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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.

After reading this I wonder what other resources there are online for learning all those things that I have found difficult to master in my life.

A great read and resource that came up through another one of my classes. The Harvard Business School grad makes free online videos that explore math and science concepts. Bill Gates is a big fan.

Edufire is an open platform that connects students and teachers from around the world and enables teachers to tutor over the internet. Initiatives like this one, support Bill Gates' view that in 5 years the best education will come from the Web. (Reference this article: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/06/bill-gates-education/)

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.

Bill Gates on MOOCs.

Gates funding higher ed tech

Some interesting videos on this topic from Sir Ken Robinson, Conrad Wolfram, Salman Khan, Bill Gates and others.

CNN on "Fixing Education." Secrets of Seoul and Mr. Bill Gates focus on teachers.

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."

Gates-funded MIT massive game

My colleagues at the Ed Arcade are designing this game - if anyone's interested, I can get you supplemental information.

Bill Gates: In Five Years The Best Education Will Come From The Web

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Next Generation Learning Challenges, a collaborative, multi-year initiative, which aims to help dramatically improve college readiness and college completion in the United States through the use of technology.