Bill and Ellie's Day Off in Latin America

Bill Gates and my next-door neighbor Ellie have a lot in common. For one thing, they both have a Windows-based PC. Well, Ellie does. I've seen it. I'm only guessing that Bill does, since it's been years since I've been invited to his house. (Come to think of it, it's been a while since Ellie invited me to her house too, so there's something else they have in common.)

Okay, a third thing they have in common is that they both support educational efforts in South America. In Ellie's case, she very commendably gives all of her spare change to rural educational efforts in Peru, and goes to Peru a few times a year to see how her dollars are being spent.

For his part, Bill is promoting the development and improvement of education through information and communication technology for teachers and students in Latin America through an agreement between Microsoft and the telecommunications company Telefónica to expand an online training network to provide online content, services and curricula to innovative teachers in Latin America. The program is already up-and-running in Spain, Mexico, and Colombia, and hopefully will expand to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru in the near future.

The Microsoft/Telefónica collaboration will support and extend services offered through Telefónica Foundation's EducaRed program to provide teachers, students, and parents with innovative tools and educational content, making it easier to access online and classroom training and collaboration tools.

Microsoft's Partners in Learning has benefited more than 59 million students and teachers in Latin America and has invested more than $25 million in grants and software through the company's Unlimited Potential program.

To the best of my knowledge, Ellie has yet to hit the $25 million mark.

-- Jonathan Erickson
jerickson@ddj.com

Posted by Jon Erickson at 05:19 PM  Permalink