Arun-Kumar Tripathi (tripathi@amadeus.statistik.uni-dortmund.de)
Thu, 5 Nov 1998 19:45:23 +0100 (MET)
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 19:45:23 +0100 (MET) From: Arun-Kumar Tripathi <tripathi@amadeus.statistik.uni-dortmund.de> Subject: [ifets] Global Learn Day II: Choosing Educational Destinies
Hi IFETS Forum Members,
For two days in November, 84 of the most savvy and powerful providers of
educational course materials for distance learning will come together in
a massive global display of interconnectivity. Their message is clear:
ignorance is becoming a matter of personal choice.
November 2, 1998
For Immediate Release
Global Learn Day II: Choosing Educational Destinies
WELLINGTON, NEW; ZEALAND -- Send your mind forward to
Sunday, November 8th. It is 7 a.m. in New Zealand and Mark Blumsky, the
mayor of Wellington, checks his watch; then returns to editing his
opening remarks. At that same moment in places scattered between the
North and South Poles where it is simultaneously morning, noon, and
evening, several hundred men and women are moving into position in media
centers in 37 countries. In three hours Mayor Blumsky will officiate at
the opening ceremonies of the largest Webcast ever: Global Learn Day II.
In all, 200 countries have registered to serve or participate in GLD2's
Internet extravaganza.
JUNCTION CITY, KANSAS, November 7th -- At the very moment that
Blumsky falls to polishing his talk, on the other side of the
International Date Line where it is Saturday, Vaudene Field is making
last-minute adjustments among the 70 musical selections that she has
chosen. Classic pipe organist Field is the music director charged with
supplying three hours of thematic music during the 30-hour Webcast. Each
time GLD2 voyagers move to a new harbor, a selection attuned
to that culture will serve as traveling music.
LONDON, ENGLAND -- In this capital city, where it's nearing
midnight, Eric Baber is filing last-minute scheduling updates to the GLD2
Voyage Time Table. A panel discussion leader as well, Baber is doubly
tasked -- and loves every minute of the work.
ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES-- Neil Hynd rises at 3 a.m. to
review a presentation he will give on his lunch break. Sunday is a normal
workday in the Arab world. A perfectionist, Hynd studies the colorful Web
site that his team has built in order to celebrate Culture and
Education with a world hungry for knowledge. Hynd smiles as he
knows that at this very minute his counterpart in Cairo, Sherif Kamel, is
undoubtedly at a console fussing with Web pages that focus on "The
World of Learning in the Next Millennium.
BOULDER, COLORADO -- Just off the phone with Vaudene Field, John
Hibbs presides over GLD2's mission control" located deep
inside the headquarters of the VStream corporation. Director of the
Benjamin Franklin Institute of Global Education, he's up from San Diego
State University and is in the process of impressing his will on ranks of
computers before him. Like that long-distance runner of telethons, Jerry
Lewis, Hibbs will be emceeing the proceedings round the clock. Stride for
stride with the sun, he will escort passengers around the world, taking
them from a Guam ship christening by way of the on the French Riviera, to
millennium forecasting in Cairo, to Hermitage visiting in St. Petersburg,
Russia, On this day, Hibbs will weave together his miracle tapestry of
Man helping Man.
While Hibbs frets, beside him an aura of professional calm has settled
over Sam Moore, operations manager of VStream, the webcaster giant Cisco
selected to help Hibbs take his message to the world. VStream will gather
all of the pictures and sounds from the linked continents, compress them
into easily conveyed packets. Moore's task, among others, is to make it
possible for viewers in Mozambique to hear presenters in Mongolia.
Hibbs picks up a ringing telephone and tells a radio reporter calling
from Perth that in three hours he can see and hear it all at
http://www.bfranklin.edu/
can tell your listeners that in a nutshell, Global Learn Day is about how
anyone in Boston can take courses from teachers in Bombay. We have the
complete schedule online at
http://www.bfranklin.edu/timetable.htm
Turning to Moore, he asks, Sam, have you heard from Peru yet?
After a year of work and unstinting contributions from hundreds of
volunteers, John Hibbs is about to energize his world-spanning
network.
During the 30-hour Webcast, GLD2 will cover a lot of geography. Organized
like a world cruise, Hibbs' team members all carry nautical titles such
as harbor masters (the producers of the individual segments that are to be
aired at each venue), afterguard (similar to those tacticians that group
themselves around the captain of a racing yacht), theater commanders (who
organized the resources within the five participating continents), and
crew (individuals like the person who oversees their email robot services,
e.g., japan@mailrobot.com). More nautical yet, the major venues are
called harbors and the shorter stops along the way are skiff visits
(as in Men, put the skiff over the side, I'm going ashore briefly).
When the starting gun sounds, the entire enterprise will set off in its
virtual clipper, the Franklin, and begin sailing from Guam
to Honolulu the long way around. Scheduled are 70-minute stops in 21
harbors : New Zealand, Japan, China, India, Abu Dhabi, South
Africa, Egypt, Austria, Netherlands, Russia, England, Brazil, Peru,
Mexico, Canada, Maine, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, California, finally
dropping anchor" in Hawaii. The skiff will be lowered for runs
into Antarctica, Outback Australia, Mongolia, Mozambique, Malta, Cyprus,
Palestine, Ukraine, Estonia, Albania, Cuba, and the Channel Islands off
California.
