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Dubai parents believe AI, VR, metaverse will have biggest impact on kid’s future

Dubai parents believe artificial intelligence, the metaverse, and virtual reality will have a significant impact on their children's futures, a new study finds.

It also revealed that creative thinking, mental wellbeing, and confidence were among the top skills parents believed were essential for their child's future success.

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The study, conducted by the Citizens School titled ‘The Future of Learning’, found that 87 percent of parents believe digital literacy is critical, while resilience and entrepreneurship rank at 84 percent.

Resilience, inclusivity, and entrepreneurship are identified as areas for schools to focus on to better prepare future-ready children.

Around 69 percent of parents believe AI and VR will have the largest impact on their children’s future, followed by cryptocurrency and the metaverse (54 percent).

At a time when Dubai is evolving in a direction led by rapid technologies and multi-faceted job roles, the white paper touches upon the importance of helping children develop skills and competencies that make them more adaptable to the realities of tomorrow.

“As the sum of human learning expands, the means of imparting this knowledge requires educators to re-imagine the traditional and challenge the conventional by giving children choices to explore themes, expand interests and discover new technologies to determine the routes they want to take to reach their full potential,” Dr. Adil Al Zarooni, Founder, Citizens School Dubai, said.

The study also suggests that schools should focus on resilience, inclusivity, and entrepreneurship to better prepare children for the future.

“The current education system focuses on one pathway, the examination which is essentially a transfer of information from teacher to student. This model needs to evolve when considering that data suggest 40 percent of nursery-aged children today will have to be either self-employed or entrepreneurs to generate any income,” said Hisham Hodroge, Chief Executive Officer, Citizens School Dubai.

“This requires a different learning philosophy aimed at enhancing quality of life by building future-ready mindsets that are ready to seize opportunities, lead change and understand that success and failure are necessary for personal growth.”

The study analyzed how children in Dubai, and the United Arab Emirates as a whole, are in a unique position given the naturally diverse classrooms, future-forward government policies, and access to emerging technologies.

It highlights that today’s education needs to adapt and evolve to outcomes that are not summed up in a report card but by better equipping children with the skills they will need to thrive and succeed in an uncertain future.

“We must encourage our students to take ownership of their learning, empower them to explore their passions and to experience success and to deal with failure, seeing failure as a meaningful step to subsequent success,” said Kephren Sherry, Head of Primary, Citizens School Dubai.

The teacher today is not the only source of knowledge, and the role of the teacher must be to guide, facilitate, and support the student in accessing knowledge from a myriad of sources, extracting key information, and making sense of it.”

The Future of Learning white paper explores the history and evolution of education, global education trends, the leading role of the UAE’s future-focused government, and survey results of over 1,200 UAE parents on how they perceived the quality of education.
The white paper outlines the need for all education stakeholders to collectively re-imagine a more future-relevant learning experience.

“We believe that today’s learners need essential entrepreneurial life skills to survive. Today’s learning experience needs to be curated to re-imagine learning, contributing towards a globally recognized future learning framework enabling learners to thrive and enjoy a better quality of life in the future,” wrote Dr. Zarooni in his foreword to the study.

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Russia has no access to damaged Togliatti-Odesa pipeline: Reports

Russian Industry and Trade minister Denis Manturov said on Thursday that Moscow has no access to the damaged part of the Togliatti-Odesa ammonia pipeline, and does not expect to be granted it, the Interfax news agency reported.

Russia has made the restart of the pipeline, which before the war carried ammonia from Russia to Ukraine for export, central to future renewal of a deal allowing Ukraine to export its grain safely from its Black Sea ports.

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Both Russia and Ukraine this week reported damage to a section of the pipeline that runs through the front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. The two sides have blamed each other.

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World

EU launches new effort to resolve longstanding migrant crisis

European Union interior ministers on Thursday made a fresh attempt to overcome one of the bloc’s most intractable political problems as they weighed new measures for sharing out responsibility for migrants entering Europe without authorization.

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Europe’s asylum system collapsed eight years ago after well over a million people entered – most of them fleeing conflict in Syria – and overwhelmed reception capacities in Greece and Italy, in the process sparking one of the EU’s biggest political crises.

The 27 EU nations have bickered ever since over which countries should take responsibility for people arriving without authorization, and whether other members should be obliged to help them cope.

