Microsoft wants more bang for its education buck
At its Government Leaders Forum in Berlin on Wednesday, Microsoft plans to announce that it is reinvesting in its Partners In Learning program, a global effort to provide software and training to teachers, students, and schools. The company is committing to another five years of the program.
In its first five years, Microsoft said the program reached 90 million people in 100 countries. The company plans to spend $235.5 million over the next five years, bringing its total investment to $500 million, but reach twice as many people in the next five years as it did during the first five.
Among other efforts, Partners in Learning provides training and certification for teachers, as well as an online gathering place where teachers can collaborate and share new curriculum ideas.
"We believe it is really the cornerstone of economic opportunity," said Orlando Ayala, senior vice president of Microsoft's emerging segments unit, dubbed Unlimited Potential. "Our software has been an important enabler of economic wealth."
Ayala highlighted several programs as recent highlights, including a Swedish teacher who partnered with a school in Madagascar to do a joint education project on biodiversity in Africa, and a robotics project in Malaysia where students created a mock disaster and used robotics to examine public safety issues.
In Colombia, Microsoft has a program in seven schools where students essentially do independent study on a laptop, using a curriculum that can move at exactly the student's own pace. The program was quite controversial when it began five years ago, Ayala said. "Today those students are scoring better in the national tests than traditional (students)."
In the U.S., Microsoft is sponsoring the Philadelphia School of the Future, where students use tablet PCs instead of textbooks.
Partnering with local governments and nonprofits is an important component of the program, Ayala said. "We know that no single model is going to fit everybody."
It also makes good economic sense, he said, noting that a greater level of partnership is what Microsoft believes will allow it to reach twice as many people in the next five years while actually spending slightly less than it had in the previous five.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
I think that this is a good idea from the point of education, but lets not be fooled here, MS is looking for future talent to extend it's Windows platform - I am sure they don't encourage people to learn computing on Unix/Linux or OS X, that's for damn sure.
The local government should be doing the education, not Microsoft. Europes is ages ahead in education well before Gates came up with this bright idea, I remember learning Algebra I in the 6th grade, Algebra II in the 7th in Poland back in 1980.
Did Microsoft just wake up to the fact???
I would concentrate on the U.S. educational market, Europe has been doing all the right things for a long time.
In other words, no charity from MSFT unless you prop up their dying business model.
/P
And that would make the entire industry look bad: "Hey look kids, IT has invested NO MONEY into your education... only stuff with no explicit financial value."
MS is helping by putting some form of corporate benchmark on philanthropy. All other measures are touchey-feeley; this is tangible money which we should all appreciate they are doing. MS puts more money into health and education than any of us do. We should express thanks.
Colombia = Country in South America
- Columbia vs. Colombia
- by natalieweinstein January 23, 2008 6:18 AM PST
- You are correct, of course. We fixed it. Thanks for the heads-up.
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