Having invested in products in the Education space at AOL, I have a real place in my heart for online education, which while having been one of the earliest applications of the web, is still in an incredibly early stage of evolution. One of the biggest winners, in terms of recent traction, is Moodle, an open source learning management system that competes with the likes of Blackboard. Born of the genius of a great developer in Perth Australia, Martin Dougiamas,this solution is well on its way to be a global phenomena.

This is a case of doing good and doing well.  Bringing the collective intellect of a global instructor base to bear to the student populace (especially in emerging markets and economically challenged school districts globally) is a great opportunity, and Martin and his extended team are leading the charge.