14 DAY TRIAL // Following the British Education Technology and Training Show (BETT) earlier this year, Microsoft announced the expansion of its educational efforts in the Central and Eastern Europe region. The Redmond company's focus is on driving technology adoption in the educational systems of CEE countries, the vast majority of which are still struggling with obsolete scholastic models, remnants of the past communist regimes. The software giant has pledged investments of no less than $25 million to organizations in CEE via the Innovative Schools Program.
“We are growing and scaling our Innovative Schools Program to reach a broad number of schools around the world,” James Bernard, director, Partners in Learning, Worldwide Public Sector, Microsoft, said . “We are expanding this program massively to make it the largest program of its kind in the world. In the next five years, we hope to reach 72,000 schools around the world, and we are also starting an engagement on a deeper level with 350 schools which we are calling developer schools that will partially serve as mentors.”
In addition to the $25 million, Microsoft has also promised additional investments, which span from people to software, but more essentially know-how. The Redmond company's contributions associated with the CEE and the Partners in Learning program will be made available over the next 5 years. The end purpose of the software giant's efforts is what it referred to as education at the level of the 21st century, a vision that can be complete only through ICT (Information and Communication Technology) adoption in educational systems.
“The Innovative Schools Program started with demand from countries and several projects grew from this in certain areas such as Taiwan, Australia and UK,” Kati Tuurala, director, Innovative Schools Program, Worldwide Public Sector, Microsoft, explained. “It was the success of these programs that lead to the integration of the whole teacher community to think about the role of ICT in education or more importantly, what are the 21st century skills needed by students and how the everyday practices in teaching could address these. With the increased predominance of IT replacing traditional skills such as manufacturing, the key consideration for many ministries is what their education policy should be in these circumstances.”