The Turkish communications company Turkcell has just announced Turkcell Academy, a new project that MIT’s Office of Digital Learning is supporting. From the press release, carried in the Wall Street Journal:

Turkcell’s CEO Sureyya Ciliv introduced Turkcell Academy, the ambitious digital education project of Turkcell, with a press conference in Istanbul (Photo: Business Wire)

Turkcell (NYSE:TKC) (BIST:TCELL) the leading telecommunications and technology company of Turkey, is breaking new ground in education. Turkcell Academy, which was founded in 2006 to train Turkcell’s employees, has gone digital, making enriched high-quality video content available to the public.

Turkcell’s brand new Academy will make digital learning available to 35 million Turkcell customers and to the general public with more than 2000 videos that span a wide range of issues in 5 categories: Innovation-Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Business World, Technology and Learn with Khan Academy, which provides courses on the basics of sciences and finance.

Cooperation with world leaders in education…

Turkcell Academy not only provides original content, developed by Turkcell, but also serves as a platform to make the global repertoire of digital learning available to Turkcell customers and to the public. One of the most distinctive features of this pioneering work is the cooperation with the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology — MIT’s innovation training videos are already available to Turkcell Academy’s online visitors with Turkish subtitles. Turkcell Academy is currently working on carrying the content of Open Courseware and EdX as well as cooperating with Turkish universities.

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Dr. Sanjay Sarma, MIT’s Director of Digital Learning, also participated in the launch. “We are in a very unique place in time and space. Ideas colliding with other ideas are unleashing a level of creativity that was not possible 10 years ago. What has changed is the interconnectivity of the world — you can be a part of the idea collider wherever you are. The individual has become powerful, a primary source in world economy. This is the area that Turkcell and MIT are working on through their partnership. At MIT, we are very excited about this – Turkcell has a dynamic leadership that is looking at these new trends. It is a connectivity company, it lets us connect. Finally, we want to learn from Turkey, it is one of the most dynamic economies in the world.” said Dr. Sarma in his address to the participants of the press conference in Istanbul. Read more.