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Sun Microsystems co-founder pushes education project

Since Sun Microsystems Inc co-founder Scott McNealy stepped down as chief executive to focus on his chairmanship full-time, he has been spearheading a side project to transform education the same way digital music upended the recording industry.

Though it is not part of his official duties at Santa Clara, California-based Sun, McNealy is spending a lot of time as pitchman for a project called Curriki -- short for curriculum and wiki, which is a Web site allowing users to add and modify content and claim a piece of authorship.

In the case of Curriki, parents, teachers and students can post and download free lesson plans, sample tests, book chapters and other materials. McNealy said the site has strict copyright protections, requiring intellectual property releases for all the original material it publishes.

He said the idea is to lower the barrier to basic educational materials as more students get access to the Internet worldwide.

McNealy said he is particularly concerned about developing countries where network infrastructure is sparse, and he is encouraging local governments to boost network spending and adopt Curriki's open-source education model.

That's why he chose China to launch the second phase of the site this week. McNealy is keynoting a Sun education conference today in Beijing, where he will announce added features to the site, including the ability to create personalized pages and a function allowing users to upload and review documents in real time.

The site has 3,000 posted items and some 35,000 members.

"The two hot-button issues every CEO would put at the top of their list are health care costs and better-educated employees -- everybody agrees that if we haven't gotten them by the eighth or ninth grade we might lose them," McNealy said.

"Getting kids excited about learning is at the top of our lists, and this is just one little piece of the puzzle," said the former CEO, who came up with the idea three years ago while helping one of his sons with a science project.
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