Like many young people across Europe, Bulgarian youth are also struggling to find their best opportunities. A survey last year by the National Employment Agency shows that more than 19% of Bulgarian youth aged 15 to 29 are unemployed; while other estimates indicate that this number is actually closer to 30%. Eurobarometer research shows that 74% of Bulgarian youth want to immigrate. The country’s...

Young, high-potential & yet lacking the employable skills that open the door to our labour market? Sharpening the lens on a critical European business and political issue: YOUTH.  Collectively, European industry, government, and education providers convened last month at the Youth, The Key to Europe’s Future event hosted by Microsoft under the common accord that Skills are the global...

14 million European young people are not in employment, education or training, and at the same time thousands of jobs remain unfilled.

A private grade 4-12 educational institution in Greece (Athens), Doukas School has invested heavily in innovative education to provide its 2,000 students with the finest educational, cultural, and athletic programs in the country.

The Next Partners in Learning Global Forum will take place in Prague on 28th Nov-1st Dec. What the Partners in Learning programme does is to help school leaders discover and share best practices to foster a culture of innovation. 

Technology donations for nonprofits made easy: What has benefited German nonprofits for nearly four years now, is now also available in Austria. As of late September, the online technology donation portal Stifter-helfen.at – IT for nonprofits went online with a press conference in Vienna and media coverage in various print and online titles. It gives Austrian nonprofits access to over 100 products...

Today we are announcing Microsoft YouthSpark, a new company-wide initiative designed to create opportunities for 300 million youth in 100 countries over the next three years.

There’s no escaping the news of today about growing unemployment and economy turbulence, which means uncertainty for many – not the least to students and fresh graduates. But as the economy stagnates for now, innovation, entrepreneurship and enthusiasm are still holding a bright camp at - where else - than universities.

The School Istituto Laporta in Galatina is a school of excellence. The Partners in Learning (PIL) school programme marked an important step for the school.  When the PIL programme was implemented, the school maximized its potential at national and international level.

To achieve a smart, sustainable and inclusive EU, technology can play an important role in preparing European youth with the skills needed.

The prospects for Europe's youth were never bleaker; the prospects were never brighter.

As youth unemployment continues to rise across Europe, today’s students are more pressured than ever before to make the most of their education and prepare themselves for the jobs of the future.

Why the industrial model – hierarchical organizations using standardised methods to produce uniform products – no longer works for schools or students.

According to the European Disability Strategy 2010-2020, one in six people in the European Union has a disability so severe that it prevents them from fully taking part in society due to environmental and attitudinal barriers.

How do we inspire innovation in young people? How can we successfully marry technology with social entrepreneurship? How do we foster ideas for positive change?

Where Europe succeeds, we succeed Europe matters to us. For the past thirty years, it’s been our aim to help fuel the European economy with the programs, partnerships, products and services we deliver, through ourselves and others. Our investment has reaped significant return for thousands of new and existing businesses across the continent. My job takes me to interesting places all...

Imagine a world where a handheld mobile device helps you to navigate an area destroyed by a natural disaster to free a trapped victim from the rubble. Or a world where gaming technology helps to rehabilitate a child suffering from a crippling disease. Believe it or not, thanks to some very talented young minds from Central and Eastern Europe, that world already exists. It might seem trite to talk about hope...

In these challenging economic times, helping European students to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to support their success as adults has become critical to the long-term competitiveness of Europe.

“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas!” is how the saying goes. That is precisely the enthused response that Innovate4Good drew in Brussels where I just spent the day with 150 amazing young people from around Europe .

For years, Microsoft has been working with governments to help large scale transformation of education.  Since 2007, one of the key elements of that work has been the Shape the Future program.

Early on in the year, much was being said about youth employability being the key to the economic crisis. We felt that was the problem. It was only being said, little was being done.

The sun rises and so do I. It is the first day of my journey to the Partners in Learning European Forum (PILEF 2012) in Lisbon.

Microsoft Certification has come a long way in its first twenty years. It made its debut with the Microsoft Certified Professional Program, a measuring tool for employers and IT professionals.

In terms of modernising educational systems, Commissioner Vassiliou says, “We have a long way to go”.

If your organization is drawing on ICT professionals simply to operate and maintain ICT systems, then it is wasting money on ICT. 

The EU Commission is constantly working on developing common policies and regulations on how to address the challenges of migration and promote successful integration. The Europe 2020 Strategy targets to raise the employment rate of 20-64 year olds in the EU to 75%.

One of the important pieces of news discussed mid- January at the Education World Forum, held in London, was that the OECD’s international PISA study in 2015 will include a new and mandatory area of 21st Century Skill assessment – Collaborative Problem Solving.

International rankings confirm Europe “must do better”.

The EU is preparing a new global list of institutions of higher learning that will be “more open, more transparent, more useful”.

Enabling a new human capacity to match a new era of exponential change in our global economy is one of our greatest challenges, not just for governments but equally for industry and certainly the focal point of initiatives from the third sector and NGOs like us Langas i Ateiti ‘Window to the Future’.

We are constantly hearing that the labour market is changing with new kinds of jobs needing new sets of skills.

Microsoft PIL is a global program focused on improving teaching and learning through the effective use of technology in the classroom.

18 projects, and the teachers behind them, were awarded special recognition at the Partners in Learning Global Forum on November 10, 2011 in Washington, D.C. This year’s winners were selected from more than 115 projects, narrowed from more than 200,000 applicants, who competed at national and regional events over the course of the year.

We have seen the global financial crisis affect all economies around the world to varying degrees, but it has been especially severe in some European countries such as Spain, Portugal and Ireland. In Spain we see the youth unemployment rates at almost 50%, and in Portugal we hear the news that the Education budget will be cut 8% (600 million euros less than this year). Ireland has experienced a drastic...

