 economic forum and I'm I'm very excited about this session actually this is a topic that's very close to my heart as I have children as many people do and this is the number one issue I think parenting issue of the 21st century we're here to talk about digital intelligence and I'm very pleased to introduce our participants this morning we have Park Yushun the founder and chief digital officer of the DQ Institute and Janiel put to cherry the senior minister of state and the minute at the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Communication and Information in Singapore. Good morning and thank you for coming. Thank you. I might turn to Yushun to start and give us an introduction to the scale of the problem and some of the challenges that parents and education educators and societies face in this new world of digital information. Sure one thing that I want to start with is that in our children's are very unique generations so their first generation who are born and raised in this hyper connected into the world. So iPad is their nanny and they live together with the digital world and another interesting thing is that they're actually born and raised the first generation in this forced industrial revolution so now we are in the stage that the digital technology really going fast in exponential growth where the system and education and culture cannot really catch up with the speed so in the midst we have great potential. We discussed today and yesterday and David for yesterday about ASEAN growing to digital economy and huge potential that we are getting by having the more and more youth and individual under Internet connection so we are looking at the huge promise thanks to the digital technology but at the same time we have to be mindful of the side effect of digital technology. The professor shop mentioned that this new technology and forced industrial revolution can bring both promise but at the same at the peril so what would be the peril so AI taking over the humankind or there will be no job for our children but I believe the true peril is that in a lack of humanity in the digital world. If you look at the digital world right now there's a lot of great things going on but at the same time there's a lot of danger that our children can face. If you look at the worldwide statistic 90% of children have come across with the hatreds, bigotry, racist comments and contents in the Internet and also around the 40% of children around the world have experienced cyberbullying and 10% of children can be diagnosed as pathological game and Internet users. It is not a surprising fact that we are seeing the social media has been used for online radicalizations, glooming and all others side effects. Of course these are the one dimension of a digital technology but unless we are mindful of these challenges we cannot really maximize our our potential. Thank you very much. Minister, can you tell us a little bit about how the Singaporean Ministry of Education for instance is integrating some of these ideas and challenges into its policy program? Well the first position is how big a role is this going to play in our education space going forward and do we have the luxury of saying well we might be in a position to restrict or reduce access or mitigate some of the downsides and the reality we believe is no because the opportunities available in terms of both the education space but the job space and the social space with what happens online and digital space are huge and the generation growing up today they're going to be very much taking up taking advantage of these opportunities it's going to be a very much part of their lives and so we take the position that we have to embrace it and we have to teach the children how to embrace it in a positive way that they need to be able to learn to navigate the downsides and the risks in the same way that there are downsides and risks with every medium of communication and you know television was no different and radio was no different and print it's just the speed and the scale and the ease of access and the affordability of the digital revolution that's making it seem like a quantum leap. We at the same time social wise a society-wide in Singapore we do take the position that there are some things that we can't count on regardless of the medium that it would be transmitted across and we have developed a series of legislative and regulatory tools so that we can police our internet and we make no we make no bones about it we don't have to apologize for this if there is hate speech we want to be able to go and do something about it regardless of whether that hate speech is on a flyer or a book or on the internet in one of our local sites. Now if we then move away from that and we think about how that pans out in terms of an education approach we feel that the use of these technologies needs to be pervasive within our education space so that the children are familiar with it. The more unfamiliar it is the more it becomes a special treat or an exotic part of their education the more open it's going to be to misuse, disuse and abuse. The more that they use it as a matter of cost they will learn those self-regulatory skills you know that they will have a sense of what is normal and abnormal in their interactions. The best protection to whether it's a scam or a phishing email or hate speech or abuse is a sense of self-worth and a sense of self-confidence using these tools and a sense of normality. When you don't have that sense you become much much more vulnerable. So we have an approach that the use of ICT is something that we should see as pervasive not in its own for its own sake but because it allows so much else to happen within the education space. Having said that we separate that out from the teaching of computational skills, quantitative reasoning, critical analysis which doesn't automatically need to be on an online platform or a digital platform in order to be effective and we want to give our teaching staff, our professional staff in the space a fair amount of leeway and autonomy to find the best tool be it digital or pen and paper in order to teach those skills but that over time overwhelmingly there will be an increase in the use of ICT in the education space and that's only for a good thing. Now the next tier is then a series of formal programs to educate our children on how to use the internet and the digital tools responsibly. A lot of that revolves around critical thinking, being a little bit skeptical about what you read as you should be regardless of where you're getting that information you need to think about it for yourself and there's a whole series of modules and programs and approaches we have. And then a separate layer which is the peer influence and I think particularly for the young peer influence is a very important part of how they learn and that should be no different in this space that there should be some degree of peer interaction and peer support that it shouldn't really be by fear or by dictation. Interestingly what we've seen in Singapore over the last five, seven years is an increasing number of people who are coming out online in the social media space using their own names not as avatars and trolls but using their own names to defend a moderate position where there has been instances of public shaming or public cyber bullying. We are now seeing this where people will