Keynote Address to iEARN Annual Conference, Marrakesh Morocco – July 17, 2017
YES, IT’S POSSIBLE!
iEARN has 50,000 teachers in 140 countries – with over 1,000 languages and dialects spoken amongst all its countries.
Nelson Mandela said, “When you speak to a man in a language he understands, you speak to his head. When you speak to him in his native language, you speak to his heart.”
There is an explosion in the creation of all types of knowledge for all purposes – education, training, spirituality, entertainment, religion, marketing, corporate communications, news, etc., a very high percentage of which is in English, or just a few other major languages – most of it is not available in the native languages of over 6 billion people.
There is, at the same time, an exponential increase in the amount of this knowledge being made available in video, which is becoming the dominant way to communicate, tell stories and inspire.
Dotsub, my 9th startup 10 years ago, has a mission to enable all knowledge, of any type, in video format, to be available to all 7.3 billion people in the world in their native language, in all formats necessary including all digital devices including smartphones AND feature phones.
This talk will give three examples of global programs in which Dotsub is involved, which iEARN teachers and students, if they wish, can participate in to help expand global knowledge in music, mathematics and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in their native languages. They will be learning new ideas and participating in a global movement, which can in its own way, help increase cross cultural communication and understanding, and a little bit at a time – change the world for the better with the global spread of knowledge.
YES, IT’S POSSIBLE!
- Dotsub was asked to partner with a company in the music industry them to do a pilot with the lyrics of 50,000 songs, from primarily English, into a minimum of 15 languages, all done by a global network of volunteer translators – on Dotsub’s platform managed by Dotsub. This pilot will involve over 2,000,000 Audio Language Minutes (ALMs) which will require about 250 man years to complete by volunteers.
Nothing of this magnitude has ever before been done, as until now, almost all of the billions of lyrics and lyric translations available on the web are illegal, with no rights obtained and no revenue being generated for the music publishers, songwriters or artists.
Since music and songs are a basic global method of storytelling, sharing emotions, and building deep connections between fans of the same artist/song and hundreds of millions of people in all countries of the world sing songs in English, but DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THE WORDS MEAN. We have already begun to create a network in India who will be finally, after years of singing lyrics they do not understand with music they love, be able to understand what they are singing.
This is an opportunity for iEARN, to create a program that works for the teachers, to allow those students in any country, speaking any language, to become very early participants in this program. How the students will be recognized, rewarded, involved is totally up to iEARN, as I have obtained early approval of this exciting project for all its students.
YES, IT’S POSSIBLE!
- Global Math Week – 10/10/17 – https://www.theglobalmathproject.org/ – join one million students, teachers, math leaders and adults from around the globe in an astounding mathematical experience. “See mathematics like you’ve never seen it before.”
We are working with James Tanton, founder of the Global Math Project, to enable the entire iEARN community, again if it wishes, on its own terms, to integrate the years of work and thinking of The Global Math Project into individual school/teacher curriculums, while at the same time creating the opportunity to do something on a much bigger global scale with iEARN to become a partner – https://www.theglobalmathproject.org/partners
The Project is focused on the base 10 system of current mathematics – as most arithmetic and mathematics works on the base 10 system of numbers. That is why the Global Math Week is on October 10th – the calendar date 10/10/17. Again, this is a totally global opportunity to have iEARN teachers, on their own or in groups, work with a cutting edge global effort, across languages and cultures, to help make math learning fun and collaborative. Teachers or country leaders can become ambassadors – all is possible.
Since Global Math Week is less than 3 months from the iEARN Annual Meeting, time is of the essence to get started with this project for this year, but it will be an annual event.
YES, IT’S POSSIBLE!
- SDGs Without Borders – creating a comprehensive global language platform to enable all media, studies, comments, news, or anything else, about the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be translated into all the world’s languages using Dotsub platform and volunteer translators. iEARN has been actively involved in studying and including into parts of local curriculums and classes – all determined either at the country or teacher level – with different classes, thoughts, etc.
Dotsub has registered the URL – https://www.SDGsWithoutBorders.com – and is in the very early stages of lining up partners, media companies, NGOs, senior management, funding, etc. to enable the exploding amount of knowledge, comments, media, videos, TV/radio/etc created in any language to be able to be consumed in hopefully hundreds of languages. This will enable all 7.3 billion people in the world, who in total speak 6,800 languages – 85% of which are oral only, to understand what is said and written about each of the SDGs. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon created the 17 SDGs starting Jan 1, 2016 – Dec 31, 2030, following the 15-year program created by the previous UN leader Kofi Annan called MDGs, Millennium Development Goals.
Since iEARN has already embraced the SDGs as a part of their global curriculum, and iEARN countries speak over 1,000 languages and dialects, active involvement in the program to help SDG related knowledge be available for all 7.3B people could be a major, long term program for iEARN to embrace, again in any way it feels, fits into its existing and future agenda.
The above summarizes my thinking into making available to all iEARN teachers and students 3 different global programs – in music/songs, Math, and the SDGs, which will involve cutting edge technology, language, translation, volunteering, learning and huge potential global impact. That is why I have titled my talk YES – IT’S POSSIBLE.