Nobody I have ever met inspires me more on innovation of and dedication to village education that Mrs N Begum. Being a parent of a teenager of this extraordinary net generation -and one who is most frustrated about the rotten curricula and modality of 21st C education in the worlds richest schools - I have spent quite a lot of my last 7 years searching for grassroots opportunities to meet great educators. I have found that those who do the most with the least actually have a lot that youth in schools governed by politicians in richer places need to action learn from. So this web is about:

1 who else inspires me

2) what might be Mrs N Begum;s next world class projects;

3)  what has she already given the world.

One remark before proceeding; I know that both Mrs B and I are most inspired of all by Dr Muhammad Yunus- part of what he does is of course education but he's got much much more to do in changing investments all round the world to be pro-youth instead of disinvesring in youth the way that errant macroeconomics is spinning . You can see examples of his heroic networking at spaces like http://leadersandyunus.ning.com or www.sbdays.com - so back to my number 1 heroine in education's world

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more of educations most promising revolutions:

 open course ware at MIT is huge idea- I am not aware if any worldwide student communities connect to it by sharing peer learnings - eg is there a wiki of what students in different parts of the world have learnt that they feel they wouldn't have if open cousre ware didnt exist - please chat with us if you are fans of open course ware

intriguingly (a few yards away in boston) one of the best wikis I have ever see connects gthe community of practice of the $100 laptop- I wish I understood the full story of where Negroponte hasn't wholly been able to test $100laptop the way he wants and whether the rumored $100 tablet and increasing use of addis abba as an african meta-hub will be ways forward ; what amazes me is the things that wouldnt exist in their present form if it hadnt been for timely interventions of Negropronte - eg MIT's Media Lab; I also wonder if it was inevitable that Intel and Negropronte as the 2 of the most exciting explorers of microedu for the poor had their fallout- by which I mean I wish that their peer networkers would increasingly find ways to get back together

sir ken robinson is one of the clearest explainers of why we need an educational revolution but more info is sought on where the practice networks of sir ken are to be linked in

now that sun is no longer direct scott mcneally baby, his newer baby curriki is well worth following

its worth tracking what newark is doing with the $100 million it reportedly got from facebook's founder to do some radical changes in education -news welcome; if I could have a chat with the likes of Gatses Fpundation I would wish yto foreward the motion  that there are system interventions needed in american's consititutional and understanding of microentrepreneurship before we can empower worthy teacher movents like Teach for America to be paradigms that the erst of the world needs to look at first

I am interested to hear views of which funding foundations bet the most chnage for the buck with the focus they choose - perhaps because of all the troubles linked into youth employment by banking;s recent subprime failures, some financially linkeed foundations are doing interesting projects, but mostly not in america  - see eg MasterCardFoundation  DiscoveryCardFoundation.S.Africa

chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk wash dc 1=301 881 1655 skype chrismacraedc