PBS Receives $500,000 Gates Foundation Grant

PBS has received a nearly $500,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create new, educational multiplatform digital content to advance math achievement in partnership with New York City Department of Education’s experimental School of One (So1). New content will be created specifically for the personalized classroom instruction platform pioneered by So1 and distributed through the PBS Digital Learning Library (DLL).

PBS will pilot a new initiative — the Digital Learning Object Academy — to spur the innovation and capacity of public media producers to create targeted, high-quality, digital media resources for education.

“PBS and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation share a commitment to help all children reach their full potential,” said Rob Lippincott, SVP, PBS Education. “Math education is critical to the future of our country and this generous grant allows PBS to continue using the power of educational digital media to boost teacher development, increase student engagement and ensure all children have the skills and opportunity to thrive in the 21st century.”

PBS’s new library of digital math content designed for 6th grade classrooms will be implemented through NYC DOE’s School of One. So1 is known for its experimental classroom instruction that blends high-quality teaching practices, differentiated learning and personalized instruction technologies to deliver an adaptive learning experience to students on a daily basis.

The PBS Digital Learning Object Academy pilot will launch in January 2011 with a three-day workshop pairing curriculum experts, consumer product technologists and leading interactive design thinkers with content producers to develop a rich library of digital learning resources.

In addition to the workshop, PBS will provide ongoing professional development to content producers in a collaborative online environment designed to guide the digital learning object development. Public media content producers are invited to submit a proposal (http://www.pbsdigitallearninglibary.org) to participate in the pilot Academy to create math digital learning objects for the School of One project.