Extinguishing choice and learning

About a week ago we wrote about Microsoft striving to 'manage' national education and we also showed what was happening in BECTA. It is only now that we find this Microsoft press release, whose headline is "Microsoft Hosts Global Education Leaders at School of the Future World Summit." Since when is Microsoft an authority in education? This is not education, it's misuse.

This week, school administrators and policymakers from more than 30 countries are gathering in Seattle for the fourth annual School of the Future World Summit, hosted by Microsoft Corp.'s Partners in Learning.

Here is a report from there, which features Microsoft's Mr. Bean, whom we recently mentioned here for 'poisoning' the Open University.

...[Microsoft employee Martin] Bean told a group of educators gathered Tuesday for Microsoft's School of the Future World Summit in Seattle. Bean said schools largely are not adapting to their students' digital lifestyles.

[...]

For instance, he said, Microsoft's Live@edu initiative, which principally manages e-mail for educational institutions, would expand its offerings.

He also said Microsoft is working on a set of "content-creation tools" that teachers will be able to use to assemble digital content for students.

And Microsoft will add specific tools designed for use in educational settings to Office and SharePoint, its collaboration technology.

So, top educators and decision-makers gather in Microsoft's back yard and are being preached by Microsoft employees (who also occupy chief positions at supposedly 'open' universities) about the use of Microsoft lock-in, which they are advised to pass to young people.

This is similar to what they do in UNISA (South Africa). They expand this ODF- and GNU/Linux-hostile strategy beyond just South Africa, according to this item from the news. They also want to bring more of that 'addiction' (as Gates calls this dependency and lock-in) to other part of Africa now. ⬆

Closed-source learning