The Commonwealth of Learning: Making Learning our Common Wealth

Abstract

Royal Commonwealth Society, Education - Creating Opportunity, Realising Potential, 16 May 2005, The Commonwealth of Learning: Making Learning our Common Wealth, By: Sir John Daniel President & CEO Commonwealth of Learning // The Commonwealth of Learning is the only intergovernmental organisation ever created in Canada. The Commonwealth Heads of Government decided to set it up at their 1987 meeting held in Vancouver. Canada won the subsequent competition to host COL and decided to locate it in Vancouver. That is where we are today and we have a small associated centre, the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia, which is based in New Delhi. // The Commonwealth's two other intergovernmental agencies, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Commonwealth Foundation, are both located in the UK, as are nearly all the pan-Commonwealth non-governmental organisations. Being located in Canada and India gives us a special and different perspective on the Commonwealth, which is healthy. // Moreover COL is the only international, intergovernmental organisation of any kind that focuses exclusively on helping countries to use technology to increase the scope and scale of education and training. Technology has already revolutionised many areas of life and our job is extend that revolution to learning. // For this reason, because I like to give my remarks a title, I have called this short address: The Commonwealth of Learning: Making Learning our Common Wealth. // I feel that this title resonates well with the themes of the short films on the RCS CD-ROM that I mentioned earlier. Some showed the benefits of education to particular individuals, others showed how learning helped communities, all urged that everyone should have the opportunity to learn, whether through formal education and training or through informal means.