25 June
2007

















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     Kronberg Declaration

The UNESCO High Level Group of Visionaries on Knowledge Acquisition & Sharing (FKAS), meeting in Kronberg (Germany) has issued a Declaration on the Future of Knowledge Acquisition and Sharing (PDF) after discussing "the future of knowledge acquisition and sharing over the next twenty-five years".

The meeting reflected agreement (an echo of past UNESCO declarations about the power of television for life-long learning, community development and amity) that

Today, the ICTs afford the exciting opportunity to begin questioning some of the basic assumptions and the choices that were predicated on them and to re-open discussions around the nature of learning, the content of learning and the role of facilitators and places for learning. We must seek to use learning systems to encourage reflection, creativity, expression, cooperation, social responsibility, democratic values, and tolerance. Learning modes will become a diversified mixture of self-instruction, group work and tutoring. This process will be complicated and difficult, particularly as there are many different audiences of learners to be targeted - students, skilled workers, general public, young children, out-of-school, primary age, secondary, tertiary, etc.

The resultant Declaration is a lovely expression of 'cosmocrat-speak', replete with affirmation of past declarations and reports, the requisite buzzwords and recommendations such as "continued reflection at the expert level in an international setting" (aka a first class hotel).

     'strategic areas

The Declaration is predicated on identification of "major strategic areas which should be addressed to shape the political and structural changes that are needed to improve knowledge acquisition and sharing". Those areas include -

• The impact of technology on the evolution of knowledge societies;
• The concept of universal "knowledge norms";
• The impact of emerging technologies on models of knowledge acquisition;
• The future role of classical knowledge acquisition structures including those of teachers/trainers;
• The role of public-private partnerships in knowledge acquisition and sharing;

     the vision

The Visionaries anticipate that over the next twenty-five years:

• Knowledge acquisition and sharing will increasingly be technology mediated (e.g. online), and thus traditional educational processes will be revolutionized and new knowledge communities will be formed;
• Leaders in the public and private sectors must embrace change in organizations and people by providing opportunities and incentives to facilitate and motivate, as well as to overcome typical barriers in knowledge acquisition and sharing;
• Knowledge acquisition and sharing institutions will have to focus more closely on the development of social and emotional abilities and skills, and to come to a wider, value-based concept of education;
• The importance of acquiring factual knowledge will decrease, whereas the ability to find one’s way in complex systems and to find, judge, organize and creatively use relevant information, as well as the capability to learn, will become crucially important;
• The importance of the role of teachers as instructors will decrease, while their role as facilitators, consultants, guides and coaches for learners, as role models and as validators and interpreters of knowledge sharing, creation and acquisition, will increase;
• Continuous professional development of teachers to assume their emerging new roles will be demanded, including the effective use of new technologies;
• Learners will play an ever more active role in knowledge acquisition and sharing, including in content creation and dissemination;
• A mix of learning and social spaces including (a) traditional schools for providing core values and social competencies and (b) online learning communities, especially communities of practices, will remain important to address more specific challenges;
• Face-to-face knowledge acquisition settings will remain vital as socializing environments especially in early childhood and in primary and secondary education; and ICT enabled learning will become more relevant in post-secondary and higher
education settings and in life-long learning;
• The private sector will play an increasingly important role as an accelerator of technology development, usage models and efficiency in the area of knowledge acquisition and sharing and as a contributing partner in standard-setting for content creation, packaging, dissemination and utilization tools;
• Knowledge acquisition and sharing will be increasingly tailor-made, including the liberalization of certification processes, taking both acquired codified and tacit knowledge into consideration;
• Global efforts related to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) as well as Open Educational Resources (OER) will play a more profound role in knowledge sharing;
• Open access to and free flow of content, as well as participation in the creation of this content, will be of crucial importance for equitable knowledge acquisition and
sharing;

     emphases

The Declaration stresses the need to:

a) Develop long-term strategies to efficiently harness the enormous potential of new communication and information processes and technologies for developing new approaches to knowledge acquisition and sharing;
b) Ensure that these strategies embrace the needs of developing countries, thereby diminishing the growing digital divide;
c) Integrate these strategies into forward-looking and sustainable policymaking;
d) Invite all stakeholders, including the private sector, academia and user communities from various age groups and with different cultural backgrounds to participate in the development of these strategies;
e) Establish efficient multistakeholder partnerships to provide sustained, long-term real solutions for ICT application in knowledge acquisition and sharing;
f) Provide opportunities for all to participate in networked social learning, which is locally and globally relevant, which values tacit knowledge and enhances informal learning;
g) Promote user-friendly ICT applications to make knowledge acquisition and sharing available to everybody anywhere and anytime;
h) Support open access to and free flow of content through the development of open standards, open data structures, and standardized info-structures, as well as other elements of cyber-infrastructure necessary to support individual learners around the globe;
i) Enable the creation of open content by practitioners in the developing world, and generally ensure the development of culturally sensitive content;
j) Develop flexible knowledge norms (e.g. dynamic knowledge/skills profile);
k) Preserve mother-tongue languages while encouraging competencies in one or more global languages;
l) Develop new and creative business models to support the sustained creation and dissemination of high quality content;
m) Adapt educational assessment to the requirements of a globalized world, taking into account migration and brain-drain issues;
n) Redefine the goals and mechanisms of assessment, to embrace the four pillars of learning: "learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be";
o) Ensure long-term and sustained availability of digital content and interoperability of e-education and e-training systems on the global level as crucial elements of knowledge acquisition and sharing;

     recommendations

What are the recommendations after consulting the crystal ball?

As you might expect, it's 'more of the same' -

a) Continued reflection at the expert level in an international setting;
b) Establishment of a multistakeholder Task Force on Harnessing the Potential of ICT for Knowledge Acquisition and Sharing (to be called Vision 2025);
c) Preparation of a report outlining long-term strategies to the Director-General of UNESCO for potential presentation to the 35th session of the General Conference of UNESCO (October 2009);
d) Presentation of this report for discussion to the multistakeholder community (e.g. through establishment of online collaboration spaces and the organization of an international expert symposium/conference).
e) Linkage of further reflection on these issues to ongoing work regarding the follow-up and implementation of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society.

     preservation

There is perhaps more value in UNESCO's belated publication of a report, edited by Yola de Lusenet and Vincent Wintermans, on Preserving the Digital Heritage - Principles and Policies.

The report reflects the Charter on the Preservation of the Digital Heritage adopted at the 32nd session of the General Conference of UNESCO in November 2003.

The 2003 Charter outlines special characteristics of digital objects that require "new policies to ensure long-term access to the digital heritage".

It highlights issues regarding selection of digital content (contrary to visions of the net as a comprehensive global archive of all content selection is necessary) and division of tasks and responsibilities between institutions.

The report provides presentations regarding principles and policies for digital heritage preservation discussed at an international conference of 4 and 5 November 2005 in The Hague, organized by the Netherlands National Commission for UNESCO and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (the National Library of the Netherlands) as a follow-up to the Charter.

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