Facebook Education Initiative...

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Educators are increasingly talking about the importance of tailoring lessons to individual student needs, often championing technology as a potentially transformational force. But even supporters warn that teachers need assistance to use new software effectively, and that the evidence is mixed on whether technology supports better student learning.

“You can’t expect that we’re just going to create the perfect platform and plunk it into every school and assume that every student is going to be comfortable knowing how to use it,” said Rebecca E. Wolfe, who directs an initiative focused on personalized learning at Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit education policy group.

Zuckerberg has shown an interest in education since 2010, when he donated $100 million to improve public schools in Newark. That effort has had largely disappointing results so far.

Last year, he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, pledged an additional $120 million to help underserved students in the San Francisco Bay Area, and they have distributed funds to about a dozen organizations, including Summit.

Like Internet.org, Facebook’s latest education initiative is not quite philanthropy and not quite business. The company owns the rights to the contributions it makes to Summit’s original software and could use that to eventually enter the education software business.

Mike Sego, the Facebook engineering director running the Summit software project, said making money was not an immediate goal. “Whenever I ask Mark, ‘Do I need to think of this as business?’ he always pushes back and says, ‘That shouldn’t be a priority right now. We should just continue making this better.'”