Suchergebnisse

BANGLADESH OPEN UNIVERSITY Vice-Chancellor's Special Seminar 19 May 2005 The Commonwealth of Learning: What does it do? By: Sir John Daniel, President & CEO, Commonwealth of Learning // I shall begin by asking what development is. This will lead me to describe the framework in which the international community is trying to promote development, in particular the Millennium Development Goals agreed by the United Nations. As we examine these goals, familiarly referred to as the MDGs, we shall find that they call for action on a variety of fronts. // But what they all have in common is that their achievement will require a massive increase in human learning. This is self-evident in the case of the goals related to education, but it is equally true for the health goals, the poverty goals, the hunger goals and all the others. // This is a major challenge, because conventional approaches to education, training, teaching and learning simply cannot cope with the scale of the challenge. So what can we do? // In nearly all other areas of human endeavour technology has revolutionised the way we do things over the last three centuries. It has done so at an accelerating pace, with the result that today ordinary people in the industrialised countries have access, at low cost, to an abundance of quality goods and services that previous generations could hardly have dreamt of. // It is now time to spread the benefits of this revolution to education, which has historically resisted it. Indeed, in education an insidious link between quality and exclusivity has gained currency. Quality education is often defined by the numbers excluded from it. // In today's world this is nonsense. I shall show that new approaches, based on technology, have created a revolution in education by making it possible to expand access, improve quality and cut costs - and all at the same time. // But even these early efforts are not enough. Our four billion fellow human beings at the bottom of the economic pyramid do not enjoy most of the comforts of modern life that we take for granted. They have been ignored by the multi-national corporations that produce and deliver many of the goods and services that we enjoy. // They have also, if they live in rural areas, been largely ignored by government services and providers of higher education. // Can we change this dire situation? Can we bring the majority of our fellow inhabitants of the planet into the mainstream? I shall suggest tools for this purpose and show how the Commonwealth of Learning is making a modest contribution to this transformation.

Royal Commonwealth Society, Education - Creating Opportunity, Realising Potential, 16 May 2005, The Commonwealth of Learning: Making Learning our Common Wealth, By: Sir John Daniel President & CEO Commonwealth of Learning // The Commonwealth of Learning is the only intergovernmental organisation ever created in Canada. The Commonwealth Heads of Government decided to set it up at their 1987 meeting held in Vancouver. Canada won the subsequent competition to host COL and decided to locate it in Vancouver. That is where we are today and we have a small associated centre, the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia, which is based in New Delhi. // The Commonwealth's two other intergovernmental agencies, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Commonwealth Foundation, are both located in the UK, as are nearly all the pan-Commonwealth non-governmental organisations. Being located in Canada and India gives us a special and different perspective on the Commonwealth, which is healthy. // Moreover COL is the only international, intergovernmental organisation of any kind that focuses exclusively on helping countries to use technology to increase the scope and scale of education and training. Technology has already revolutionised many areas of life and our job is extend that revolution to learning. // For this reason, because I like to give my remarks a title, I have called this short address: The Commonwealth of Learning: Making Learning our Common Wealth. // I feel that this title resonates well with the themes of the short films on the RCS CD-ROM that I mentioned earlier. Some showed the benefits of education to particular individuals, others showed how learning helped communities, all urged that everyone should have the opportunity to learn, whether through formal education and training or through informal means.

Canadian Association for Distance Education / Association canadienne de l'éducation à distance, 2005 Annual Conference / Congrès annuel 2005, CADE and COL / L'ACED et COL, Welcoming remarks / Mot de bienvenue, 9 May 2005 by: Sir John Daniel, President & CEO, Commonwealth of Learning // In 1987 Canada hosted both the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, known as CHOGM, and the Sommet de la Francophonie. Prime Minister Mulroney made proposals to both meetings for new programmes that would apply technology to education, proposals that were developed with the help of a number of CADE people. As a result, at the CHOGM meeting the Heads of Government decided to create the Commonwealth of Learning. // COL is an intergovernmental development agency. What do I mean by development? Nobel laureate Amartya Sen defines development simply as the enhancement of freedom. A nation develops by the enhancement of the freedoms that its people enjoy. Freedom is not only the aim of development, but also the means by which it is reached. That is because people, acting as free agents, are the most effective drivers of development.

Open University as/and Ecosystem, NETAJI SUBHAS OPEN UNIVERSITY, Opening of the Kalyani Campus, Regional Centre, Green Campus and Biovillage, 15 April 2005 Remarks by: Sir John Daniel, President & CEO, Commonwealth of Learning // I have had great pleasure taking part in this most enjoyable ceremony, which comes a day after I became a member of the Netaji Subhas Open University community through the award of an honorary degree, and two days after I tried to explain the global significance of the work of NSOU in my Endowment Lecture. This new Kalyani Campus is a lovely place and I am honoured that my name will remain associated with it on the foundation stones that we have just unveiled. // May I begin by congratulating the Minister of Public Works of West Bengal for undertaking the construction of the buildings that will spring up here? My thanks go also to the Government of West Bengal for its financial contribution to NSOU and to this project. // We have inaugurated and celebrated four initiatives this morning and I shall comment briefly on each of them.

