谷歌联手Edx推出免费教育平台

A little over a year since Harvard and MIT joined forces to launch the not-for-profit online learning venture edX, Google has announced that it's to start working with edX to build an open MOOC (massive open online course) platform, hosted at MOOC.org.

一年多前，哈佛大学和麻省理工大学联合推出了非营利性在线教育项目edX。日前，谷歌宣布开始与edX合作，创建一个大规模开放网络课程（MOOC）平台MOOC.org。

MOOC.org will be an online learning portal aimed at academic institutions, governments, businesses and individuals, allowing them to create and host online courses.

MOOC.org平台目标成为在线教育的门户网站，集合学术机构、政府、商业机构以及个人的力量，帮助他们制作和维系在线课程。

The site isn't functional yet, though a provisional date of "the first half of 2017"has been given for launch.

尽管该网站暂时计划于2017年上半年上线，但是目前功能还未开放。

Google will contribute to the development of the open edX platform, and follows its experimental Course Builder tool released last year, which has been used by universities and nonprofits to experiment with MOOCs.

谷歌将在开发上给予edX开放平台帮助，并跟进去年发布的Course Biulder实验性课程制作工具，该工具已被一些大学和非营利组织用来开发过大规模开放网络课程。

Google says it will continue to maintain Course Builder, but is "focusing its development efforts on Open edX".

谷歌称将会继续维系课程制作工具，但主要集中“为edX开放平台的发展提供帮助”。