MICHAEL
TRUCANO 
TECHNOLOGY | INNOVATION | EDUCATION

ABOUT MIKE

 

Michael Trucano is a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution, a think tank based in Washington, DC. where he explores issues related to effective and ethical uses of new technologies in education. Current areas of inquiry include the use of digital educational credentials, generative artificial intelligence in education, and, more broadly, emerging edtech policies, initiatives, and institutions after the pandemic.

 

Mike is currently on leave from the the World Bank, where he served as the institution's Global Lead for Technology & Innovation in Education for eight years, working on issues at the intersection of technology use and education in middle- and low-income countries and emerging markets around the world and co-led the World Bank EdTech team, which coordinated national efforts to support 'remote learning' during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

During his 25-year career at the World Bank, Mike was an advisor on, evaluator of, and/or working-level participant in, large scale educational technology initiatives in over 50 countries, working with ministries of education, NGOs and the private sector in diverse environments from A(rmenia) to Z(ambia), including notable work in China, Egypt, Ghana, Iceland, India, Kenya, Rwanda, South Korea, Thailand, Uruguay and Vietnam.

Mike co-founded and led the World Bank EdTech team, which provides technical support and guidance to large scale national education projects around the world as well as the institution's global solutions group on 'innovation in education', which maintains the World Bank's internal knowledgebase on edtech topics and sponsors numerous knowledge-sharing events each year.

He co-authored the World Bank's edtech strategy, Reimagining Human Connections, and directed analytical work under the World Bank's flagship Systems Approach for Better Education Results: Information and Communication Technologies (SABER-ICT), including a related working paper series.

He was the principal voice behind the World Bank's influential and widely-read EduTech blog, which featured over 220 essays, collected and published in seven annual volumes, including, a number of which went 'viral', including Worst practice in ICT use in education.

A frequent public speaker and interview subject on the use of technology in education around the world, Mike regularly also serves as a 'master of ceremonies' or moderator at conferences and industry events.

His notable publications include:

• Building and Sustaining National Educational Technology Agencies: Lessons, Models and Case Studies from Around the World
• SABER-ICT Framework Paper for Policy Analysis: Documenting national educational technology policies around the world and their evolution over time
• Getting Textbooks to Every Child in Sub-Saharan Africa: Strategies for Addressing the High Cost and Low Availability Problem
   

In addition to his advisory work on projects funded by the World Bank and other international aid agencies and donors, he has served on a number of external advisory boards for non-profit groups, international development agencies and prize committees, including Digital Promise, UKaid's Digital Advisory Panel, the mEducation Alliance, and the International Literacy Prizes of the U.S. Library of Congress.

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Earlier in his career, Mike served as the ICT and Education Specialist at the World Bank's infoDev program, where he coordinated activities related to information and communication technologies and the Millennium Development Goals. He led infoDev's work in the education sector, exploring the use of various low-cost ICT devices to meet developmental objectives in the social sectors, and managed the program's mobile banking work. While at infoDev, he authored the popular publication, Knowledge Maps: ICT in Education (What do we know about the effective uses of information and communication technology in education in developing countries?)

Mike joined the World Bank Group in 1997, first working at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and then as part of the education team at the World Bank Institute, where he was a core member of the team that developed the pioneering World Links program, which introduced and coordinated the first educational technology programs iin 22 countries across in Africa, Latin America and Asia. He began his career as a classroom teacher.

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A native of Minnesota (USA), Mike is a graduate of Bowdoin College and the Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, with additional study at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich and Prague's Charles University. An avid soccer player and fan, he lives with his family outside of Washington, DC.

You can find Mike on Twitter @trucano