Oman will send three of its top educators to the Classroom of the Future Conference, to be held in Abu Dhabi from April 24 to 26, 2017.

Sulaiman Al Kindi, Deputy Director General of IT, Dr. Sharifa Al Said, an educational expert at Oman’s Ministry of Education, and Tariq Al Barwani, Chairman of Knowledge Oman, will attend the conference. Barwani, whose organisation specialises in reaching out to local entrepreneurs to form public-private partnerships to spread education and awareness across the Sultanate, is expected to address the conference. 

The conference, organised by British Educational Training and Technology (BETT) in collaboration with Microsoft and Abu Dhabi Education Council, aims to create awareness about the benefits of rolling out technology in classrooms through a series of workshops, seminars, and conferences.

“Economies across the Middle-East and Africa are busy fulfilling ambitious economic visions that require an abundance of national talent to be on hand in the years to come. As a result, education has become a tier-one priority for governments in the regions,” said Mark Chaban, Area Education Director, Microsoft Middle-East and Africa .

“As with many other areas of their economy, leaders are turning to digital transformation as a means of enhancing the classroom and the learning experiences it provides, but Microsoft believes it is vital that change does not occur merely for its own sake,” he added.

In addition to directly influencing the manner in which children in Oman and the rest of the Middle-East are educated, the implementation of technology will also have knock-on benefits, in the form of new business and educational opportunities for people in the region.

“Digital transformation, when implemented thoughtfully, can give birth to business models that recharge an organisation’s productivity, sometimes leading to disruptive innovation within an industry. For commercial enterprises, this means improved customer engagement, empowered employees, optimised operations, and transformed products,” explained Chaban.

“This is nothing short of a new era of economic activity,” he continued. “As our societies were once grounded in agriculture, and then heavy industry and mass manufacturing, today we are in a world of connectivity and data. Advanced machine-learning and analytics mean our combined technology infrastructure intrinsically ‘knows’ more than the sum of humanity itself.”

The conference is being held under the patronage of Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Vice Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council. About 110 educators at schools, universities, government organisations and educational think-tanks from across the Middle-East, North Africa, Europe, and the US will attend the conference, to witness how to best customize the technology available to suit the needs of their students and teachers.

These include Hanouf Al Juhail, Director of Academic Support Services at the American University of Kuwait; Dr. Ali Al Karni, Director General of the Arab Bureau of Education in the Gulf States from Saudi Arabia; Dr. Karima Al Mazroui from the Abu Dhabi Education Council; and Rosamund Marshall, CEO of the UAE’s Taaleem Schools. Anthony Salcito, Microsoft’s President for Worldwide Education, will also be speaking at the summit.

Source: Timesofoman