The National Grid for Learning has been born in the UK but will it become a world exemplar? Will the UK national government give it "space" to enable a number of initiatives to develop under its umbrella? Will the United Kingdom be prepared to learn from other parts of the world and not just stick its nose in the air and say "we are already doing it!". As industry is increasingly discovering it has to become a "learning organisation" – learning all the time, learning from mistakes and most important learning from others.
The UK cannot become complacent and think that it is always ahead of the game. It can learn from its European partners and from other parts of the world. One article in this edition highlights this. Developments concerning the use of Digital satellite TV for learning are about to take off in Europe this year. But RAI, the national public-sector TV service in Italy is already ahead of most of Europe with its offerings for all sectors of education. (See the article by Dario Natoli).
A previous edition of this newsletter (issue 11) mentioned Singapore – the Learning Island and in February 1997 issue 12 led on Deutsche Telekom’s planning to launch a global learning service. No UK Telecom company as yet appears to have made such a public commitment to develop learning services on such a large scale.
We must also learn to re-think and re-engineer traditional ways of offering learning. On page 7 an article by Robert Winter from the European Broadcasting Union highlights challenges for Europe’s public service broadcasters. And on page 9 Paul Bacsich raises issues concerning re-engineering universities for the future.