In August, President Obama outlined an ambitious new agenda to combat rising college costs and make college affordable for American families. As a part of this plan, the President called on the U.S. Department of Education to enlist entrepreneurs and technology leaders to catalyze new private-sector tools, services, and apps to help students evaluate and select colleges. On Wednesday, in response to the President’s call, the White House and the U.S. Department of Education will host an Education “Datapalooza”, highlighting innovators from the private, nonprofit, and academic sectors who have used freely available government data to build products, services, and apps that advance postsecondary education, empower students with information, and help colleges innovate in creative and powerful ways.
In particular, the program will focus on two areas responsive to the President’s call: empowering students and families with the information, apps, websites, and other tools to make informed decisions about going to and paying for college — and leveraging technology to increase the quality of teaching in learning both online and in hybrid formats that can mean breakthroughs on college cost and quality.
Over the past few years, the Obama Administration has launched a series of Open Data Initiatives, which have released troves of valuable data that were previously hard to access in areas such as health, energy, education, public safety, and global development. These data are being used by innovators, businesses, researchers, and the public to create new services and applications that benefit Americans. Leading up to the Datapalooza, the U.S. Department of Education, in partnership with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, traveled across the country to gather feedback and host "Data Jams", which brought together groups of entrepreneurs, software developers, college and university scholars and students, along with policymakers and others, to brainstorm creative ideas to improve postsecondary education in support of President Obama’s college value and affordability efforts.
REGISTRATION: To attend in-person, media must RSVP HERE by Tuesday, January 14 at 5:00 PM ET.
For more information, visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp