Education and learning

How can education and learning make humanity more intelligent, knowledgeable, and wise enough to address its global challenges?

Much of the world’s knowledge is available - either directly or through intermediaries - to the majority of humanity today. Google and Wikipedia are helping to make the phrase “I don’t know” obsolete. The Internet is reinforcing curiosity and life-long learning. The ideal of excellent curricula and excellent teachers being available to anyone at anytime is a possibility within sight. Increasing numbers of university Courses (over 6,000 now) are freely available to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. MOOCs (massive open online courses) are accessed directly from universities or through intermediaries like Coursera and edX. Learning systems independent of universities like TED and the Kahn Academy are also proliferating. A team led by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is dedicated to getting everyone on the planet connected to the Internet, as is Google’s Loon Project to create a network of high-altitude balloons for universal Internet access. The price of laptops and smart phones continues to fall. However, successfully applying all these resources for better learning around the world requires much greater effort to distribute these capabilities and adapt them to cultures.