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Home > Vol.
1, No. 6 > Open Articles |
Sep 2001 | |
Welcome to Global Learn Day Vby John Hibbs, Founder and Director, The Benjamin Franklin Institute of Global Education
208 weekends ago, long before the dotcom mania, and at a time when only a small number of people even knew what the word webcast meant, Al Lepine, Alexis Rocherolle and Blaine Berger came to San Diego to see if we could hold a global, 24 hour non-stop distance education conference. We could. And we did. We called it Global Learn Day, The Inaugural. 156 weekends ago, Terry Redding and Vaudene Field also came here to see if we could improve on the Inaugural. We couldn't. And we didn't. Privately, we called it a disaster. Publicly we called it Global Learn Day II. It was a stiff reminder that making mistakes is the price you must pay if you want to make progress. 104 weekends ago, Guy Bensusan, Terry Redding and Rick Stahl gathered with me again. This time, we teamed virtually with Eric Baber in London, Neil Hynd in Abu Dhabi, Karen Eini in Israel, Roger Boston in Texas and Graciela Pascual in Argentina to see if we could recover from the shipwreck of GLD II. We could and we did, ending it with the deep sense of pride that comes to those who are on their way back up the mountain. In sailing what we had experienced would have been called a knock down. The good ones get up...the very good ones don't just get back up -- they get back in the race. 52 weekends ago, Midi Cox and I gathered together and once more we teamed virtually with every person mentioned previously. To that team we added an oceanographer by the name of Sean Chamberlain and a knowledge management entovator by the name of Debra Amidon. With some very heavy lifting, Debra expanded terrifically our collection of experts in the business of knowledge distribution. With some very heavy sweat, Professor Chamberlain took us into the world of radio. With a brilliant keynote from Vint Cerf, we took our little ship very nicely once more around the world. The changes on the cyberspace horizon from 208 weekends ago are easy to spot. The magic of being a dotcom innovator has been replaced by the label of being a dot dumb stock holder. The beauty of limited e-mail between friends has yielded to electronic mailboxes stuffed with junk. Like six shooters in times past, cell phones and pagers are checked at the door. Along with thousands of fine colleges worldwide, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Oxford and Cambridge have all gone on line. All of it pretty big news. Then came September 11. Until then, not many were prepared to link the misery that comes to those whose opportunities are limited by geography and circumstance with those who suffer the deep pains that comes by acts of terror. Yes, 52 weeks ago, our Keynote Speaker was Sir John Daniel, the man who earned his knighthood by changing the landscape of higher education in the United Kingdom. For the British, he did not just open up opportunities to more education. He opened opportunities for a better life. In his keynote, 52 weeks ago, Sir John made crystal clear that it was not an option to have five billion denied those same opportunities. He sharply reminded us that not only have five billion never touched a keyboard, very few could give you any compelling reason to do so. Here we have a world where a tiny fraction of the planet makes a very good living with keyboarding skills of a kind not that difficult to learn. Yet, the rest of the planet hardly has any inkling whatsoever that individual earning power need not be tied to geography or circumstance.
Because of that, in our Curtain Raiser this year we will feature Keynoter Maria Victoria Polanco, the president of the World Association of Community Broadcasters. She has dynamite stuff to say about all of this. Also on that Curtain Raiser platform will be Keynoter Dr. Raj Dhanarajan, the president of the Commonwealth of Learning. He will provoke you with thoughts about telecentres and telelearning and tele-jobs. Later, during our round the world Voyage, we will feature those in radio and those in telecenters -- from Alaska to Argentina, from Dublin to Durbin, from Lagos to Los Angeles. The best example of all may well be what is showcased in South America and what is addressed during Martha Davies' Keynote talks when we reach the Latin American shores. The story is this. By hook and by crook, Martha arm-twisted 600 old computers from American sources and got them shipped to Peru. With unstinting help from her Peruvian friends, they took those 600 rather tired units and transformed them into 200 mini e-learning and e-commerce centers; and put them in some of the most out back villages of Peru. Along with llama sweaters web-shipped at very good prices, these Peruvians plan on earning an income exporting knowledge about the Incans. They now know you don't need to be a mega corporation to earn a living from sales in Peoria.... but never leave Peru. So where are we? Fellow shipmates, I expect that Voyage Number Five will be as much a transcendent experience as was Voyage Number One. On the page which welcomes you to Global Learn Day V is written this:
At the half way mark to GLD V, we are out to reach new audiences to expose new opportunities. We want them to come to a conclusion we reached some time ago ...that misery is best eradicated by open minds, open doors and open societies. We also want them to know that just as Nagasaki and Hiroshima were never repeated neither should be another September 11. From our tiny craft, we will do our best to megaphone the message of GLD V - that linking radio, telecenters, distance education, distance training and distance jobs is our response to the evil of September 11. It is also the virtual card we will leave at the graves of those lost, everywhere, from acts of terror. Global Learn Day links
Read more about John Hibbs.
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My
name is John Hibbs and I'm your Captain on our fifth Voyage from the
South Pacific to Hawaii, the long way around.
The
good news is that also on board last year was fellow Keynoter, Dr. Arun
Mehta, from New Dehli. This is a man who is a fervent apostle of the
benefits of a marriage between the Internet and the radio. We listened
very hard to what Arun said about 50 cent radios, $200 computers, $1,000
micro radio stations and 70,000 community radio stations operating worldwide.