Arriving for the meeting in Luxembourg, the EU’s top migration official, Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said it was an “extremely important day” to resolve what has “been a marathon” issue for Europe.

“Of this marathon, we have maybe 100 meters left. So, we are so close to actually find an agreement today,” Johansson said. “I expect the member states to be able to do the final extra meters to reach the agreement.”

“If we are not united, we are all losers,” she said.

Under the existing rules, countries where migrants first arrive must interview and screen them and process the applications of those who might want to apply for asylum. But Greece, Italy and Malta maintain that the burden of managing the numbers of people coming in is too onerous.

Later attempts to impose quota systems on countries to share out the migrants were challenged in court and finally abandoned. EU countries now seem to agree that the assistance they provide must be mandatory but can take the form of financial and other help rather than migration sharing schemes.

The EU’s presidency, currently held by Sweden, has proposed a system under which countries who do not want to take migrants in could pay money instead. Figures of around 20,000 euros ($21,400) per migrant have circulated in the runup to the meeting. It remains unclear if the idea will be accepted.

Diplomats said ahead of the meeting that an agreement is only likely if big member countries France, Germany and Italy back the plan. A deal requires the support of a “qualified majority” – roughly two thirds of the 27 members but crucially also making up about two thirds of the EU population.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the compromise on the table “is very difficult for us.” She said that “I am fighting for us to have a Europe of open borders,” and warned that “should we fail today … that would be the wrong signal.”

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told reporters that he had come with compromise proposals and that plenty of work remains to be done on what is a “very difficult” issue.

“What we want to do is completely change the situation on migration,” Darmanin said.

His Spanish counterpart, Fernando Grande-Marlaska – whose country has struggled to deal with an influx of people trying to enter from North Africa through Spanish islands in the Atlantic – warned that “if we don’t reach that agreement, I think that all of us will be losers.”

Even if a political agreement is reached Thursday, the member countries must still negotiate a full deal with the European Parliament, which has a different view of solidarity – one that requires countries to draw up detailed “annual migrant support plans” in case of emergency.

Lawmakers have warned that this is a last chance to solve the conundrum before EU-wide elections in a year, when migration is likely once again to be a hot-button issue.

Should the EU fail, the project might have to be abandoned or completely overhauled as it’s taken up by the next European Commission – the bloc’s executive branch – and the new members of parliament after next June’s polls.

“If we miss this chance to make it right, I don’t think we will have another,” Spanish Socialist lawmaker Juan Fernando López Aguilar, a leader on migration policy, said in April. “The kind of a message would be: ‘Hey, listen, it’s not going to happen. Not this time. Ever.’

The long-festering dispute has led to the collapse of Europe's asylum system. Unable to agree, the EU has tried to outsource its migrant challenge, making legally and morally questionable deals with countries like Turkey or Libya, which many people transit through on their way to Europe.

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World

Indian leader Modi expected to visit Egypt after official US trip: Source

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to travel to Cairo on his way back from an official visit to the US in June, the Times of India reported Thursday, citing official sources.

It will mark the Indian premier’s first visit to the Middle Eastern country. No official announcement has been made.

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Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi joined India’s President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a parade celebrating the south-Asian nation’s Republic Day in January 2023.

Ahead of the parade, al-Sisi met with Modi and held talks, including on deepening military cooperation, and invited the Indian premier to Egypt.

The January visit elevated ties between the two countries, especially in counter-terrorism, energy and economy. Egypt and India share historic diplomatic relations.

As for trade, it bilaterally expanded in 2021-22, amounting to $7.26 billion, registering a 75 percent increase compared to 2020-21, according to data provided by the Embassy of India in Cairo.

India’s exports to Egypt during this period amounted to $3.74 billion, registering a 65 percent increase over the same period in 2020-21, the same report said.

Egypt’s exports to India reportedly reached $3.52 billion, registering an 86 percent increase over the previous year.

US President Joe Biden will host Modi at the White House for an official visit from June 21 to 24. They will reportedly address a joint meeting of the House of Representatives and Senate, one of the highest honors Washington affords to foreign dignitaries.

The speech would be Modi’s second to a joint meeting of the US legislature and comes as Biden seeks to deepen ties with the world’s largest democracy as part of his bid to win what he has framed as a contest between free and autocratic societies, especially China.

With Reuters

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