come out using their own identifiable online persona and to speak up on behalf of a moderate inclusive stance online and I think that socialization of that normal approach is what will ultimately help us over time that we take some of the things that we're going to talk about in terms of DQ and it becomes a very much more social approach that everybody participates and that will give us some online resilience to these negative factors. So in terms of that second layer which you mentioned which is the actual formal programs for teaching of digital intelligence. You should perhaps you could tell us a little bit about the concept of DQ that you have developed and how parents and children and teachers and others can access these ideas. Sure. Janiel described really well about what has to be taught for our children. We want our children to be an independent thinker who can make a decision in online right decision and with a critical thinking. So we want them to be a proactive learner and doers so who can actively reach out to the community and also utilize the technology in a most effective way and maximize the potential while mitigating the risk. So these are the ability that we want to nurture in our children. So we as a group of researchers develop what would be the core skills, life skills that children need to have. So we DQ digital intelligence is some of cognitive, social and emotional ability that child and individual can deal with the demands and threats of digital technology and media. So what we have done is very interesting. We are looking at the generations of children. So who are the target? Who will be the most effective target in intervention time that we can go and talk to them about these skills? So we concluded 9 to 12 because these are the age group they started their digital life most actively. So they get the first device around 9 or 10 and they become very active in the social media even though they are not supposed to be on social media until 13 and above. But that's the reality because they are the age seeking the social inclusion. They need a pure pressure. They need to influence and get influenced through the social media. So what we believe is that just like a driving license before you drive, before you hit the road, you know how to drive. So DQ education has a similar rational. Before you get very actively involved in social media and digital media and technology, you know how to use them safely, effectively and responsibly. That is a starting point of DQ. We work with very closely with Singapore government and private sector SingTel is always our strategic partner and we also work with the civic partners in TouchSever Wellness, our partners in Singapore. We formed the coalition to make what is the most effective way to reach out to whole generation of 8 to 12 years old. Because we really believe that this is a core competency that every child needs to have. And it is not just about every child also. It is very important to reach out to children in the underprivileged community because there is a data showing that children in low socio-economical status can have a higher impact on the cyber risk. So what we develop is the online platform that children, any child can self-learn DQ by themselves in a holistic way with the minimal efforts of teachers and parents. Because digital issues are very tricky. Like we say, they are the first generation who are born and raised in this internal generation. So teachers and parents are usually feel powerless. So they feel incompetent to talk about this issue. So it is often neglected in schools or parents. So what we do is we make it all self-learning. And number two, what we did is we made assessment tools. So we are the first group who developed the assessment tools for digital skills and digital citizenship skills. The reason it was so important is that since there was no measurement, teachers and parents do not feel the gravity of this importance. And it is very hard to teach our children one step to another unless there is a feedback coming back to them. So we made all this into an online platform. And we did a rigorous study together with the Singaporean schools and Ministry of Education. And we had a great result. So our program has proven that 10% of increment of DQ score, which can lead to about 30 to 40% of reduction on cyber risk and enhancement of future readiness skills such as literacy, future readiness, global citizenship and empathy and others. We are very privileged to announce and publish our results at this year's Davos. And we are ready to actually provide this free and tested program to the nations. So we are launching a new initiative called DQ Every Child, which is a global movement in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and other partners. So what we believe that this is education for really old children, 1 billion of children who is coming to the Internet world. Yep. Thank you very much. I'm very pleased to take any questions from the audience if I just kind of let me know. But as I'll turn again to the minister and some of these. So there's clearly the message I was hearing from you is that digital intelligence is something that children should, that should be integrated into sort of in the normal flow of education. That digital devices exist and that children should through socialization and their educational programs become familiar with behavior in the same way that they do in the playground. Are there any curriculum items or policies that specifically address these new kind of information overload and other challenges that you can think that the government might wish to explore? Well our approach to the curriculum side, our approach is again tiered and layered. We expect at the primary school level and certainly for the younger kids that there will be a very significant part of their math and science curriculum which revolves around computational skills, quantitative reasoning, critical thinking. Now that may or may not be done using a digital and online platform but it's possible. But we're separating out the curricular aims from the tools being used to deliver. That's our expectation. At the same time at our primary school we have a pervasive expectation that there will be exposure to using computers and tablets and online tools for a wide variety of subjects including social sciences, history, language and so on and so forth. So we separate out the curricular aims from the platforms and tools that we're expecting. But on both levels we are hoping there's a very high pervasiveness of ICT and computer related skills as well as platforms. Now then as we progress throughout our educational system we then have senior primary and opportunity for some students to then develop that further and take on computing, coding, computer science projects, robotics and so forth. And then the secondary school level, significant proportion of our secondary schools will offer an applied learning program in science or STEM related subjects or math related subjects or computer science related subjects. And all of those are then opportunities and platforms for them to start learning and dealing with these skills or dealing with the digital or online world, information overload and so forth. We're also offering O-levels in computer science and A-levels in computer science. And so we have a tiered approach as we progress through our educational