Page 66 - Education in a Digital World

International Organisations 53

opportunity to the estimated 5 billion people who are not yet realizing the benefits
of technology”. These activities involve supporting a variety of educational
NGOs around the world to sustain school-based and community-based computer
use – with Microsoft therefore responsible for financing projects ranging from
the Bangladesh Friendship Education Society to Education for an Open Society
Romania.
Aside from these ‘stand-alone’ efforts to supply resources and train individuals,
Microsoft has also developed ambitious on-going educational technology
programmes aimed at stimulating the long-term technology-based change of
education systems. For example, the company sustains a series of Dynamics
Academic Alliances around the world where networks of higher education teaching
staff in over 1,600 academic institutions are given access to classroom software,
technical support from product experts, and bespoke product training. Similar
networks are operated for college and high school teachers across 45 different
countries. In the same manner, Microsoft’s IT Academic programme provides
accreditation to strategically selected schools to deliver training to other
neighbouring schools. These intervention and support activities are complemented
by a substantial programme of scientific and social research into education and
technology. Through their ‘external research’ programme Microsoft pursues its own
original research and collaborative relationships with universities, alongside series of
seminars, fellowships and direct funding of projects in the area of education
research. Recent areas of interest have included the funding of a Classroom of
the Future initiative, an Institute for Personal Robots in Education as well as
research programmes on topics ranging from ‘games curricula’ to ‘tablet and
pen-centric computing’.
Perhaps the most extensive example of the central positioning of education
within Microsoft’s corporate activities is the company’s Partners in Learning net-
work. Since its launch in 2003, this $500 million programme has involved over
121 million students and nearly 6 million educators in over 100 countries. Partners
in Learning activities take many guises – offering professional training for teachers,
online networking opportunities and the supply of curriculum resources, free tools
and learning programmes. Partners in Learning has also allowed Microsoft to work
closely with educators, schools, school districts, state departments of education and
other organisations to create projects that can serve as models for the future. One
notable instance of this was the company’s partnership with the School District
of Philadelphia to plan and build a 750-student high school based around principles
of ‘innovation and technology’. The ambitiously named ‘School of the Future’ opened
in 2006 and despite its fractious initial years of operation was soon being offered by
Microsoft to ‘serve as a model of twenty-first-century learning’ for other educa-
tional authorities to replicate elsewhere. This involvement in the broad reform of
education systems was furthered in 2011 when Partners in Learning was given
responsibility for operating the US government’s nationwide teacher recruitment
programme.