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Wednesday, November 24, 2010

News Corp. Buys Wireless Generation - NYTimes.com

News Corp. Buys Wireless Generation - NYTimes.com

News Corp., After Hiring Klein, Buys Technology Partner in a City Schools Project

Greg Gunn and Larry Berger met as Rhodes scholars at Oxford University and, after stints teaching computer skills and mathematics to children in Harlem and Stamford, Conn., they came upon an idea: create a business that would put technology in the hands of teachers and into classrooms.

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

Chancellor Joel I. Klein is also going to News Corporation.

Mr. Gunn, 40, and Mr. Berger, 42, founded Wireless Generation 10 years ago, and the company has since grown from a start-up with a bare-bones budget and staff to a national leader in a new wave of education reform, where data is a crucial tool to transform failing schools.

On Monday, News Corporation announced that it had signed an agreement to buy 90 percent of Wireless Generation for $360 million in cash, its first foray into the for-profit world of education since its book publishing arm, Harper Collins, got out of the textbook business in the mid-1990s. The deal thrusts one of the world’s largest media