Gates Foundation Donates $20 million for Online Courses

I am assuming that these "free to use" courses will be completely free to schools and teachers for use. I am wondering if Pearson gets anything out of it in the long run? It seems to me that there is already a lot of very good, teacher-created and open-source-provided courseware out there. The real future is, I believe, not entire courses, but a platform that makes it as easy as a few clicks to add course components together, allowing teachers to combine what they believe individual students need to master the standards.

I haven't seen the specs for how the money will be spent on these courses, but I would hope they will be set up in such a way that teachers could take components from them to use as they choose, and not an "all or nothing" approach. I also wonder how this free courseware fits in with the Pearson suite of online courses that they license to customers at a premium price? I am hopeful that most of the dollars invested by the Gates Foundation go into the actual value for students, and not in a deal that allows Pearson to profit on an ongoing basis from the product or parts of the product. I am thinking, for example, that there is a potential for the agreement to allow Package their completed product in different ways themselves to charge for it on an ongoing basis, while having some version available for free.

Let's think positively that students win more than a for-profit company does!

Lisa McClure of NJ 12:13PM April 30, 2011