[FC-discuss] Huge announcement today: Obama announces $50 million for CC licensed content

[Alex Kozak]

This is huge!

Word on the street is that Obama's American Graduation Initiative announced
today (
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Investing-in-Education-The-American-Graduation-Initiative/)
includes $50 million for creating open online courses, we're told under a CC
license.

Relevant text from his speech:
*
"Even as we repair bricks and mortar, we have an opportunity to build a new
virtual infrastructure to complement the education and training community
colleges can offer.  So we're going to support the creation of a new online,
open-source clearinghouse of courses so that community colleges across the
country can offer more classes without building more classrooms.  And this
will make a big difference especially for rural campuses that a lot of times
have struggled -- attract -- have to struggle to attract students and
faculty.  And this will make it possible for a professor to complement his
lecture with an online exercise, or for a student who can't be away from her
family to still keep up with her coursework.  We don't know where this kind
of experiment will lead, but that's exactly why we ought to try it because I
think there's a possibility that online education can provide especially for
people who are already in the workforce and want to retrain the chance to
upgrade their skills without having to quit their job."*

Thanks to everyone who continues to advocate for open content. There is much
more to be done!

-- 
Alex Kozak
Education Program Assistant
ccLearn, Creative Commons
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://freeculture.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20090714/3aa2f9a4/attachment.htm