Who controls the digital technologies used by schools and education networks? Where does the data and everything created by students and teachers go? Whose interests are served by the algorithms that organize school life?
The problem that drive us
The accelerated entry of private platforms from large foreign corporations (big techs) into Brazilian public education has produced a silent shift in power. It’s not just about privacy and data protection: what’s at stake is the autonomy of teachers, schools, and networks, the definition of curricula and pedagogical practices, and national sovereignty itself. When a school or network adopts or receives “for free” a platform whose servers are located outside the country, whose algorithms are opaque, and whose business model is based on the extraction of behavioral data, it transfers fundamental decisions to corporations that are alien to the right to education.
We bet on transformation
A Iniciativa Edtec para o Bem Comum vai além de responder “como usar tecnologia?” e incorpora duas perguntas centrais: “qual tecnologia queremos adotar?” e “por quê?” Para isso, é preciso ampliar a perspectiva de educação digital, sem reduzi-la a adotar tudo que é oferecido como novidade pelo mercado, como plataformas e aplicativos. Isso exige examinar infraestruturas e promover a governança participativa que garanta os direitos das comunidades escolares.
What we propose
The Edtec Initiative for the Common Good will plan and implement a pilot project for digital sovereignty in education. This pilot aims to:
- Generate evidence from listening to school communities;
- Adjust strategies along the way, with continuous learning;
- Promote open practices and technologies;
- Serve as a benchmark for public policies and inspiration for other projects in Brazil.
We do not seek standardized scalability, as we recognize the impossibility of replication given the diversity of contexts and territories. What inspires us is scalability as a political goal: multiplying principles, not formulas.
A debate that is taking hold all over the world
The digital sovereignty in education has become a central theme all around the world. It gained relevance in forums such as the G20 Brazil 2024 and COP30, which strongly highlighted the environmental impact of large platforms’ data centers. On the legal front, recent milestones such as the LGPD (General Data Protection Law), ECA Digital, the New PNE (National Education Plan), and the MEC’s (Ministry of Education) guidelines on digital, media, and artificial intelligence education, signal a shift in language in official documents. The socio-technical approach supersedes the view of technology as a mere tool and focuses attention on the criteria for selecting and adopting digital educational resources. International examples demonstrate the importance of this agenda:
A school in Madrid is penalized for negligence with student data
France will replace Zoom and Teams applications developed locally
The Edtec Initiative for the Common Good joins this movement, bringing together civil society, academia, and public authorities around a common goal: technologies for the common good, with sovereignty and autonomy for both educators and learners.
Join us
The Edtec Initiative for the Common Good joins this movement, bringing together civil society, academia, and public authorities around a common goal: technologies for the common good, with sovereignty and autonomy for both educators and learners.