Beyond BCeSIS--will there be a difference?

Finally the BC Ministry of Education got the message that the student information system, BCeSIS, is inadequate and gets in the way of effective recording and reporting on student development.  Last year the Ministry started a process of buying something new.

The new program has been selected and implementation is to begin.  The Ministry's choice is a new software program, but the same people running it that have been running BCeSIS. 

The new software is called Aspen, and the old--and new--service provider is Fujitsu.  A dozen companies put in proposals, three were asked to provide more detail, and Fujitsu was chosen.

Fujitsu has been in charge of many of the elements of BCeSIS--providing and managing the servers, providing the documentation, responding to the glitches, developing the training, providing support.  They will now be in charge of the same elements of the new system.  Presumably they were able to offer a better financial deal because they already have an infrastructure in place with BCeSIS.

The major change is in the software, moving from "esis" to Aspen.

Few BC  teachers have seen the new software and developed an opinion on whether it will be a satisfactory system.  It has been adopted in a number of states in the U.S., but that isn't necessarily a positive factor.

In the meantime, work is proceeding on an alternative, open-source student information system.  Called OpenStudent, it is being developed by a team in the Saanich school district.  Several school districts have signed on to use this system rather than a new BCeSIS and are piloting it in schools.  Information on this system can be found at openstudent.ca.

 

 

 

 

 

Breaking NSA security--an inside job

Several years before publishing the Davinci Code, Dan Brown published another book about code called Digital Fortress.

I first read this book several years ago--it was published in 1998, before the events of 9/11 that have been used as an excuse for increased government surveillance.  A reread seemed timely given the information released by Edward Snowden about the National Security Agency and the global snooping it carries out.  The amount of digital information circulating these days is many times that of 1998, and the technology to snoop much more sophisticated and complex, but the story is even more relevant.

The premise of the novel is that a rogue programmer creates software that will cause a meltdown of the security on the NSA's central computer.  This programmer will give the agency the key to stop that action if the agency publicly admits to its massive surveillance.

Much of Digital Fortress is chase scenes--in Spain and the NSA headquarters in the U.S.--typical of his novels.  Also, it centres on relationships of the man and woman who turn out to be the good guys and save the data centre from being opened to the world.  Spoiler alert--the key is knowing about the code that Julius Caesar used to send messages to his generals.

A couple of quotes are as pertinent now as when the book was written--maybe more so.

"Over the past few years, our work here at NSA has gotten harder and harder.  We've faced enemies I never imagined would challenge us.  I'm talking about our own citizens.  The lawyers, the civil rights fanatics, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation)--they've all played a part, but it's more than that.  It's the people.  They've lost the faith.  They've become paranoid.  They suddenly see us as the enemy.  ...We're eavesdroppers, peeping Tom's, violators of people's rights."  (229)

The rogue programmer's favorite quote was the Latin "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes," roughly translating to "Who will guard the guards?"  Great question!

In the credits, Brown offers "a quiet thank you to the two faceless ex-NSA cryptographers who made invaluable contributions via anonymous remailers.  Without them this book would not have been written."

Brown has one of the characters comment that the danger to the secrecy about what the NSA is doing won't come through a technological break, but rather, from a person on the inside.  Thank you Edward Snowden.

 

 

ICT in Education: Workshop on critical perspectives

Fourteen critical issues in technology are identified for a workshop at the BCTF Summer Conference in August 2013

The new technologies raise many educational and social issues as they have become infused in our classrooms and culture. Ursula Franklin says that “every tool shapes the task”—no technology is “just a tool.”

Which are the big technology issues that we should focus on? What should we do on these?

1.         Student information system (beyond BCeSIS)

The ministry has selected a corporation, Fujitsu, to run a new software program to replace BCeSIS. This is the same company that has had the contract to run BCeSIS, but with a new software program.

The ministry-developed system is not the only alternative. The Saanich school district is developing OpenStudent, a open access system for student information.

What are the issues that we should be concerned about?

An analysis of the Ministry’s approach to replacing BCeSIS can be found at http://www.bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Publications/ResearchReports/RR2013-03.pdf

OpenStudent can be found at http://www.openstudent.ca/

2.         “Bring your own device”

The BC Education Plan assumes that technology will be infused throughout the school—but largely depends on students bringing their own device.

Should students be able to bring their own device (smart phone, tablet, laptop) into the classroom and use it there?
What are the equity implications of this policy?

