Facebook CEO wants APEC countries to join global connectivity revolution

In a keynote address to the APEC CEO Summit in Lima on Saturday, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, challenged the world to connect all people to the internet and reap the economic benefits of doing so.

With the speech titled "The Connectivity Revolution," Zuckerberg said that, as an engineer, his mindset was to view any system in the world, whether hardware and software, healthcare and education systems, or even governments, Xinhua reported.

"With the accelerating progress in science and technology, our generation has the potential to do even more great things that at any other time in history," he said.

As an example, Zuckerberg looked at education.

"For the last century, education has worked in more or less the same way. Students sitting in a classroom, with a teacher, learning the same material, in the same way, at more or less the same pace," he laid out.

"Today, we know that personalized learning is way better. If you can give teachers the tools and software to help students learn in the way that suits them best...results show students can learn as much as 50 percent more each year and that can compound."

According to Zuckerberg, schools that integrate such personalised learning feel like start-ups and that more of the education system should work like this.

To tap into this, Facebook created a dedicated engineering team to create personalised learning that teachers could use for free.

In the first year, 20 schools signed up to Facebook's programme. The second year, 100 schools signed up and many hundreds are expected to do so in the third year, Zuckerberg pointed out.

He added that Facebook intended to spread this program around the world, clearly providing an opportunity for APEC countries.

--IANS

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