Day One Done - Part One

I woke up to a funny ringing sound - more commonly known as the wake up call - but I was too out of it to realize. My day started very much the way it usually does - talking to my beautiful wife. It took a little while but we were able to connect using gmail video chat. Isn't technology wonderful? I was even able to iron my shirt and show off my new suit before leaving the comfort of my hotel room.

We had a buffet lunch in the hotel restaurant. Lots of options many things I have never seen before. I will experiment more tomorrow. We hopped on a bus to go to the Ritz Carlton Hotel. The amount of construction is astronical. They are really working hard to beautify the city. Interlocking sidewalks. Green part - lots of irrigation Hoses needed. They are preparing for a bid for the world cup so that may have something to do with it.

The opening address for the conference was very interesting. The Emir's wife, a representative for UNESCO spoke. This summit was her idea. It was hard to determine who she was addressing her speech to. In many ways it seemed like she was speaking to her citizens, at times to the Arab world and at times to us. The main point of her message was the need to innovate in terms of the three themes of the summit: plurality, sustainability, technology.

There were a few other speakers. One of the mentioned that Qatar is not part of the middle east but it is a part of the Arab world. Not sure what that means... There was also the idea that we need to be action oriented so that we are not reactionary. We also found out that at the end of the summit there will be a document drafted containing key points that are brought up in the breakout session. The opening session ended with the following: knowledge is about the past, wisdom is for the future therefore let us all strive to be WISE.

The first session was discussing Globalization and preparing our students for the Global economy. Two of the speakers talked about Higher Education and one discussed k-12. The university folk talked about the need for critical thinking skills to create a learner for life, a life of careers rather then a lifetime career. There were some interesting discussions on this topic, a woman from UNESCO in Africa asked about the poor and the most needy and how they fit into the idea of globalization. The discussion also turned to what exactly is a global citizen, and is that notion even possible. At the end of each session, the panelists are asked to provide two points that they would like to recommend regarding the topic.

We had lunch-buffet style-with lots of little finger foods, shawarma, spring rolls, sushi (yes I had a roll of some kind), fish, meatballs, chana, pita and something that looked like humus. It was all very good.

The second breakout session was about Technology and e-Learning. One of the panelists was from Texas, the other was the head of Sesame Workshop (Street) and the last was a from an African organization called TESSA. The term creative commons was addressed as a way to copyright work for the purpose of opening it up to be used by anyone. Sesame street was interesting because he showed us examples of how it appears around the world. It is not dubbed in other countries, each country has it own version where they develop their own characters and use their own celebrities etc. The one comment that resonated with me was that e-learning can be very boring (no offense to Library Part 1) and I agree that it can be. I think also an issue is how will people be able to sift through the garbage to find what they want or need.

End of Part One...time to go to the market.