What policies should apply to students’ use of devices in classrooms? Type of use? Limits on sending photos and videos?

3.         Cyberbullying

This is a big public issue—for good reason. Ethical and safe communication can be taught in the school. But where?

What responsibility does the school have for actions by students outside of the venue of the school building and grounds?

Lots of material on cyberbullying exists on the web—just Google it.

4.         Boundaries

Social media have porous boundaries. A professional relationship with students requires boundaries.

Many of the cases of discipline of teachers dealt with by teacher unions relate to claims of inappropriate professional behaviour related to online communications. Often the digital footprint ends up as evidence in a hearing.

What should the Federation be doing to help members find a balance between effective use of technology with our students and necessary professional boundaries?

5.         The “cloud” and privacy

BC has a privacy law that requires that personal data must be stored on servers in Canada. This is a positive response to the Patriot Act and the pervasive surveillance that we now know is undertaken by the US National Security Agency.

Cloud services of major corporations like Google and Facebook and many others store information in massive server farms in the US and elsewhere.

This places significant restrictions on the ability for teachers and the school system to legally use these services. Waivers signed by parents may permit some use of these cloud services—but with significant cautions. Some teachers believe that the BC government should change the law to eliminate privacy restrictions for educational purposes. What should the BCTF position be on this?

An excellent publication by Julia Hengstler provides lots of resources on these issues, including sample waiver forms to be signed by parents. It is called A K-12 Primer for British Columbia Teachers Posting Students’ Work Online.

http://jhengstler.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/a-k-12-primer-for-british-columbia-teachers-posting-students-work-online/

6.         Intellectual property and copyright

Do you own what you create—as a teacher, as a student?

When you create a resource for your students, from an individual item up to a full course, do you own it? Or does your employer own it? Who has the right to decide if it can be used, or sold, to another teacher or another district?

What about student-produced material? What permission should a teacher have from a student if the student’s work is to be shared online?

The student developed issues are also covered in Julia Hengstler’s publication.

7.         Distributed Learning

Under what conditions and with which students is Distributed Learning a good option?

The practice of Distributed Learning in BC is largely determined by funding. Districts create programs to ensure they are getting the revenue that follows the student. Compliance audits drive many of the practices, rather than sound pedagogy being the focus.

What should be the future direction of Distributed Learning in BC? How can we define that and influence decisions on appropriate use of DL?

The working conditions of DL teachers have deteriorated as funding pressures and funding decisions have played out in recent years. DL is expressly excluded from class-size limits incorporated in Bill 22, and collective-agreement clauses don’t deal with some issues specific to the DL environment.

The BCTF policy on Distributed Learning can be found on the BCTF website or on the Digicritic blog at http://digicritic.blogspot.ca/2013/08/union-supports-online-learning-with.html

The BCTF has published several research reports on Distributed Learning that can be found under “Technology” in the Research Reports section of the BCTF website: http://www.bctf.ca/publications.aspx?id=5630#Technology

8.         “Blended” or “hybrid” learning

This is the new thing in the edtech world. It’s not really new, of course, but addresses concerns that many have about online learning for K to 12 that is only done online.

The concept is simple. Students are engaged in work online sometimes and in a class setting sometimes. A number of research studies say that this combination is the most effective approach. Although there is little research that tells us much about effectiveness in a field that changes quickly, it seems like common sense.

This does, however, call into question encouraging students to sign up for courses offered in districts other than the one in which they live. Blended learning is place-based, not just cloud-based.

9.         Technology in a capitalist system

The capitalist system is based on ownership and the aggregation of “surplus value” through that ownership. As participants in interactive programs we create that value. Our attention and our participation are what major corporations like Google and Facebook, as well as less pervasive businesses, have to sell.

Are open systems based on sharing viable alternatives? Can we really produce an alternative at least on the margins of a capitalist system?

10.       A surveillance society

We are all being watched, particularly online. Many people guessed that was the case, but we now have confirmation through Edward Snowden’s May 2013 “leak” of information relating to secret government mass surveillance programs, and their acknowledgment by the US.

Easy ways of linking information promotes surveillance. The BC government is planning that all of us have a single card that relates to all services—driver’s license, medical care, social services...everything that relates to government.

One of the areas the ministry included in seeking a replacement for BCeSIS is parent and student access to the database from home to look at what the students and teacher are doing, reflected in the eSIS data. Authentication is to be...by the BC ID card.

The government has announced that there will be consultation with the public this fall about this card—and presumably its use.

