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Mark Zuckerberg announced today that he and his wife were going to give away 99% of their Facebook stock during their lifetime, though, as one journalist points out, it’s not necessarily accurate to say it will all be going to charity:

This is what he’s setting-up, according to The New York Times (read the article for more info):

By using a limited liability company instead of a nonprofit corporation or foundation, the Zuckerberg family will be able to go beyond making philanthropic grants. They will invest in companies, lobby for legislation and seek to influence public policy debates, which nonprofits are restricted from doing under tax laws.

Zuckerberg says he’s learned from mistakes he made in Newark (see The Best Posts & Articles For Learning About Newark’s $100 Million From Facebook). I guess we’ll see if he has learned the right lessons or not.

The announcement, done in a public letter on Facebook to their daughter, has a lot to say about education, particularly personalized learning (see The Best Resources For Understanding “Personalized Learning”) – one can only hope he sees beyond tech as being the only tool to facilitate it:

Our generation grew up in classrooms where we all learned the same things at the same pace regardless of our interests or needs.

Your generation will set goals for what you want to become — like an engineer, health worker, writer or community leader. You’ll have technology that understands how you learn best and where you need to focus. You’ll advance quickly in subjects that interest you most, and get as much help as you need in your most challenging areas. You’ll explore topics that aren’t even offered in schools today. Your teachers will also have better tools and data to help you achieve your goals.

Even better, students around the world will be able to use personalized learning tools over the internet, even if they don’t live near good schools. Of course it will take more than technology to give everyone a fair start in life, but personalized learning can be one scalable way to give all children a better education and more equal opportunity.

We’re starting to build this technology now, and the results are already promising. Not only do students perform better on tests, but they gain the skills and confidence to learn anything they want. And this journey is just beginning. The technology and teaching will rapidly improve every year you’re in school.

Your mother and I have both taught students and we’ve seen what it takes to make this work. It will take working with the strongest leaders in education to help schools around the world adopt personalized learning. It will take engaging with communities, which is why we’re starting in our San Francisco Bay Area community. It will take building new technology and trying new ideas. And it will take making mistakes and learning many lessons before achieving these goals.

But once we understand the world we can create for your generation, we have a responsibility as a society to focus our investments on the future to make this reality.

Together, we can do this. And when we do, personalized learning will not only help students in good schools, it will help provide more equal opportunity to anyone with an internet connection.

In addition to The Times article, you can read this piece at The Washington Post, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan to give away 99 percent of their Facebook stock, worth $45 billion.

The New York Times has even created an interactive inviting readers to share what they would do with $45 billion – How Would You Give Away Your Fortune?

The Surprising Math In Mark Zuckerberg’s $45 Billion Facebook Donation is from Forbes.

Mark Zuckerberg and the Rise of Philanthrocapitalism is from The New Yorker.

Why Mark Zuckerberg’s huge new donation is going to an LLC rather than a charity is from Vox.

Why a German billionaire says that pledges like Mark Zuckerberg’s are really bad is from The Washington Post.

How Charitable Is Zuckerberg’s Plan Really? is from The Atlantic.

At the Primary School, funded with Zuckerberg fortune, education will start before birth is from The Washington Post.

You might also be interested in The Best Resources For Learning About The Role Of Private Foundations In Education Policy.