The Future of Education Around the Globe

"The event will promote networking and help build a global community ready to initiate change and provide support for each other in practical ways."

The Third Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning, which takes place from 4 to 8 July 2004, bears the theme 'Building Learning Communities for Our Millennium: Reaching Wider Audiences through Innovative Approaches in Education, Health and Local Government'. Participants in the event, organised by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and the Distance Education Association of New Zealand (DEANZ), include ministers, senior government officials and educationalists from the Commonwealth.  

Former Commonwealth Secretary-General Sir Shridath Ramphal is one of the keynote speakers. Others include UNESCO's Assistant Director-General of Natural Sciences, Walter Erdelen; former Governor-General of New Zealand, Sir Paul Reeves; Tertiary Education Commission member Shona Butterfield; and The Gambia's Secretary of State for Education, Ann Therese Ndong-Jatta, who has recently been appointed to UNESCO headquarters in Paris as Director of Basic Education.  

Delegates at the forum will discuss how the latest developments, best practice, emerging issues and research could be used to address the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. These include eradicating hunger and poverty, improving maternal and child health, combating HIV/AIDS and malaria, promoting gender equality, ensuring environmental sustainability and building global partnerships for development. Recommendations from the conference will be presented to the UN.  

Forum participants will deliberate how technology-mediated learning and teaching can be applied to pre-school, primary, secondary, post-secondary, adult and tertiary education. They will also explore how open and distance learning strategies may be deployed in these sectors. Delegates will study how open and distance learning and technology-mediated methods can be used in the provision of training in health, agriculture and related professions. They will also examine the use of these strategies in enhancing practical knowledge and skills for the development of local government and public infrastructure. 

Dunedin is home to New Zealand's first university (Otago) and the first School of Art (now at Otago Polytechnic). 

Bronwyn Hegarty, a DEANZ executive and co-ordinator of eLearning (electronic learning) at Otago Polytechnic, stated: "The event will promote networking and help build a global community ready to initiate change and provide support for each other in practical ways." 

The Pan-Commonwealth Forum grew out of a conference in Brunei Darussalam in 1999, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of COL, a Vancouver-based body which promotes distance education. The second forum was held in Durban, South Africa, in 2002.

Link:
Commonwealth Education Section

CNIS - the Commonwealth News and Information Service Issue 191        7 July 2004