Microsoft get a lot of bad press so it is always nice to hear that EX CEO Bill Gates is handing out more money for charitable causes. This time Bill and his wife Melinda are spearheading a college based inititive to help improve education.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is to fund many ideas, including trying to help students master difficult subjects with online college tuition from leading professors. The initiative helps to find new ways to deliver college instruction using technology to help cut costs and improve results.

This will provide grants to educators and entrepreneurs to develop more fully promising technology tools. At the start the focus will be on classes taken by students in higher education but in subsequent years will focus on K-12 learning said Bill Gates in a conference call yesterday.

Some of the technologies they might help fund will include the improvement of ‘blending' learning systems which help combine online learning with face to face instruction and even using digital games to help grab attention. Real time student monitoring can also be utilised to help improve the life support system.

The grants will range in size from $250,000 to $750,000 and the Gates Foundation said that by 30, fewer than half of all Americans have earned a college degree. Last week the Gates Foundation accounced a $34.8 million program to help boost community college graduation rates.

KitGuru says: Bill Gates is actually a very generous billionaire, having handed out billions of dollars over the years to charitable causes.

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