Building Knowledge Societies
the Supercourse
Strategic Plan:
Building a Library of Alexandria
Scientific Supercourse
Ronald E. LaPorte, Ph.D.
Gilbert Omenn, M.D.
Ismail Serageldin, Ph.D.
Vint Cerf, Ph.D.
Faina Linkov, Ph.D.
Send Comments to ronlaporte@aol.com
Imhotep,
the "father of medicine". The word
"Imhotep" means "he who comes in
peace'
Medicine is a science from which one learns
the states of the human body with respect to
what is healthy and what is not, in order to
preserve good health when it exists and
restore it when it is lacking
Ibn Sina, the opening to the Qanun fi al-tibb
Changing Life Expectancies
80
75
70
65
60
55
US
Qatar
50
45
40
1945
1975
2005
Causes of Death in Qatar
95% of Classroom Lectures use PowerPoint
75% of Distance Learning use PowerPoint
7
Improved Manufacturing and
Delivery of Lectures
Why don’t scientists and educators
share our most exciting PowerPoint
lectures on the Internet for free?
Internet Library of Lectures
Faculty can choose 1-4000 lectures
Educating the Teacher
44,000 Faculty
175 Countries
Lectures
Supercourse Lectures Teaching
1,000,000 Students
Education is the most
powerful weapon which
you can use to change
the world.
Nelson Mandela
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Developed under grants from NASA and NLM/NIH
Global Expert Network of 45,000 including 20 Noble
Prize Winners, Director NIH, US Surgeon General, Vint
Cerf
•3,383 PowerPoint lectures on prevention
• 80 million hits a year
• Highest Google Percentile Ranked Site for Global
Health lectures
• 170 publications in Science, Nature, PNAS
• Top 100 PC magazine site
• Taught >1 million in the past 12 months
23
WHO-NCD-Supercourse
Scientific Supercourse
Need for a Scientific Supercourse
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Science has become enormous, and compartmentalized
making interdisciplinary research and training difficult
It is a very large task to keep current for 2 areas of
science, let alone 30 topics for a review course
Many Scientific findings take >5 year to appear in
classrooms
A large number of developing countries have not
received scientific journals and books for greater than a
decade
Scientists have always shared, why not share our best
lectures?
The Library of Alexandria saved scientific works for
>700 years, we should archive our lectures
Supercourse
Global Network of Scientists Sharing
PowerPoint Lectures
Building a Scientific Supercourse
• Vetted content
• Network
• Distribution System
• Funding
Discipline Vetted Lectures
Of Science =
Keynote Speakers
Networking Scientists
• Scientists in 1-20 of each other
• 45,000 Prevention network contacting Scientific
Friends
• Flier in Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese
• Viral Marketing
• All Scientists in world knowing about this in 3
weeks
Distribution Scheme
• Library of Alexandria Supercourse
• Mirrored servers in all national libraries
• DVDs
• Mirrored servers for each scientific Disciplines
Prometheus statue
At the Library of Alexandria
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ronlaporte@aol.com