International Perspectives on Open Learning and Distance Education, National Forum on Open Learning and Distance Education, The Gambia 12-14 April, 2005, by: Sir John Daniel President & CEO Commonwealth of Learning // The title of my presentation today is International Perspectives in Open Learning and Distance Education. // I shall begin be recalling what open learning and distance education are. Then I shall review briefly some of the history, show why open learning and distance education are important, and identify the important trends today. This will lead me, in a third section, not only to take an international perspective but to draw from it conclusions for The Gambia. // This is a Forum about policy making. Helping governments to develop policies on open and distance learning is COL's main programme and I shall argue for the importance of policy making. Policy making takes place in a context and I shall suggest that the context for us here is the development agenda expressed in the Millennium Development Goals and, most particularly, the agenda of Education for All set at Dakar nearly five years ago.

Commonwealth Universities: What Contribution to Development? Presented at the: Association of Commonwealth Universities, Kerala, India, 4 April 2005 by: Sir John Daniel, President & CEO, Commonwealth of Learning // What is the Commonwealth of Learning? Briefly, we are one of three intergovernmental agencies of the Commonwealth, the other two being the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Commonwealth Foundation, both based at Marlborough House in London. // The Commonwealth of Learning was established by Commonwealth Heads of Government when they met in Vancouver in 1987. Canada and British Columbia won the subsequent competition to host the organisation, which means we are the only Commonwealth intergovernmental body - and one of the few Commonwealth bodies of any kind - that is not headquartered in the UK. From this standpoint I strongly endorse John's remarks about the need to make the ACU multi-centric // I stress that COL is not a teaching institution but a technical assistance agency. I stress that because in the run-up to COL's creation some wanted it to be a University of the Commonwealth, beaming courses by satellite to people around the Commonwealth. However, the Planning Committee, which I had the privilege of chairing whilst I was president of Laurentian University, decided that it was more important, if you will allow me the metaphor, to teach countries to fish rather than giving them fish. // Our purpose, therefore, is to help countries use technology, particularly the demonstrably successful technology of distance learning, to improve the scope, scale and impact of their education and training systems or, more generally to make the opportunity to learn more widely available to the people of the Commonwealth. One of our primary mechanisms for doing this is cooperation within the Commonwealth, particularly south-south cooperation.

Law, Language and Learning: The Common Wealth of the Commonwealth, Gala Reception Museum of Anthropology, UBC, Commonwealth Day - 14 March 2005, by: Sir John Daniel President & CEO, Commonwealth of Learning // It is my challenge and my privilege to work for the advancement of education in the Commonwealth as President of the Commonwealth of Learning. I begin with a few words about this unique organisation; one of Vancouver's best kept secrets. // First, the Commonwealth of Learning is the only intergovernmental organisation ever created in Canada. The Commonwealth Heads of Government set it up at their 1987 meeting held here in Vancouver. Canada won the subsequent competition to host COL and decided to locate it in Vancouver, so here we are. // Second, our location is unique amongst Commonwealth organisations. The two other intergovernmental agencies, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Commonwealth Foundation, are both located in the UK, as are nearly all the pan-Commonwealth non-governmental organisations. Being located here in Canada gives us a different perspective on the Commonwealth, which is healthy. // Third, COL is the only international, intergovernmental organisation of any kind that focuses exclusively on helping countries to use technology to increase the scope and scale of education and training. Technology has already revolutionised many areas of life and our job is extend that revolution to learning.

First, I shall tell you why the issue of education should be of concern to you. Second, I shall make a brief excursion into history. Today we tend to take education for all for granted. It is actually a relatively recent concept in legislation - and even more so in practice. Third I shall look at education around the globe. Where has education for all been achieved? Where is good progress being made? Where are the seemingly hopeless cases? From there I shall describe what is being done, by countries themselves, and by the international community, to move the world toward education for all. My final section will be more speculative. We cannot promote education for all without asking ourselves what kind of education we mean. What is quality education?

I have entitled this address From the Triangle to the Pentagon: Open Universities in the 21st Century. In the light of current events I hasten to add that I am not talking about the Sunni triangle and the building in Washington from which the war in Iraq is directed. Many of you know my fondness for explaining the success of educational technology in general, and open and distance learning in particular, in terms of an iron triangle made up of the vectors of access, cost and quality. Some colleagues in India even call this the Daniel Triangle, although I disclaim any ownership. // The importance of these three parameters in education is obvious. I first heard them used as a way of analysing developments in higher education when I was a new university president attending one of my first meetings of the Council of Ontario Universities in the mid-1980s. The then president of the University of Toronto, George Connell, used these three vectors to analyse Ontario government policy for higher education and the idea has stayed with me ever since. Today, however, I am going to add two more vectors and look at today's challenges to open universities as a pentagon.

This paper will focus on four issues relating to Southern Africa. First, it will locate Southern Africa in the changed international relations architecture of the late twentieth century and consider where Southern Africa stands in the global pecking order in what Pat McGowan has described as a 'post-Westphalian, post-Cold War, post-apartheid and post-modern world'. Second, it will identify the dominant characteristics of the Southern African regional economy and examine the changing nature of South Africa's relations with the region. It will particularly analyse the increasingly dominant role of South African capital in its regional backyard. This will lead to a consideration of the prospects for increased co-operation and integration in the region and pose two related questions. One as to whether a viable regional trading bloc can be constructed in Southern Africa in the foreseeable future and, two, whether that will, in turn, serve as a factor facilitating the region's shift from its current position in the global economy's slow lane? (SAJIA/DÜI)

Die Auswirkungen der Vereinbarung von Nkomati zwischen Mosambik und der Südafrikanischen Republik (1984) auf die innenpolitische Entwicklung Swasilands werden bezogen auf die Verfolgung der ANC-Exilpolitiker in Swasiland wie auch der innenpolitischen Opposition. (DÜI-Wsl)