This is what the Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham has had to say about the card:

Based on Phase 1 documentation, Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham found privacy and security of the card was designed according to legal requirements. Phase 2 will include potential for data linkages across multiple platforms and the rollout could be jeopardized without building public trust, she wrote.

“The BC Services Card program raises significant concerns regarding misuse of personal data, such as unauthorized access, profiling, and function creep,” Denham wrote in a February 5, 2013 letter to Citizens’ Services deputy minister Kim Henderson. “Solutions that government proposes to address these risks should be subject to scrutiny by both the public at large and by those with technical knowledge in the field.”

See more at: http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/2013/08/15/BC-ID-Care/#sthash.cQ3K24hl.dpuf

11.       Big data and data analytics

“Big data” is the basis of much of the direction of technology. It consists of the mass of digital data that is being produced from data points in many of our personal and business activities. We daily produce more data than was produced over thousands of years of human activity. Making any sense of it requires tools to analyze patterns and display the patterns in a way that can be understood—usually called a dashboard.

One of the visions of education technology is “adaptive” learning based on data analytics. It is the learning machine—constantly providing feedback and new content to lead a student to understanding what has been predetermined to be learned.

How big is big data? 

Take a look: http://onesecond.designly.com/

A great critical analysis of the application of data analytics was written by Phil McRae of the staff of the Alberta Teachers’ Association: http://www.teachers.ab.ca/Publications/ATA%20Magazine/Volume-93/Number-4/Pages/Rebirth-of-the-teaching-machine.aspx

12.       MOOCs

MOOCs are Massive Open Online Courses, the new “best thing” in online education. They are free to take, but without providing formal university (or K-12) credits, although that is changing. 

A person can take the course just out of interest and not produce anything to share. Beyond that, an individual may join a peer group that reads and responds to work done. Another option is an “autograder” that checks answers submitted against the already-determined “right” answer. 

MOOCs started at some of the high prestige universities like Harvard and MIT. Tens of thousands of people sign up as students—or a smaller number. Materials are provided online—that may be lectures, streamed and/or archived, and readings, many available on the web.

Lots of post-secondary faculty have serious concerns about this creating two-tier education, the quality of some of the courses, and the threat to face-to-face learning by an automated form of education. Some developments are spilling over to the K-12 systems.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/edtechresearcher/2013/08/mooc_killer_apps_the_autograder_vs_the_syndication_engine.html?cmp=ENL-DD-NEWS2

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/edtechresearcher/2013/08/a_new_learning_environment_for_the_future_of_learning.html?print=1

13.       Open source, including open resources

Open source software has long (in technology time) been an alternative to closed, proprietary software. A movement by techies who have been willing to contribute to building software that is open in the sense that techies get access to the code and can make modifications, but with the requirement that the developments also remain open.

Lots of the software that underlies the operation of the Internet is open source. The software for smart phones and tablets is built on open source, in contrast to the operating systems of the iPhone, Microsoft phone, and Blackberry. These are proprietary, and putting up walls is a key to their model for producing revenue.

Open resources are starting to gain traction at the post-secondary-education level. The Public Knowledge Project and others are pressing a model of academic publishing that is open and free to use, in contrast to the expensive and profitable journals for which university libraries pay and researchers provide content.

Open textbooks are also a growing phenomenon. Free, open textbooks have been developed for some post-secondary courses in BC, helping to reduce the cost of an expensive part of education. This approach to textbooks and other e-books will make a significant difference to access to reading resources in less-developed countries that have few publishing options and currently little access to books except by elites.

What are the implications for K-12 education?

The Public Knowledge Project can be found at http://pkp.sfu.ca/

The BC Open Textbook project can be found at http://open.bccampus.ca/

14.       Not enough stuff

Transformation of education using technology?

Not if teachers don’t have the goods to do it. What is needed?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2013-08-16

LK:cep/af:tfeu

Union Supports Distributed (online) Learning--with Conditions

Teacher unions in Canada have had concerns about developments in online learning, but have generally been supportive if they have felt conditions were appropriate. Most provinces have relatively small numbers of students in online programs and they are integrated into the schools with face-to-face programs.  The Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union has provisions in the collective agreement that make working conditions for teachers in online programs equivalent to those in face-to-face classrooms.

In the U.S., most of the online programs are run as Charter Schools and the staffs are not unionized.  In fact, online learning has been seen by opponents of unions as a way of breaking unionization in education.

