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The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and four nonprofit education organizations are investing to accelerate the development online learning tools. According to Mr. Gates, "Innovation is our only hope", and "And the nly new game in town is Technology."

The link within the article to the hybrid education 2.0 article really speaks to the new "badge" movement online. What they say makes sense in support for these. Will be interesting to see how this evolves.

The American Council of Education will review some Coursera classes to see if they will recommend them to other universities as "acceptable." This involves a review by existing professors for course quality. Other interesting tidbits: looks like Coursera will pilot remote-proctoring to verify identity of students; Gates Foundation just gave away $3 million to study MOOCs and create remedial / introductory classes.

Related to our design exercise from section this week--check out what new blended learning models caught the eye of the Gates Foundation. "Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC), an initiative dedicated to improving college readiness and completion, today announced grants totaling $5.4 million for 13 new models of personalized, blended learning at the secondary and postsecondary levels."

Looks like there is some funding available to scientifically evaluate MOOCs for remedial education! I think the results will be interesting to see, since I remember from discussion or a reading that some ed tech seems to work for autism and special needs students...so maybe MOOCs also have a niche.

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is offering ten grants for MOOCs that reach lower achievers in schools.

Gates funding higher ed tech

Here is the link to the archived version of the SIIA webinar I posted about a few days ago: "The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) is working to create a standard metadata framework for tagging educational resources on the web to enhance search, discovery and delivery of educational content. The project is funded by the Gates and Hewlett Foundations, administered through AEP and Creative Commons, and builds on the broader Schema.org project by leading search engines Bing, Google, and Yahoo! This webinar provides an overview of the LRMI goals and deliverables, an update on progress and timelines, a look at the technical specifications, and a discussion of its implementation and impact with a focus on content publishers, aggregators and other digital learning providers."

"In This Session What do teachers really think about digital games in the classroom? Join us for our community's next webinar for the just-released findings of a year-long research project, sponsored by BrainPOP and the Gates Foundation, that investigates teachers' attitudes and beliefs on game-based learning. Michael Levine and Jessica Millstone, Executive Director and Research Consultant at The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, will showcase the findings of this national survey that was conducted with 500 teachers nationwide who are currently integrating digital games into their classes.......

How test designers are trying to move away from standardized tests to computer programs that can measure a myriad of skills simultaneously through simulations and "stealth monitoring."  Both Chris Dede and Howard Gardner are mentioned.

Gates Foundation is now rolling out funding for researchers to produce peer-reviewed quality studies on MOOCs. It looks like professors around the world (as far as down south in Australia) are keen to start working on this new tech trend in education.

With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, SRI International is conducting a study investigating to what extent, why, when, and how online learning models that target Algebra 1 work or do not work for different student populations, especially those that are historically disadvantaged or underserved.