DOHA: Curriki, the innovative award-winning project of the first World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), is keen on partnering with Qatar. Dr Barbara Bobbi Kurshan, Executive Director of Curriki told The Peninsula yesterday that they were working on the possibility of implementing the project in the country.

Barbara said they will be meeting top officials of Qatar Foundation tomorrow to discuss their proposed project for Qatar. It is also exploring the possibilities of covering other GCC countries, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and working on developing Arab content targeting the Arab region and looking for teachers trainers to learn Arabic curriculum.

Curriki-Global Education and Learning Community — is a non-profit organisation that supports the development and distribution of free open source educational materials to improve education worldwide. Its mission is to eliminate the Education Divide-the gap between those who have access to high-quality education and those who do not- in the US and around the world. It supports the development and distribution of free open source educational material to improve education worldwide, she said.

Talking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of the second day of the WISE Summit, Barbara expressed hope that Curriki would be able to introduce Arabic curriculum in the region. “We are also working for translating English content into Arabic”, she said.

As of now, Barbara said, some 4.7 million students are benefiting from Curriki content. It is targeting a membership of one million teachers by 2014. The project will continue to expand its library of primary and secondary teaching materials to bring high-quality education to children everywhere.

Today, textbooks are the primary form of instructional materials used in a curriculum. The US spends about $5bn on textbooks each year, up from about $2bn in 1991. These costs are continuing to rise, not only in the US, but all over the world.

Curriki is the first all-embracing Internet site instituted to develop and support the best of Open Source Curriculum. It is the only site to develop this complete Open Source Curriculum solution based on a comprehensive curricular framework that includes defined learning objectives, instructional materials, teacher training and student assessment of mastery,

she said.

“Our online setup will make it easy to post a wide variety of different resources, course and curricula, we will encourage community members to review, edit, revise and combine resources into course and complete curricula,” Barbara added.