The fascinating thing is that he really seems to want to just give to those who are doing good work and he prefers for them to approach him through this network.
Look under contact us and you find:
"Rather than send us your proposal or business plan, please join us on omidyar.net, an online collaborative community where anyone can pursue their passion to make the world a better place and connect with others who share their interests. We prefer to get to know each other in this collaborative environment first — in a place where we can all learn about many different areas at once, exchange and improve upon ideas together, and with others as well."
Then you can click to enter the network and participate.
I think the plebisite would be a prefect fit to partner with the Omidyar Network. In any case it is really a fascinating place to check out as an example of a similar community, though I think we may be lacking a millionaire in our midst:)
What do you guys think?
m