le globalisation, l'education, et...l'amour entre deux oranges?

This morning's keynote was excellent - I was in two minds whether to go or not, but it was definitely worth the sprint to the convention centre and getting drenched by the sprinklers in the park. There's far too much to cover here, but Bruno Lanvin (The World Bank) - look, here he is in a sub-standard picture:





















gave a talk about Knowledge Societies and the Global Education Challenge. Yes, quite, that's exactly why I was in two minds about whether to go - not my kind of thing at all. But it was an incredibly engaging talk and he covered a lot of complicated concepts in very accessible ways. A lot of the talk was focussed on the knowledge economy, the value of information, the rapid outdating of information (eg, in a 3 year degree, by your final year the information you learned in the first year will be outdated; we're currently educating people for jobs that don't yet exist, and preparing them to work with tools, technologies that haven't been invented yet; for advanced and technical skills, lifelong learning will be the rule, and the best thing that anyone can learn is how to learn).

It might be the sort of stuff you've heard before, but it really helped me to focus on some of the conversations we've been having in AI recently, about the need for fluency, adaptability, changing patterns of learning, etc (hint: AI Forum future of learning wiki. get it while it's hot!).

There was a bit about measuring and statistics - about the fact that the digital divide has always existed, but it's just the focus that is shifting; and about the fact the people try to measure economies based on what is measurable rather than what is strategic. Anyway, like I say, too much to cover (and I've probably done the poor man some terrible injustice with this rambling post) but the presentation should be available online. So just two more things...

1) Apparently, when the US VicePresident went to Argentina to deliver a speach about the Global Knowledge Infrastructure (in the 1990s, i think), the initial focus of the speech was going to be termed International Information Infrastructure. Until he got on the plane, and someone pointed out that the acronym was III, and it probably wouldn't go down too well in a spanish speaking country...

2) If anyone can find out firstly, what the "Love of 2 oranges" (or "Love between 2 oranges", or something similar) is, there's a prize in it for you (share your solution as a comment); and secondly, if you can guess what it might have had to do with the presentation, there's an even bigger and better prize.

Right, I'm off to finally engage with globalisation and the knowledge economy. More book shopping at the airport on the way home, methinks...