The Lucent Technologies Foundation is donating $1.5 million in cash and an estimated $1.5 million in equipment to help start the Partnership in Global Learning -- a project that will use the Internet and other communications tools to offer materials from high school and college courses to people around the world, the New York Times reports.

The first phase of the pilot program will bring together high school teachers to universities in the U.S. and Latin America, so they can learn how to develop courses usable in multiple countries, the newspaper reports.

During the next three years, researchers at the University of Florida's Center for Latin American Studies in Gainesville will be working with universities in Mexico and Brazil, the Times reports. They are: the Instituto Technologico Y De Estudios Superiores De Monterrey (Technological Institute of Higher Education of Monterrey) in Mexico, the Fundacao Getulio Vargas in Brazil, the Pontifica Universidade Catolica in Brazil and the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil.

Each university will train high-school teachers in their area how to develop the Web-based curriculum for business and science subjects.

The project organizers still need to decide what language or languages the courses will be offered in, the newspaper reports. Participants speak in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

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