Tech behemoths big it up about IT literacy

THROWING THEIR COLLECTIVE weight around in the name of education, Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco say they'll team up to lay down proper standards of digital literacy.

Admitting they may not be completely capable of coming up with such standards by themselves, the triumvate of tech-sperts have magnanimously appointed a plethora of academics, education leaders and wise men to guide the world towards the holy grail of being IT literate.

Both the Redmond Giant and Chipzilla have been active in the educational sphere for donkeys years, with things like the Intel Teach programme, and Microsoft's Partners in Learning amongst others. And of course there is also Intel's cheapo kiddie lappie, the Classmate PC, a new model of which is being launched this week.

"The collaboration will help us to reach our common goal of transforming education around the world", noted Intel's Will Swope who added "we are aiming to resolve the gap that exists between what goes on in schools and what goes on in the real world and better measure the skills that are truly needed for the 21st-century."

Volish Veep, Anoop Gupta, head of Microsoft's emerging markets effort noted the importance and "the need for public and private sectors to unite in an effort to extend access to quality education, increase graduation rates and create a consistent way to measure success".

It is of course rare for companies to work together on educational reform programmes rather than going solo. Working solo makes it much easier for individual companies to push their own marketing agendas, so teaming up is no insignificant feat.

But the real litmus test of "is it charity or clever marketing" will surely come as the credit crunch forces firms to tighten their belts and rein in unnecessary spending. Is it still worth it for the giants to plough humungous sums into the IT education of the developing world? Possibly. If they can get them to buy kit. µ