December 10th 1948: the
United Nations General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights; with Article 26 proclaiming that “Everyone has a right to education.
Education shall be free...”After 60 years of waiting, ALISON finds a way to make
all education, scalably and sustainably free to access on the
Web.
December 10th 2008, Galway, IRELAND: ALISON, the free online
learning website for basic skills announced it had registered its 250,000th free
learner. Founded in April 2007, ALISON has rapidly become one of the most widely
used online learning services providing free access to basic and essential
skills training. ALISON’s portfolio of learning includes comprehensive
interactive courseware suites for IT skills, Health & Safety, Financial
Literacy and much more. ALISON recently announced its intention to release a set
of freely accessible high-school curricula, as well as greatly expanding its
portfolio of IT skills and English language resources. ALISON has acquired
several thousand hours of high-quality commercial quality content for free
publication through early 2009.
Speaking about the success of ALISON,
founder and CEO Mike Feerick stated that “the success to date of the ALISON free
learning model suggests that all learning, not just that of basic skills will be
available for free online access within the next decade. This includes
comprehensive high-school and college education curricula worldwide”. Feerick
continued: “Ubiquitous free access to high-quality learning online will be an
enduring mark of the 21st century helping to free much of humanity from deep
poverty, ignorance and intolerance”. To view interactive courses from various
basic skills categories with immediate access, simply register at www.alison.com.
ENDS (278
Words)
ALISON
Launched in April 2007, ALISON provides freely accessible interactive
learning on the Web. With registered learners in every country and territory
worldwide, its mission is to enable anyone, anywhere, to educate themselves for
free via interactive self-paced multimedia. Based in Galway, Ireland, ALISON provides interactive
learning for basic and essential life and workplace skills. In a 2008 report,
the U.K. Government's Dept of Innovation, Universities and Skills declared
ALISON was part of a wave of “new technologies … opening up the world of
knowledge and offering new, flexible and exciting ways to learn.”
Page
26, Informal Adult Learning – Shaping the Way
Ahead, (2008), London: DIUS Publications.
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR) is a declaration adopted
by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10th 1948, at
Palais de Chaillot, Paris,
France. It
consists of 30 articles which have been elaborated in subsequent international
treaties, regional human rights instruments, national constitutions and laws.
For press
information contact:
Ben
Mead, Press
Relations, ALISON
e-mail: bmead@alison.com