The British Columbia Teachers’ Federation adopted policy at the Annual Meeting of 2001 that supported DL—if conditions are appropriate.  This was at the beginning of the expansion of the number of students in DL programs from 2200 to about 80,000 last year.  (That is the number of students taking at least one course—many are taking only one.)

Unfortunately, many of the conditions for success identified in the BCTF policy do not exist in practice.  Limited funding in the school system as a whole has led to districts finding resources by squeezing staffing in the DL programs, leading to deteriorating working conditions for DL teachers.  When the BC government legislated class size limits for face-to-face programs, they explicitly excluded DL from limits.

This is the BCTF policy adopted in 2001 and still in place.

51.11 - Distributed Learning

That BCTF policy on distributed learning be:

1.      Distributed learning remains a positive offering within the BC public school system when fully supported by adequate staffing, funding and resources within provincial guidelines.

2.      Distributed learning should not be used in place of sufficient staffing or adequate facilities.

3.      a. Distributed learning and electronic delivery of public education programs should be delivered under the provision of the collective agreement.
b. Distributed learning programs and courses in BC public schools should be equivalent to other programs and courses in curriculum, assessment and reporting.

4.      Policies on distributed learning should be adopted by any school district that intends to use distributed learning for any of its students, either in its own district, or in conjunction with another district that runs programs:

a.        the teacher local should be involved in the formulation of the policy;

b.       the policy should include criteria and processes for making a decision on whether distributed learning is an appropriate placement;

c.        the policy should consider the social purposes of education, as well as the educational development of individuals.

5.      The school district in which any public school student lives should receive funding for that student. Decisions on requests to place the student in a distributed learning program should be made by the school district according to established criteria and processes. If a school district believes that an out-of-district distributed learning placement is most appropriate, then it should make enrolment and financial arrangements with the other district.

6.      Development of learning resources for distributed learning should be directed by the Ministry of Education, and BCTF members, identified through the BCTF process, should be involved in the development of the resources and compensated according to their rate of pay under the collective agreement provisions that apply in their local.

7.      Distributed learning programs should not include marketing learning materials, courses and programs outside of BC.

8.      There should be no financial or other incentive for parents or school districts to enrol students in one program over another.
(01 AGM, p. 42-43)

9.      That locals should ensure that all distributed learning courses and programs are being offered by qualified teachers who are members of our bargaining unit.

51.13 - That locals be encouraged to develop policies on distributed learning that include a statement of where distributed learning may be used appropriately, the appropriate conditions for the work of teachers using distributed learning and transparency in budgets for distributed learning and that locals use these policies in attempts to influence school district practices.
(Jan./Feb. RA 03 p. 17)

51.15 - 1. That the BCTF opposes allowing Grade 10–12 students in the public schools taking courses in the independent distributed learning programs.

2.      That the BCTF supports legislation and policies that ensure quality public school distributed education programs.

3.      That public education programs, such as distributed learning, should be carried out through public institutions, not private societies.

4.      That distributed learning programs not be promoted as better than classroom-based programs or be used to replace classroom-based programs in schools.

5.      That locals be made aware of the possible implications for staffing, transfers, and layoffs from some distributed learning programs not meeting the ministry conditions by May 31 and thus not able to offer distributed learning programs.
(May 06 Ex., p. 12)

***************************************************************

Research reports on Distributed Learning in BC are available on the BCTF website:   http://www.bctf.ca/publications.aspx?id=5630#Technology

 

"Black Code"--We are all in their sights

The revelations by Edward Snowden should not have been such a surprise to so many.  Much of the story has been out there for anyone who was looking for it--in books, novels and, of course, online.

The fact that there has been no outcry long ago is an indication of a willful ignoring of the dangers of digital technology and "big data" in particular.

As an example, Ronald Deibert's  Black Code:  Inside the battle for cyberspace, points to the dual developments of the new century that changed what is possible and how it is exploited--massive increases in data collected, transmitted and stored and 9/11 as an excuse for mining that data to protect us.

Deibert is a professor at the University of Toronto and heads the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies.  Its mandate is to do research on the "intersection of the Internet, global security and human rights"  and he is an investigator  with the Information Warfare Monitor group.

The National Security Agency (NSA), he reports, has data-mining equipment at key IXPs, Internet Exchange Points that are the key points where Internet data passes between networks.  Being at the exchange points is efficient because so much of the data is streamed through these crucial links.

