Gates Foundation Earmarks $20 Million for Education Technology

Image credit: Gates Foundation

The Gates Foundation is offering $20 million in grants to individuals and institutions who are harnessing or developing innovative technologies to make students more successful.

In a blog post, Bill Gates introduces the Next Generation Learning Challenge, a project that aims to “accelerate the integration of technology in ways that substantially improve learning.”

The program will provide grants and gather evidence about effective educational practices in order to facilitate the development and implementation of affordable, high-quality tools in order to meet the needs of students within the budgetary confines of today’s education system. 

The first round of grants is focused on technology that can aid post secondary students complete college. Grants will be given in waves of 6-12 months, with each period focusing on a different topic area.

The barriers to entry are low: submitting an idea just requires visiting the website and describing what you have in mind.

The assumption behind the Next Generation Learning Challenge is certainly a sound one: whether through online games, social networks, online video, or mobile phones, technology is increasingly stretching beyond just having computers in a classroom, and is playing a more extended role in the educational process.

Unsurprisingly, technology companies are working to capitalize on this. For instance, last month, Santa Clara based chipmaker Marvell announced a $100,000 competition for application developers to bring “revolutionary new educational applications to classrooms around the world,” as part of its Mobylize tech for education campaign.

The Gates program is bound to kick up some debate about the usefulness of technology in the educational sphere – already a controversial topic amongst educators, many of whom are of the view that technology is more of a distraction for students than an aid.