One reservation I've had about Khan Academy, is a "gather college textbooks and distill them" story doesn't work well when textbooks so poorly describe domains. When MIT did a VR intro to cell biology, they reached out to people with direct research expertise. And found them very intrinsically motivated to contribute. But it's still no small effort.
Creating excellent stories, especially interdisciplinary ones, requires far more intensive domain expertise than is usually appreciated. And seems more at the scale of (neglected) societal infrastructure, than something that can be MVPed in passing.
But perhaps excellence in stories is more than is needed. At least to develop and prove the delivery mechanism. But coming from science ed, I think of misconceptions as toxins that can severely diminish outcomes.
So as I read the Boston Harbor story slide, I thought... The big heavy canvas fluttered away?!? Is there a hurricane? Was anyone killed? Did they launch a boat to recover it? Why was the label sun-weathered if it was under a canvas? Did they really use printed labels on sea cargo? I'd have naively thought branding the wood more likely. And so on.
An issue with science education graphics, is they often mix aspects done with great care for correctness, with aspects that are artistic license with little connection to reality. And students lack the background to identify which aspects are which. Creating rich ecosystems of misconceptions that compromise understanding.
But students' understanding of history is and will remain so poor, that perhaps there's little there to damage. Content might be pure upside, regardless of shortcuts taken to keep creation costs plausible. At least until we do better.
Re Gates Foundation... perhaps a useful model is that they think of patents and established companies as keys to impact at scale... and thus do things which can seem less than ethical if one doesn't share that perspective.
