The XPRIZE (http://xprize.org) began with a $10 million reward for the first successful privately funded manned space flight. When that achieved its goal, XPRIZE created other rewards for monitoring ocean health, cheaply performing blood analysis, landing a privately funded robot on the moon, and developing a Star Trek-style Tricorder.
Last September, XPRIZE announced the Global Learning XPRIZE ( http://learning.xprixe.org). The goal is, in a fixed period of time, to create the best tablet app for teaching 7-10 year olds reading, writing, and arithmetic, as judged by an 18-month field test. The total prize pool is $15M. Lots of discussion has been going on over at http://forum.xprize.org, but nowhere has Racket come up in the conversation. Based on: - the power and breadth of Racket - the excellent documentation and support provided by the Racket community - the continuous improvement of Racket through research and implementation - the interest of many in the Racket community in education - the exciting things I saw at RacketCon (including Jay McCarthy's game development system) - and my own successful experience developing a prototype software analysis system for a startup I'm involved with ... I think that Racket could be a very competitive underlying platform for an entry in the Learning XPRIZE competition. Please let me know if you would be interested in exploring this possibility. Byron Davies, Ph.D mailto:byrondav...@starshine.us Chief Learner and Director of K-12 Innovation StarShine Academy (Phoenix; Santa Fe; Wau, South Sudan; and Puerto Peñasco, Mexico) http://starshineacademy.org 480-276-4285 [When you go to the XPRIZE site, you'll find that the winning entry must be delivered on an Android tablet. Racket doesn't run on Android, but I have already started a porting project. If anyone would like to help with that particular project -- and be able to fun Racket on your phone -- let me know.)
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