controlled online book subscriptions in schools

I remember George Soros via his Open Society Foundation was the one to give hundreds or thousands of computers to schools in romania starting around 1993. I think he's guilty for Romania developing such a good and vibrant community of good software developers after 1990.

It was an era of BBS and desktop applications only. I remember coding in GW Basic, Turbo Pascal, Turbo Assembler, Turbo C, DBase, FoxPro -- on George Soros's computers from my school.

But there were no books at all at that time. I mean REAL books wrote by real professionals connected to the real software and problems at that time. I remember my teacher was offering me from time to time a book he was able to buy or "get" somehow. But there not enough ones.

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Now things have changed. Hardware/computers are cheap and romania is no longer so poor. There is google, internet and flood of information one have to choose from.

I think there is too much information for the very young ones. They don't know what to choose or where to choose. It's ok to search on google but the temptations are too many if a young one don't have a good system of metrics to "classify information" based on some rules.

Too many parents are busy trying to make money for their family - but I think leave education just for teachers.

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Translated to 2008 -- a good development for long term in education might be "controlled online books subscriptions for students".

Any kid above 14 studying some "software" related class/course must have online access to GOOD and RELIABLE sources of information: BOOKS.

Taking the good example of Safari Books Online (which I'm very happy about) -- I think an example of around $400/year/student is a fantastic investment for long term. There may be other providers as well -- but this one is really good. Having around 300 books available over a year for a student let him really choose from what's best.

Online companies like Safari would also benefit from this -- it's a new vertical to consider. They currently don't sell expensive books to very young people or students. It would be a new form of long-tail.

Education "managers" should really think on this. I know kids in front of computers can be very bad -- a balanced learn/play/rest must be achieved.

I think too many students finishing school these days don't like to read books because they are EXPENSIVE or INEXISTENT to their context/world.

Kids/juniors now no longer listen just because there's no anything else to do. They are very 'demanding' - they have 'high standards' and requirements :-)

I'm a big supporter of RSS and any online information flood. But really the profoundness come from books (if ever to come ...)

I think in 30->50 years -- the country to invest in education is the one to have a better life. Unfortunately too less is done in terms of "real infrastructure". Usually it's about politics and nice speeches.

As far as I read -- USA is having big problems in this area of new engineers (software included). What's worse regarding this -- I'm not sure in 2008 young students from Romania want to "go west" and live in USA no matter what -- like it was 20 years ago. So just "more visas" don't solve the problem.