Page 65 - Education in a Digital World

52 International Organisations

e-learning industry was estimated in 2011 to be worth over US$160 billion. Similarly
the ‘instructional materials’ market in the US alone was estimated to be worth
around $8 billion (see Simba 2010). Yet the growing commercial involvement in
educational technology is also indicative of wider shifts in the provision and gov-
ernance of education – chiming with a growing influence that private interests are
able to exert over educational arrangements within countries. Aside from immediate
matters of profitability, the increased presence of commercial organisations in edu-
cational technology represents a potential substantial shift in authority from public
to private interests. Thus in developing a better understanding of the global nature
of educational technology we need to consider the full breadth of transnational and
multinational corporate involvement – from the direct supplying of resources,
to the more subtle assumption of responsibility for the organisation and governance
of technology use in education.

Mapping Commercial Involvement in Educational Technology:
The Case of Microsoft
The full extent of corporate involvement in educational technology is evident if we
consider the education portfolios of some of the major IT corporations around the
world. Microsoft, for example, remains the world’s largest software company with
nearly 90,000 employees and almost 700,000 ‘partner’ organisations in over 100
countries. Despite the scope of its core commercial commitments, over the past
twenty years Microsoft has assumed a central role in influencing global educational
technology use above and beyond the direct selling of its products. Indeed, this is a
company that has assumed a significant level of responsibility for educational tech-
nology leadership, governance and support around the world. As the company
announces in its promotional literature, “we are investing our resources – people,
partnerships, services, philanthropy and products – to stimulate positive change in
education”. One of Microsoft’s key aims in doing this is to support the wide-
scale use of digital technology throughout the world’s education systems – as the
company puts it, seeking to “increase adoption of innovative learning solutions
through scale”.
As these statements imply, Microsoft has an extensive and well-established
portfolio of educational activities. The company has long operated large-scale
educational programmes that are concerned with increasing individuals’ access to
and use of computers. These include the Unlimited Potential Community Tech-
nology Skills Programme which supports NGOs to set up and run over 40,000
community technology centres in more than 100 countries to deliver the Microsoft
Digital Literacy Curriculum. The recent US-focused ‘Elevate America’ initiative
similarly provided foundational skills to over 2 million unemployed workers. Other
interventions are directed specifically at educational technology arrangements in less
wealthy counties. In particular, the company’s philanthropy programme (Microsoft
Unlimited Potential) is focused explicitly on “help[ing] bring social and economic