Texas moves emphasize need to open source education | ZDNet

Texas moves emphasize need to open source education | ZDNet

Texas moves emphasize need to open source education

By Dana Blankenhorn | May 25, 2010, 6:50am PDT

Summary

Texas has created an enormous opportunity for states, for communities, for publishers, and for authors to use open source and mass customization to transform education, just as those savings are most needed.

Topics

Education, Texas,Board, Corporate Governance, Open Source, Business Operations, Corporate Law, Dana Blankenhorn

Blogger Info

Dana Blankenhorn

• Bio
• Email

Paula Rooney

• Bio
• Email

I didn’t intend to get into the Texas school board controversy.

Personal reasons. After I left college I was a close friend of a guy who is now a member of that board, one of its most controversial.

Back in 1978 David Bradley was drifting, but the woman he married around the time I knew him straightened him out. Last I saw him he was living in the mansion where the papers creating what later became Exxon were signed.

But his latest silliness (only stupid kids believe the history they’re taught in high school) got me to thinking of the enormous opportunities there are for open source in education, starting in the area of textbooks.

What lefty political types will tell you is that Texas’ school book standards are followed in lockstep by most other states, because Texas is such a large market and publishers don’t want to publish multiple