[Marketing] Mixing Free Software and Free + Proprietary content. A case study

[Caroline Meeks]

This is a follow up to our discussions about California. I want to expand
your experiences around what can be done, but I don't know that we should
directly talk about any of this in our letter to CA.

One of Solution Grove's clients is Connecticut Center for 21st Century
Skills.  They create mixed medium classes for middle and high schools.

The classes are run on entirely open source software, Moodle, ELGG for
ePortfolios and LAMS for pedagogy support.

One of their new products is a complete curriculum for midldle school
science. No additional text book required. Its being piloted this year at
the Lila Fredrick in Boston.

A wonderful master science teacher put it together.  It contains free
content from all over the world.  She uses stuff from the NSF and also a lot
from the UK.  She also use proprietary interactive lessons from a company
called Adaptive Curriculum http://www.adaptivecurriculum.com.

There just isn't full coverage out there without some proprietary content

The integration was annoying. We had to modify Moodle to interact with their
DRM.  http://www.solutiongrove.com/blogger/one-entry?entry_id=1056027

Annoying but not really a big deal in the greater scheme of things.  Any of
these content vendors will need to have their DRM work with Firefox and
likely Moodle. Thus letting kids access it through a Sugar machine vs a
MacBook, it shouldn't be that big a deal.

I have a big practical side.  To be economical, the class has to replace ALL
of a middle school science curriculum.  That can't be done without some
proprietary content right now. But by using a great deal of open content,
they are encouraging the creation of more open content.  This sort of course
is what I want to see. Interesting, interactive, varied material and more
affordable then the much less innovate text they are using in the other
classes.

The problem is, the kids can only use it during class! They can't bring
their MacBooks home, not all the kids have netbooks at home, so the teacher
can't assign this as homework.  It would be so much better if they were
interacting with their teacher during class and with these high quality
learning objects at home or at their after school program as homework.

Sugar and Sugar on a Stick and Linux on a Stick could make this experience
even better, and I think almost all the DRM technical issues would be
handled at the server level.  I want the best and most affordable
educational materials in the kids hands now. I don't think we should, and I
certainly don't think we technically need to, let DRM stand in the way.

-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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