On Thursday, during Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan’s visit to Harvard University, she revealed that she and edX are partnering to launch Edraak, an Arabic-language MOOC that will help to edcuate countless people in the Middle East.
edX is a joint venture from Harvard and MIT founded in 2012 that specializing in virtual education. A MOOC, or Massive Online Open Campus, is essentially an online class that unlimited users can participate in and access freely over the web. edX has developed several courses and will be converting some of these into Arabic languages as well as developing new courses for Edraak that will be taught by top Arabic professors.
edX releases this news following the rather recent spring expansion into several Asian countries. Queen Al Abdullah hopes Edraak will offer satisfy the needs of Arabic youth who are eager to learn and access new opporunities.
This opening of education opportunities in the Arab World comes on the heels of the offering of an unprecdented amount of Arabic language television being made available on streaming video services.FilmOn offers 20 Arabic stations from the prestigious news channel, Al Arabiya, to Rotana’s group of channels serving up classic Arabic film and music videos. For example:
Rotana Aflame: Arabic music videos and entertainment news.
DW Arabia: An Arabic affiliate of Germany’s Deutsche Welle news network.
Rotana Classic: Classic Arabic films and programming.
For a complete list of Arabic TV stations available streaming live via FilmOn: click here!
