Thank you, Mike Honda and Anna Eshoo! Digital Promise is taking off - need letters of support now

Let's hear it for the SF Bay Area representatives!  Mike Honda (D-CA) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA) are co-sponsors of legislation to create a Trust for digital education, my father and Larry Grossman's vision of the Digital Promise. The official title of the bill (H.R. 3631) is the "Revolutionizing Education Through Digital Investment Act of 2007".

The bill was introduced Sept. 20th by Congressmen Yarmuth (D-KY) and Regula (R-OH) along with Congressmen Kennedy (D-RI), Markey (D-MA), Honda (D-CA), to create a Trust Fund for digital projects. Others who have joined as cosponsors include Boucher (VA), Chandler (KY), Gordon (TN), and Sensenbrenner (WI). If this list includes your representative, thank him or her. If not, please ask your representative to join as a cosponsor.

This could really help libraries. The bill would create a Digital Trust to provide financing for research, development, and demonstration of advanced information technologies for lifelong learning...similar to the National Science Foundation model. Proposals for grants and contracts would generally be evaluated by peer review, as in the NSF grants.

The grants would go towards research (basic and applied), development and demonstrations of innovative digital learning and assessment, plus evaluation of the systems and programs to encourage widespread adoption. 

Money would be awarded to libraries, museums, colleges and universities, public boradcasting entities and similar nonprofits - with or without private partners.

Public domain  Here's an especially good provision --  if the majority of funding for a project comes from this Trust, the materials resulting (including research and development materials) must be freely available to the general public in a timely manner.  There is an exemption, though, if the Board determines that the public will benefit significantly by the materials not being made available.  Hopefully, that would rarely occur.