Dear Commons Community,

As indicated in my previous post, I have been in San Jose attending  the Emerging Technologies for Online Learning Symposium.  I attended a plenary session yesterday where the speaker was Dr. Milton Chen, Senior Fellow, The George Lucas Educational Foundation.   His presentation entitled, Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools, was based on his book with the same title.  Dr. Chen’s presentation was well-done with many significant comments directed mostly to K-12 educators.   What I kept thinking about during his presentation was the number of private foundations, mostly corporate affiliated, that were one way or another visible at this symposium.  As someone who has received grants from a number of entities both public and private, I kept thinking that the number of private foundations now interested in technology and education has grown significantly over the past dozen years.  I think this is good and opens up funding streams for work in this area especially important now that state and local funding are feeling severe fiscal constraints.  Naturally anyone applying for a grant from one of the private foundations has to buy into the grantor’s program which is the obligation we incur in developing the grant relationship.

Tony