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On my offset day in Austin I had a terrific hourlong chat with Cameron Evans, Chief Applied science Officer for Microsoft Pedagogy. He had a lot of candid observations and great lines: "The vast corporeality of data in our pedagogy system tin exist used for good, and also for bad actors and bad reasons," and on the demand for professional evolution and parent education around new learning technologies: "You don't want to be in a situation where yous give people a library card but they tin't read."

Microsoft Education
op-fine art past simosx on Flickr

Toward the end I took the chance to ask him about a controversial indicate. It is an article of faith among many concerned about education that the extensive philanthropic influence of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, headed past Microsoft founder Bill Gates, is deployed directly in service of the concern interests of the Microsoft Corporation. When information technology comes to schools, where do the interests of ane end and the other one brainstorm? (Disclaimer: The Pecker & Melinda Gates Foundation is among the many funders of The Hechinger Written report, which publishes this blog.)

Evans greeted my question with a wide smiling. It's 1 that he fields fairly frequently.

"Bill and Melinda Gates have gone out of their way to brand sure that the foundation'south work and the work of Microsoft have nothing to practise with each other," he starts, noting that the Gates Foundation oft uses open up-source technologies.

However, he allows, "At that place are times we do see eye to heart."

Not for nothing, Evans agrees that the Gates Foundation and Microsoft share a single mission. Equally the foundation puts information technology, "Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives." "We share that core mission: everybody should be able to participate fully in life without constraint or impediment."

The truthful common ground between the company and the foundation, Evans tells me, has to practice with teaching as a source of human capital and economic productivity.

"We're not producing plenty homo capital chapters in college ed and G-12. We have an obligation equally a corporation to assistance America be the dominant actor in international competitiveness. We should exist very clear about this. This is a national event for a global company. It'southward not something nosotros have to apologize for or defend. If the Gates foundation shares that sentiment, so does Intel, so does Lumina, so do MacArthur and Carnegie." He mentions Microsoft'south legislative advocacy on behalf of the H1B visa for foreign-built-in technology workers as a sign of their interest in global human capital.

I point out that he's defaulted to talking well-nigh Microsoft'due south interest in education from a corporate social responsibility standpoint. This is a political party line in any ed-tech conversation, and I wish that corporations would drop it. We all know that Apple, Google, and Microsoft are not just in the educational activity business for the love of ambrosial, ethnically & socioeconomically diverse children. If they'd exist more transparent about where they run into the opportunities, we could have an open and honest public give-and-take well-nigh the legitimate office of private actors in providing this public good.

Microsoft Education
Microsoft Education
Microsoft Education
meridian to bottom: Cute students using Apple, Google, Microsoft

And then Evans says this: Microsoft's education business organization strategy is not primarily almost hardware–a pragmatic attitude since they're losing out on hardware.

"Some people retrieve our sole goal is to get kids hooked on our products," through deployments of items similar Surface tablets in public schools, he said. "That they'll exist gateway products, students will be hooked for life. The consumer market today is far more dynamic than that. Information technology doesn't determine what technology y'all employ, whether in school or out of it. Consumers are choosing, not school districts, not everyone."

What IS it nigh, then? Reading between the lines, by being a potent voice in workforce development and grooming, Microsoft helps ensure the the continued authorisation of Microsoft software programs like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access beyond the transition to mobile access in the global workplace. "Equally a technology supplier to governments, hospitals, private corporations and entrepreneurs we have a responsibility to build capacity," Evans puts it. Microsoft has 1.5 billion users on the planet; only 55 meg are in the U.s.a..

Secondly, on a much smaller scale than that global strategic interest, Microsoft is developing educational data and reporting systems that aim to requite students, schools and parents embedded, formative, actionable, continuous feedback and insight about pupil growth and progress–and to give teachers and administrators performance feedback for professional development purposes. Evans was at SXSWEdu to promote this idea. "A instructor needs information on the student sitting in front of them right now. We need sophisticated, but simple tools to exist able to communicate across the board, what is this data, and what decisions do I need to make that are different."

The Gates Foundation, of course, cares a lot nearly data, reporting, and instructor quality equally well. And here's the rub: Information technology tin be difficult to trust any kind of separation betwixt the interests of the foundation and the corporation because in many cases, non necessarily nefarious ones, they do in fact coincide.

The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn't mean it's free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed nigh pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the state. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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Anya Kamenetz, writes the Digital blog for The Hechinger Report. She is a contributing writer at Fast Visitor and the author of several books and book capacity well-nigh the hereafter of teaching, including...