At each port-of-call, there will be real-time audio and video
presentations from host institutions representing the world's leading
distance education providers (e.g., University of South Africa in
Pretoria).
As one looks at the Internet-driven changes coming to the fore and the
need for the even greater changes that must occur in a world intent on
reinventing education, the human dimension begins to express itself.
Oddly enough, one of the strongest statements along this line comes from
a non-virtual tall ship that is today working its way through some 50
ports in 25 countries.
Reports Captain Dan Moreland from the deck of the 180-foot, three-masted,
square-rigged barque Picton Castle http://www.picton-castle.com now under
way in the Indian Ocean, We recently visited an island in
the South Pacific on which the highest point of land is called 'The
Mountain.' We left the schoolteachers there with educational materials
that cover such topics as El Nino, global warming, and the threatened
one-meter rise of the world's oceans. On this island 'The Mountain' is 20
feet high. Think what that rise in ocean level means to this village. For
them, distance learning in the rest of the world should have begun 100
years ago.
After 18,000 miles, we've hand-delivered thousands of lesson plans, wall
charts, CDs, pamphlets and calendars from the deck of a 19th-century
sailing vessel. Great stuff! But our delivery system is a bit slow in the
world of satellite communications -- in a world on the verge of going
post-Gutenberg. Consequently, I see the Picton Castle as a
symbol of the past that points to the future.
In fact, we're already involved in bringing the future on board. When we
arrive in the Seychelle Islands, a four-person education team from the
innovative group, Tidal Passages (http://www.tidalpassages.com), will
come aboard. For six months, they will be sending back exciting programs
to some 600 schools throughout the world from Zanzibar, Cape Town,
Brazil, over a dozen islands in the Caribbean, and all the way back to
Nova Scotia. That's as exciting as life get for a deep-ocean voyager like
me.
How far off is that future day for everyone else?
Consider this. Today there are more than 100,000 courses offered online
from hundreds of accredited universities worldwide. That number will grow
to one million in the next 18 months. The number of universities offering
full-degree programs obtainable without ever setting foot on a campus
exceeds one hundred, many of which offer full post-graduate and even
doctorate programs.
In addition to illuminating visits to foreign capitals, the GLD2 program
includes five panel discussions:Teaching English as a Foreign
Language (led by Dr. Eric Baber, who teaches English from London to
students in China); Access & Disabilities -- New Ramps with New
Tools -- No One Gets Left Behind (Dr. Norm Coombs, a blind history
professor); K-1 to K-99 -- Lifetime Learning Is What the 21st
Century Is All About (Dr. Cliff Layton, Online Director at Rogers
State University); Appropriate Technology -- Affordable
Access (Mr. Roger Boston, the world's leading authority with
respect to the tools available to deliver education from anyplace to
anywhere); Globalization -- High Octane Discussions about
Education, Business and Politics (Dr. Neil Hynd, a brilliant
expatriate Englishman who provides 21st century training in management
techniques).
The organizers are using leading-edge technology to Webcast this event so
that it can be viewed by anyone with a recent version Netscape or
Explorer browser, an ordinary computer, and a 14.4 modem. They have the
capacity to hold this event so that as many as 100,000 viewers may
interactively participate. (Some individuals may have to download a free
copy of RealAudio from http://www.realaudio.com/
In his Boulder command post, John Hibbs drops the phone back into its
cradle.
That was Cys Bronner at World without Borders
(http://worldwithoutborders.com). The chatroom looks great. It should.
They put 200 plus hours getting ready for us." he exclaims to a room
crowded with technicians. Turning to Sam Moore, his operations manager,
he says, O.K. Heads up. We are five minutes and counting. Who's got
Guam? Who's got Texas? Who's got Wellington? Who's got Cannes? Four
minutes and counting..
It is always five minutes to curtain time for someone, somewhere, but
we've been privileged with a backstage look at a critical moment in the
history of human learning. However, unlike so many unwitting witnesses,
we can at least say that we walked into a new future with our eyes wide
open.
For further information contact:
John W. Hibbs
Director, Benjamin Franklin Institute of Global Education
Tel/Fax 619 230 0212
2529 Front Street
San Diego, CA 92103
http://www.bfranklin.edu/
For the GLDII VoyageTimetable, visit
http://www.oltraining.com/GLD2/toc.html
music visit http://www.jc.net/~penfield/gld2/music.html
Thanks for Listening,
Kind Regards
Arun
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ARUN KUMAR TRIPATHI,c/o Braun,Luetgenholthauser Strasse 99
44225,Dortmund,Germany EDUCATOR: WEB SITE REVIEW WRITER
My short bio at http://www.bfranklin.com/gld98/tripathi.htm
Volunteer cum List Manager on Global Learn Day II Project
Join GLD-II Ship at http://www.bfranklin.com/gld98/contents.htm
Internet in Education: http://www.gsh.org/wce/archives/tripathi.htm
E-mail: <tripathi@amadeus.statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
Research Scholar Internet Search Expert
Department of Statistic EDRESOURCE Listserv Moderator
University Of Dortmund Internet Information Investigator
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