Qatar Foundation

The second World Innovation Summit for Education took place in Doha, Qatar on December 7-9, 2010. Nearly 1300 dignitaries, thought leaders, disruptive ICT practitioners, program planners and policy makers were provided with a more focused program with deeper debates, better internet access, WISE web TV and WISE Twitter feeds to push out up live updates. This version included some interactive sessions with 2o Learner Voices of young men and women selected by WISE as leaders in development. Their voices were finally a more active part of the Summit, and should be expanded in as many sessions next year as possible, as they represented some of the most articulate, clear sources of feedback on the state of the art from the end-user perspective. Throughout the proceedings, delegates were capably assisted by a thoroughly professional army of WISE Logistics team members and Sheraton hotel hospitality staff who gracefully performed their supporting roles & duties. I particularly enjoyed meeting some friendly bomb-throwing "disruptive" educational anarchists representing  emerging or established ICT entitities. In particular Donald Clark, John Davitt, and  Tim Rylands provided persuasive perspectives (and ongoing sardonic, dry wit) of ways to achieve near-universal access through ...

I recently received notification of being invited to participate in the second installment of the Qatar Foundation’s hosting of the 2010 World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE). WISE is a three day global conversation with 1000 thought leaders about building concrete, innovative, and sustainable education practices for the world’s diverse learning communities in Doha, Qatar on December 7-9, 2010. WISE 2009 snapshot review Last year's event  was an ambitious beginning aimed at convening a representative cross section of professionals & practitioners to take an open-minded look at the  overall status of the world's efforts to provide educational access, quality, and meaning.  The Qatar Foundation and Summit attendees worked towards creating a balanced perspective between celebrating technological breakthroughs, the resilience of  the human spirit, & noteworthy  achievements with facing the realities of  unconscionable/unacceptable deficits of teaching/educational infrastructure, poverty, and inequalities that block access to the majority of the world's educational minorities  daily. For me, it was an opportunity to connect, listen, and share with other program leaders about the critical need to include people of all ages with disabilities into any educational reform calculations. Our voices were few, but clearly heard and important for those from other sectors of the K-20 system to appreciate that ...

After three years of planning, the Qatar Foundation in the fall of 2009  initiated the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), a global launch point to convene/engage forward thinking professionals and practitioners in setting educational priorities worldwide. Originally proposed to be a biennial event, the Qatar Foundation has decided to make it an annual Summit. The WISE 2010 will be held in Doha, Qatar on December 7-9, 2010. Although there is no conference program to share what types of presentations and interactions will take place, it will certainly follow the 10 Educational Priorities identified last year shown in this Slideshare presentation that follows: Global Equity Imperative: Can we be WISE enough to change the face of education worldwide? View more presentations from Rob Crawford. Individuals and programs interested in participating in the Award competition as well as a complete WISE 2009 conference write up, videos of Innovation Award winners, and other activities can be  found at this link: http://www.wise-qatar.org/.

The World Innovation Summit for Education in Doha, Qatar zeroed in on the concept of education being in a transtional state- especially with technological breakthroughs expanding the potential access of education- but also fragementing/dividing the world into digital haves/have nots. Even though only 3% of the continent of Africa is connected to an electrical power grid, there are over 2.5 billion cellphone users. The current generation of global learners under the age of 25 have grown up with mobile phone apps, internet connections, text messaging, and games as part of daily living. They interact and function in a vastly different space than traditional settings are prepared to deal with, let alone any effective plan of reform for the future. But what does this mean to students with learning and neurological issues? What can be expected of their ability to learn and advance in parts of the world where they don't have schools, teachers, or help for their problems ? If the purpose of education today/tomorrow is to measure success by community impact, getting the "right students" to attend, affordable tuition, with trained teachers and infrastructure- then Professor Sugatra Mitra's "Hole in the Wall" experiments challenges the relevancy of needing teachers, being able to speak the language of instruction, or having access to expensive computer technology. This ...