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Mexico-based telecom billionaire Carlos Slim Helu is the latest Daddy Warbucks to flock to Sal Khan and the Khan Academy since Bill Gates. In fact, Slim is ranked as the richest guy in the world according to Forbes. Slim’s foundation this month announced it signed an agreement that it will support Khan Academy translations to Spanish and help bring it to students, teachers, researchers and others in Mexico. The foundation press release didn’t disclose dollar figures but says it will provide, ”All the necessary resources” for the project. Here’s what some media are saying about this new NAFTA-rific ed tech alliance.

Kerry A. Dolan writes on Forbes.com:

The alliance between the two groups sets out a goal of having 1,000 Khan Academy videos translated into Spanish by April this year. Slim’s foundation also pledged to invest more than $300 million (4 billion pesos) over the next three years into programs that improve the development of “human capital.”

To read the foundation’s Activities Report is to delve into a little-publicised world of giving. Among many other things, the foundation has provided Mexicans with more than 128,000 reading glasses, 293,000 bicycles for children who live far from their schools, 245,000 scholarships and has paid for 794,000 medical operations.

Elias Ayub says that about 85 per cent of the foundations’ projects centre on health and education – two areas of human development that crop up constantly in Slim’s discourse on solving poverty. “We don’t have a spending limit,” Elias Ayub told the FT recently. “The money is there.”

So perhaps this week’s announcement should come as no surprise, considering that Slim himself once taught advanced mathematics while at university. But to judge by some of the online lessons the Khan Academy is putting out – Evaluating integral for shell method example is one of many mind-boggling examples – the whole endevour does throw up one tiny question: wouldn’t it make more sense to teach Mexican kids English instead?

Via The Financial Times

The Associated Press reports:

Khan Academy offers thousands of free video lectures on YouTube in subjects like mathematics, physics and art history. More than 500 videos have been translated into Spanish by Mexican professors, so far.

Slim says he will also fund online classes about Mexican history to be added to the website. He says funding for the not-for-profit organization comes from a 4 billion peso ($315 million) investment over the next three years to expand internet connectivity in Mexico.

Slim made the announcement Monday together with Khan Academy’s founder, Salman Khan.

Via The Washington Post