To better understand what is happening to Canadian date, the IXmaps project at the U of T traced a specific message through its route.  They sent an email from the University of Toronto to the Hockey Hall of Fame, a few block away:  "The email crossed into the United States, was peered at an IXP in Chicago, and was probably exposed to one of the NSA's warrantless surveillance systems rumoured to be located at the facility."

Much of the stream of data in Canada is open to US monitoring.  The data goes through the US because it has 95 of these IXPs and Canada only five. 

Canada, of course, has its own surveillance agency, the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC).  Then Defense Minister Peter McKay in Parliament gave Tom Mulcair assurances that "this program is specifically prohibited from looking at the information of Canadians."

Oh, sure!  The US and Canada--and other countries, as well--claim to be looking only at the information from people who are not their citizens.  In the case of Canada and the US, security agencies share information which inevitably means the assurance is meaningless.

But McKay's assurance isn't genuine in any sense.  Note the weasel words--"looking at the information of Canadians."  One outgrowth of Snowden's leaks is that it makes clear that the metadata--the unseen data that identifies time and places-- is of particular use.  You can find out a great deal without ever looking at the content of the communications.

Surveillance, though, is only one of the battles for cyberspace outlined by Deibert.  "Big data," the collection and storage of massive data and then its analysis is not only used for surveillance, finding supposed terrorist threats.  Corporations use it to target products, as does Google through an algorithm that determines what ads are going to be sent with your Gmail or YouTube videos.

Government's are also anxious to use big data to find out about citizens and shape government programs.  In British Columbia we have the "Government 2.0" plan currently being implemented.  Central to it is seeing citizens as made up of data points that can be stored and mined--still another form of surveillance brought to us by the new technologies. 

The BC Ministry of Education plan for the replacement of BCeSIS is part of a cross-ministry strategy to be able to link education data with other data government collects on individuals.  BCeSIS is the student information system build in the pre-Big Data days.  The common link will be the identity card being rolled out that serves as a driver's license and medical card.

More on that another day.

Reference

Deibert, Ronald.  (2013)  Black Code:  Inside the Battle for Cyberspace.  McClelland and Stewart:  Toronto.

 

 

 

 

Questioning "One Laptop Per Child" as a development policy

 

The One Laptop Per Child project was initiated by Nicholas Negroponte from the prestigious MediaLab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  It was to be carried out by a non-profit organization with the project announced at the World Economic Forum (Davos) in 2005.

The objective was to produce a $100 computer that could be given to every student, providing ubiquitous technology on low-income countries.  It was designed to be simple, durable and operate with power sources that could include wind-up charging.  An antenna on the computer would allow for connection to wifi where it exists or to links among computers in a local area.  The software was open source, including the operating system and the applications.

Open source software became an area of conflict with Microsoft, which competed to get its software into the project with a special deal of $3 packages of its software.  The design eventually allowed for either open source or Microsoft.

The low cost of the computer did not include ongoing operating costs such a maintenance and technical support, and assumed a level of durability that has not panned out.

The project has not succeeded in having the widespread take-up that the promoters anticipated.  Some of that is because the technology itself didn't live up to the expectations. 

Perhaps of more significance, though, according to Neil Selwyn, author of Education in a Digital World, has to do with political and social values and policies.  The issues he raises are key issues to consider in all attempts to implement Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in an education context.

Selwyn draws on other researchers to identify the importance of looking beyond the technical:

We suggest that this and other ICT4D [ICT for development] projects be critiqued not only in      terms of their technological feasibility, economic rationales or models of education, but, more fundamentally, in terms of the ideologies  they intend their users to enact.  (Anannany and Winters, 2007)

Selwyn identifies five aspects of ideology and values that relate to the OLPC project, all aspects to consider in examining any policies on applications of technology to education:

1)         An assumption that access to technology will lead to education, health and life-related      improvements for those with access. 

Negroponte claims that "poverty can only be eliminated through education."  Selwyn characterizes the assumption about the centrality of technology as an aggressive  modernization agenda--technology will revolutionize the world for the better.

2)         Support for constructivist learning theory.

This form of constructivism is learner-centred, in the belief that learning takes place by the individual creating objects and systems--as in the title of a book by Piaget--To understand is to invent.  This is an individualist approach that devalues the social and institutional frames of learning.

There is an overlap here with one form of "progressive" pedagogy in contrast to the social constructivism based on the ideas of Vygotsky.

3)         Learning and change happen through networked individualism.

