Can you do your bit ?

18 influentual thinkers, appointed by the US National Academy of Engineering have just announced their list of the great technological challenges facing humanity in the 21st century at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston.

The list of identified challenges is:

1. Make solar energy affordable


2. Provide energy from fusion


3. Develop carbon sequestration methods


4. Manage the nitrogen cycle


5. Provide access to clean water


6. Restore and improve urban infrastructure


7. Advance health informatics


8. Engineer better medicines


9. Reverse-engineer the brain


10. Prevent nuclear terror


11. Secure cyberspace


12. Enhance virtual reality


13. Advance personalized learning


14. Engineer the tools for scientific discovery

Number 13 is interesting !

To have personalised learning (as being actively developed by Swansea University Lecturers with Oremi and a wide variety of other Web 2.0 tools) on the same list as making solar energy affordable, providing energy from fusion, providing access to clean water and preventing nuclear terror surely illustrates the importance attached to it by the great and the good - who after all, should know (I don't think any of them are on the board of directors at Blackboard).

So, do your bit to advance humanity !

For support give the E-Learning team a ring on 2250 or e-mail us at blackboard@swansea.ac.uk. We can only help on one of the 14 challenges though. The other 13 you will have to tackle yourselves ...

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Read the press release at the US National Academies (listing the thinkers ...)

Read the largely unrelated (but kind of depressing - or exciting depending on how attached you are to your toaster) BBC article that contained this news item