UPDATE - I have decided against this.
Hello Kossacks. On a few occasions I have posted comments within DailyKos threads related to science education that I had created an MCAT course over the past fifteen years which I was releasing as a Creative Commons work. In the dozen or so replies to these comments individuals nobody seemed to think it would be too self promotional for me to create syllabus diaries for the modules and post the videos an independent school and I are creating from our live course in Atlanta. I am a Kossack with a three digit user ID. The videos would be appearing every other week on Science Friday.
Because the entire body of learning materials is now a creative commons work, there will be a large number of downloads in these diaries. Nothing is being held back.
These materials include thousands of questions, discussions, figures, a physics learning system, an organic mechanisms book, a 4000 term scientific glossary, an image archive of over 6000 creative commons figures and much else that works together within the interdisciplinary spiraling curriculum of the course.
The course is located at wikipremed.com (which I am desperate to get in shape this month before beginning my live course, which is a fundraiser for a school). Although WikiPremed the website is hosted by my print publishing company. The works on the site are not proprietary. Every single thing can be picked up and made your own without ever paying anything. I hope that professors and students with an interest in premedical education will be curious as to whether or not I have accomplished something worthwhile in fifteen years of work. Whatever professors and students do make of the deeper underpinnings of the curriculum I have created, at least I hope they will see that I have been extremely patient and dedicated in my work. It is a difficult position for me having no advanced degree and no professional standing, but there was no other path to this work. In 1993 I probably had the highest MCAT score of any English major in the country, and I have been on my own, giving up going to medical school, ever since the goals of this project took hold in me.
It was a very risky decision to try to build my life's work outside of an established professional pathway, but in science the groove is ever more specialized as you move into research. Alfred North Whitehead said one had specialize to be effective in the modern world and that was in the nineteen twenties. I guess my specialty is in the field of education having to do with interdisciplinary education in science, and MCAT preparation. The kind of project required to make the network of relationships underlying the unity of science present to the mind of another person is so huge that sometimes I feel like I will not be able to find a harbor to bring the ship in.
For Dailykos the question is whether it is appropriate for a private company to have a presence in a recurring diary. Even if what I am doing is worthwhile, some may feel it may set a bad precedent. Established authors can post and help their book promotion, but this would be different I think. I personally do not enjoy my standing as a 'private company', but what else can I be? To make things better, I will be trying to recruit a faculty board for the resource to provide direction and ensure educational values. I hope to sustain myself and my family as a printer of things I'm basically giving away, which people can print themselves, my own work, and I have hopes of being a printing really nice sets of open source lecture notes on behalf of professors for advanced placement students in high school.
One thing that indicates the weighting of motive with this is that there is practically nothing for sale at the site today! If I were a decent businessperson I should at least have mugs for you to buy. I am in the midst of the overhaul from tables to CSS that webmasters know all about, and I am transforming all of my works into downloads and free online processes and this only about a third finished, so the site will look better in a few weeks when I start posting. If you dig into the science topics or syllabus you'll start to get how the curriculum works. The purpose of this project is basically to make an undergraduate equivalent education freely available to anyone in the world.
A video of the complete course is being prepared for free release on the internet which will have a collection box for Horizons School, a wonderful little independent school in Atlanta which is making the course. For the year long program I am hoping online students will feel like dropping $20 a couple of times for this school, which is a lot better than $2000 for ExamKrackers, Kaplan, or Princeton Review, which frankly aren't as good. I am really trying to help this wonderful little school as a parent and teacher volunteer (Horizons School in Atlanta). The next phase of development of my work will be for middle school, high school integrated science as well as the Step 1 stage of medical school. I really hope to accomplish this work.
If this makes an interesting discussion, and the diary gets recommended, maybe an Atlanta premed or two will read this. If so, please come to the informational sessions for the live MCAT course on Monday May 12 or May 19 at 7:00 PM at the Horizons School Theater. I am hoping of getting a college bowl tournament going between teams from Atlanta schools this summer, so it will be fun! We will feed you.
So there will be a bit of boosterism, but mostly I will be posting a great deal of learning content here if the group feels it is okay. If you are interested in mastering science but did not get the opportunity in college, following this course might be a stimulating and absorbing activity for you.