The learner is expected to organize their own educational experiences using the technology.   It is this networking that will make changes, not social institutions and policies.  An anti-school sentiment goes with this view.  Individual children are seen as the principal sites of change.  Technology is "inherently expressive and self transforming."

Negroponte acknowledged that the $100 laptop is a 'Trojan Horse" to get the technology in the hands of young people.  The students, presumably, will then change the education system.

4)         Access in itself is a social project.

The technology itself becomes a fetish rather than focus on the education first and the technology in relationship to it.  Selwyn quotes a programmer slogan as an example:  "Not every child in the world had a laptop.  This is a bug.  We're fixing that."

Giving computers to students is seen as educationally better than giving them books, hiring more teachers or building more schools.

5)         Promotion of the technology is culturally insensitive.

Getting computers in schools is not understood as fitting into the work of the school as opposed to becoming the work of the school.  The "evangelist" technology promoters come into the school with the message that this is the way it must be done.

Selwyn quotes former SUTEP (PERU) General Secretary Luis Munoz Alvarado saying  that the OLPC "laptops are not part of a comprehensive educational, pedagogical project, and their usefulness is debatable."

One Laptop Per Child in Latin America--a research agenda

Many countries in Latin America have adopted the OLPC to one degree or another.  The first country to give a laptop to every elementary student under the program was Uruguay.

In addition to Peru and Uruguay, others are Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico, as well as Costa Rica.

Research in these countries might look at the level of implementation, the strategies involved and the educational results as seen by teachers and their unions, as well as academics and education ministry officials.  The five areas of values and ideologies identified by Selwyn could be a framework for comparative examination of the specifics of this program as well as other elements of technology in education.

Source:

Selwyn, N.  (2013).  "'One Laptop per Child'--A Critical Analysis."  127-146.  In Selwyn, N. (2013).  Education in a Digital World:  Global Perspectives on Technology and Education.  (Routlege:  London).

 

 

 

IT, corporations, global institutions vs local culture

 

The connections between IT corporations and the push for technology as a solution to education problems is very clear in the US.  The Gates Foundation funds projects and organizations that are pushing IT and online learning as government policies. 

The Foundation also funds the Pearson Foundation which is creating online courses and assessments for the new Common Core curriculum that are then sold by the Pearson for-profit company.   Microsoft and Cisco are big promoters of information technology in education with an obvious corporate interest in sales and profits. 

Joel Spring in his book, Education Networks, points to "shadow networks" of people who move from corporation to foundation to government, linking and pushing the IT policies.

But do those links operate on a global basis as well?  Not surprisingly, the answer is yes and here are a couple of examples.

Microsoft linked up with UNESCO in 2009 to create a UNESCO-Microsoft Task Force on Higher Education and IT.  A UNESCO-Microsoft agreement was announced at a meeting of 150 education ministers and top bureaucrats.  A UNESCO officer said that "Through the creation of the UNESCO-Microsoft Task Force...we will help mobilize critical strategic resources to better assist ministries of education worldwide." (p.37)

Spring reports that the" agreement allowed Microsoft to make major inroads into national systems of higher education."  Microsoft put $50 million into the project--in the form of  "free software and certifications which would lead to future purchases of Microsoft products by the world's higher education systems." (p38)

The World Economic Forum (Davos) plays a role as well.  It published a report (written by two corporate executives of Cisco Systems who formerly worked for the World Bank) called The Global Information Technology Report 2010-2011 which claims that "ICT has also proven...an important instrument for bridging economic and social divides and reducing poverty."  It's a claim that seems somewhat overblown when compared to reality.

The future promised by the report is of a "global consumer class" who can afford personal ICT.  They are part of "a 'new global Internet culture' where users across countries generally share similar opinions and habits." (p. 57) 

This is reminiscent of Thomas Friedman's "flat world" thesis that globalization and technology have homogenized the globe.  It, of course, ignores the reality of the billions of people who are not part of the global consumer class. 

What are the links between national education decision-makers and the corporate and transnational organizations promoting ICT in education?

Is the technology having the impact of creating a global culture?  If so, is this happening because it is desirable and desired?  Or is it an unintended consequence that can be altered if there is a social consciousness and will to maintain diversity?  Can ICT be used to contribute to maintaining cultural diversity?

Reference:

Spring, Joel.  (2012).  Education Networks:  Power, Wealth, Cyberspace and the Digital Mind. (Routlege:  New York)