WASHINGTON, Sept. 20, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Saylor Foundation is pleased to announce a collaboration with Google, Inc. to offer Saylor.org courses through the Course Builder open source project. Beginning today, Saylor's Mechanics I will be open for free registration and will be immediately available to individuals across the globe via the beta platform released by Google.
Based on the software used by Google to build Power Searching with Google, the Course Builder open source project is an experimental technology and is the first step toward helping educational organizations scale their offerings through the cloud.
"We're beyond excited to be working with Google on the initial testing of Course Builder," said Alana Harrington, Director of the Saylor Foundation. "Google's unparalleled reach combined with this new approachable platform and our professor-vetted and -created open educational content could have a major impact on access to education around the world."
Through its mission to make education freely available for all, the Saylor Foundation provides an option for education-seeking individuals facing financial or geographical barriers by employing university professors to compile high quality, open educational resources into college-level courseware. The Foundation has built over 200 self-paced, automated college-level courses, which are freely available via www.saylor.org.
Individuals can register for Mechanics I through the Course Builder open source project at: http://cb-me102.saylor.org. The Saylor Foundation plans to roll out additional courses in the coming weeks.
About the Saylor Foundation
The Saylor Foundation (under its legal name, The Constitution Foundation) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Foundation was established in 1999 by Michael J. Saylor, the Chairman, CEO, and President of the business intelligence company MicroStrategy. Mr. Saylor serves as the Foundation's sole trustee. The Foundation's focus since 2008 has been its Free Education Initiative, through which it is using technology to drive down the cost of education to zero. Saylor.org serves as a zero-cost alternative for individuals who lack the resources to attend traditional brick-and-mortar institutions and as a complement to willing mainstream education providers. Saylor expects free, self-paced, automated online learning opportunities to motivate people to pursue personal growth and career ambitions as well as to lead to institutional change among education providers everywhere.
More information about the Saylor Foundation and its 200+ free, college-level courses is available at www.saylor.org.
The Saylor Foundation logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=13180