Educational institutions have role in building innovative generations

Dubai: The steps that educational institutions must take in order to produce an innovative generation of young individuals who are prepared to shape the world was discussed at the First Knowledge Conference yesterday.

The second session under the title ‘Knowledge Through Innovation and Integration’ was led by Raghida Dergham, a columnist and senior diplomatic correspondent for Al Hayat in New York, who conducted a discussion with five panellists.

The five panellists were Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, Jimmy Whales, co-founder of Wikipedia, Dr Dana Brown, Director of the MBA at Said Business School, Doctor Chizu Nakajima, Director of the International Centre of Integrity and Governance at the London Guildhalll Faculty of Business Law, and Professor Hamid Al Naimy, Chancellor of the University of Sharjah, who all brought up several topics regarding the importance of knowledge and the role of technology in transferring it.

Al Naimy said that space technology in particular has become “the knowledge of today and such topics must be taught and must be the focus at many universities”.

“The first step to be taken is to encourage students in schools to take basic sciences as a beginning before choosing a focus,” he said.

On another note, Dr Brown suggested certain skills be acquired by students in order for them to bring positive contributions to the world.

“We need to turn technical knowledge into innovation and the way to do that is by finding ways to foster leadership and bring about a generation of leaders who can contribute to the global economy,” she said.

Berners-Lee spoke on how the language of data is powerful and how students should be taught how to understand codes if language ever becomes a barrier. He said, “Websites are built on data and everything on the internet is based on data, but data is not dependent on language and so students must be aware of the codes even if they choose to not go for programming.”

He added that changing data could change what people can see and that data has become “an international language”.

Among the topics discussed and the questions asked was the issue about the reliability and credibility of some platforms that carry information, such as Wikipedia.

Whales said that around 100 per cent of students go to Wikipedia to get some information, but he says it is their responsibility to know the strengths and weaknesses of it and to be cautious.

He also said that there is a specific committee that rates the quality of articles.

Brown said that “with knowledge comes the responsibility to seek the truth, but the challenge is to have a sense of responsibility in our education system”.