In July 2011, Romania’s first Digital Agenda conference highlighted the importance of getting every European citizen online and equipping them with the right digital skills.

In this case study, you can read about the Lincoln Specialists Schools Group (LSSG) which is making advanced and specialised school courses available to students in Lincoln through cloud computing, and fighting the decline in student population in rural UK – with the help of an innovative SME - F1 Group.

The IT Academy in perspective

In January, Microsoft participated in the largest gathering of Ministers of Education in Europe and around the world at the Education World Forum.  At the forum, discussion of ensuring our students have the right skills to compete in this global economy was top of mind.  In partnership with Cisco and Intel, with the leadership of University of Melbourne we had the opportunity to participate in two...

In this case study, you can read about how students and staff at the University of Bologna can now collaborate and learn anytime and anywhere, thanks to cloud computing.

This post is a discourse on how new technology is a key factor that induces enjoyment as an educational path to the skills of the 21st century.

Take a Microsoft consultant in Madrid, add a PR Director in Kiev,  include a development tools specialist in Warsaw and an online marketing director in London. Then add to this the HR consultant in Dublin and finally throw in a very generous sprinkling of technical experts all around Europe. That’s when you start to get a sense of the cumulative value that employees at Microsoft are...

Office 365 for education will extend learning possibilities to students while helping them master technology they will use in their future careers.

Last month, people from around the world gathered at two education events in London – the Education World Forum (EWF) and the BETT trade show, one of the largest ICT in education conferences worldwide – to discuss how technology can help improve the state of education globally. Interestingly, The New York Times recently reported on the modern day skills students need to excel and succeed in...

The way we learn is changing. The voices of young people from across the globe are captured in this video, illustrating how they see the transition to a new culture of education empowered by technology.

Talent has no age. Talent has no passport. Talent has no gender; but opportunity has all three. Indeed, it is people that are the world's greatest untapped resource.

Global dimensions are changing. To name a few: the shift to a low carbon economy, globalization, technological change, accessible education and an ageing population have all sparked a change in the skills, knowledge base and competencies that the labour market demands. 

Just a few weeks after the launch of the EU flagship initiative Youth on the Move, on 4 October, Microsoft and European Schoolnet hosted a successful EU roundtable on eEducation entitled “ICT – are we doing enough to keep Europeans ahead in education?” in Brussels.

In Europe we have education placed high on the political agenda, indeed the first single EU-level strategy embracing both education and employment ‘Youth on the Move’ has recently been launched as a key facet of the Europe 2020 agenda!

The world's premier student technology competition celebrates this year’s winners on the 6 October! The event takes place at the European Parliament and is hosted by Polish MEP Rafal Trzaskowski.

Innovation in technology has changed the way we access and consume knowledge! With this in mind there can be no greater impact than that on the delivery of education and the creation of an attractive learning path for students both young and old. 

Picture 400 of the brightest young minds from 70 countries in Poland, selected from 325,000 students revealing some of the youngest entrepreneurial technology innovations on the globe! 

 The European Union has singled education and training as one of its priorities with the adoption of the Lisbon Strategy, its overarching program focusing on growth and jobs.

The pace of change and development in education has picked up substantially in recent years – largely because of the key role ICT is increasingly playing in both teaching and learning. 

Education is one of the important targets in Europe’s 2020 Strategy and rightly so.

The feeling in Berlin this week is not quite one of the majestic city of the past, but much more an innovative, exciting capital looking to the future.

CeBIT 2010 opened its doors yesterday, March 2nd. This year’s theme of the most important fair for the IT business is “connected world”.

Every year, Microsoft runs the Imagine Cup, a global technology competition for students to develop their IT skills while at the same time making a difference. 

Forward-looking perspectives from INSEAD’s recent conference  ‘Building e-Competences to Strengthen Innovation in Europe’  and the European University-Business Co-operation Forum  would suggest that the academic/business footprint on skills and workforce development is moving towards a closer fit but that there is more work to be done!

No matter where I am, there’s one thing we hear that’s always the same: educators the world over want access to affordable, secure, and easy-to-use technology that gives them the tools to increase quality and variety in delivering their curriculum.

I’m very proud to be writing that Microsoft has just launched the Microsoft Student Career Portal! The portal provides insight on five IT careers, along with the learning tools, certification exam guidance, and various resources necessary for students to gain technical skills that can differentiate them in today’s challenging job market.

As you might have read in my recent post, the IDC last week published a report sponsored by Microsoft, entitled “Post Crisis: e-skills are needed to drive Europe’s innovation society” (view PDF) which is based on the input of over 1,300 employers and training partners.

As a teenager in 1990s war-torn Kosovo, Alban Rrustemi loved a good crime film – especially one with computing gadgets.

No longer confined to geeks, eSkills is everybody's business.

Have a look at this interview with Jean Philippe Courtois produced by the INSEAD eLab, following the publication of a report by the European Business Summit and INSEAD proposing a Skills Pact for Europe.

The field of computing was still young in 1965 when SUPINFO was founded as the first French private higher-education school dedicated to information technology (IT). 

Through the Students to Business (S2B) program, Microsoft collaborates with universities and businesses to provide students with specialized IT training and help them find jobs and internships at local companies.

If Europe is to prosper in the global economy, it needs a lot more people like Fabian Suchanek. The 27-year-old German student is full of enthusiasm for his field, computer science.

Innovation isn't just what scientists and engineers do: it's also a feature of many community-based organisations and social entrepreneurs. But the result is the same: new ways of doing things and new products and services that enable people to change their lives.