Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been confirmed as a keynote speaker at UK education technology show, Bett 2015.
Wales, who was rated in the 2006 TIME Magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential People’, will deliver a session called ‘The New Paradigm Of Open
Access to Information’ on January 21, 2015 at London’s ExCeL.
In the Bett Arena, which can seat 700 people in the centre of the show
floor, Wales will discuss how open-source and open-content technology is changing the way we access information.
He is expected to highlight how this will
affect the fundamental ways that businesses interact in the future, and look at how students can be helped to compete in the digital workforce.
Wales
said: “10 years ago I said ‘Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum
of all human knowledge.’ That's what we're doing.
“In my Bett 2015 keynote, I look forward to explaining the journey we have taken across that
last decade, the pedagogical aspects of the Wikipedia project and why - as the world’s 5th most visited website - Wikipedia resonates so strongly
with the Bett 2015 theme ‘enhancing access to education, through technology’.
“Wikipedia embraces the tensions between traditional and innovative models of education, evidence-based education and
creating collaborative minds and personalised teaching, some of the major themes of Bett.â€
The Bett shows runs January 21 to 24, 2015 at ExCeL London.