Sharing, Freedom and Openness

For many years I’ve thought that all knowledge should be free and open to all. One of my goals is to share everything I know with everyone in the world for free. I started several years ago by sharing all of my practice test questions (quizzes) in my field (biochemistry and molecular biology) in a format that I thought would be most productive for the learner (self learning exercises with immediate feedback). You can find these posted here:

http://medweb.usc.edu/pub/

These self learning exercises were created with JEST (Javascript Enabled Self Test) which is freely available to the public (for free) to create their own self learning exercises:

http://biomed.usc.edu/jest

More recently I’ve decided to make all of my lectures in biochemistry and molecular biology freely available to all on the web in a wiki format. You can find the beginnings of my efforts here:

http://keck.on-wiki.net/BiochemistryLearningModules

One of the problems in this project is to find good images (graphics) for illustration of structures and pathways. Wikipedia (and Creative Commons) provides a great source but it’s fairly limited if you’re trying to teach a whole subject area (e.g. bioenergetics and energy metabolism, fatty acid metabolism, etc.). Further, it’s almost impossible for a single individual to create all of these images. It truly requires a community effort among individuals with knowledge and skills in these areas.

Anyone who would like to contribute to this effort of “Sharing, Freedom and Openness”, please feel free to contact me directly (or respond to this blog). I would like to help you share your knowledge and skills with the world.

http://keck.on-wiki.net/RayMosteller