system. So everybody gets a certain exposure, significant exposure both to the skills as well as the tools. And even those if you so wish and if it's something that you have an attitude for, we're not teaching everybody how to code. But we are expecting that everybody will learn the cognitive skills, computational thinking, quantitative reasoning, the scientific method and that's something everybody needs to learn but not necessarily learn how to code. But we want to make it possible for everybody to learn how to code should they wish to. Now if I then circle back to the social impact of this, information that we use, that's not a single discrete subject. In the same way that we're separating out the curricular outcomes from the platforms, these sort of higher order skills, how to deal with information, how to be critical about the information you receive from various sources, how to fact check and cross-corporate the data that you're receiving, that's pervasive across a number of subjects. That's not just an ICT subject. I mean, social science needs to happen in language. So that comes down to our pedagogical approach and how we are training our teachers to think about the extent to which our children have access to knowledge way over what they're provided in the textbook. To what extent are our teachers bringing in internet resources into their classroom? Are they making the URLs to the YouTube video as prominent teaching resource as a chapter in their textbook? So our approach to these things is now to look at how we train our teachers, both pre-service and in-service. So it's a professional development issue around the pedagogical tools that our teachers can bring to bear. And it cuts across all our subjects, how to deal with information, sources of information. And we're quite open to the fact that our teachers need not develop all their information de novo themselves. We are very supportive of the idea that they should scour the internet because on a YouTube video, better than any of us, that's the thing that they should use as a teaching resource. And that approach means that the skills that we're talking about become normalized and socialized for our teachers and then they can do so for the children under their care. And that is how we think there's a way forward. So what I'm hearing from Jamil is that it's integrated throughout the curriculum. Do you think that DQ is something that actually you need to... It's a different subject altogether. That it's something that you need to address in a particular time frame with particular tools. Currently, like Singapore is one of the frontier nation who is working on the DQ topics. So they have developed the curriculum called cyber wellness. And it is one of the few countries around the world I can say who have frontering this as putting it in a national education curriculum and a separate set of side of these topics and dedicate time to teach them about the cyber wellness. So I can say that Singapore is quite advanced in their regard. And one thing I found that is quite fascinating is that Singapore has done not just about the national curriculum they encourage to bring the social sectors as well as the industry sectors to bring in the best knowledge. So they form the inter-ministerial committee to look after cyber wellness issue and to bring the partners like us to be part of the game. So one thing that I really admire and I think it's going to be benchmarked by the other nations is that how the Singapore Government has formed the private and public relationship and partnership to create the ecosystem rather than it's just not about the one time curriculum it also nurtured the ecosystem and culture in the society so involving education not just educated teachers and students they involve with parents and they involve with in counseling. So this beyond education it's more about the also community effort so that is something that I'd like to compliment about the Singapore approach of dealing with the DQ education and regarding your question my personal view is yes because nowadays it is not no longer about math and science it's more about what is the future skill that we want to nurture. Another component of digital intelligence is critical thinking. Critical thinking can be born from multiple subjects and it has to be thinking about the new curriculum future curriculum should thinking about how we can integrate it as you and then we can help children to think about how to solve the really global agenda and global challenges. So along that line I think we are moving into that direction. So just circling back to your question about you hearing that it's pervasive or is there some discrete time those are not mutually exclusive when we talk about the skills that Dr. Park just talked about in terms of critical thinking the higher order skills whether it's critical thinking relationship building presentation skills these can't be taught in a vacuum they have to be taught about something and have something to think critically about and so whether this approach is pervasive throughout the curriculum or you have time set aside it's not an either or approach and our approach is that you need to do both you need dedicated time especially at the lower primary level and the kid hasn't been introduced to some of these concepts you need to have some dedicated curricula time to pull out and think about these problems and these challenges but then you need to take those concepts so that they have something to do with these new skills that they have it's not an either or approach it's both and it's only then that you get those real synergies across both the skills and the subjects that those skills are brought to bear upon that makes great sense so we've talked a bit about Singapore and we've touched upon the work of the DQ Institute how do we transfer these ideas globally thank you for the question because that's what I'm very passionate about I personally believe that how we can actually change the generation because these are the really unique generation that has a really high hope and they have so much potential compared to other generation because of technology they have at hand so what we want to do is that anybody, any child around the world come to this digital space they just need to know the basic of DQ that means how to be online how to become a good digital citizen so in order for us to help the nations we actually devised this very simple to use simple plug and play online platform to the nations so three bottlenecks that usually the nations have to implement this digital intelligence education first, teachers not empowered either they don't know about importance in other nations, in some nations and or they don't have resources or tools or training to teach this topic to other children the second, the lack of framework and curricula and problems as well as assessment so in order for a nation to develop all this it takes a lot of time so what we actually provide is an easy to plug and play solution so they can't actually bring it without any cost so third is about the system is not ready so just to be sure there's few nations who having this digital intelligence as national curriculum so despite passing all this what we actually provide is a nation any child and any teachers around the world can utilize our platform to learn DQ and get the assessment so what we are planning to do in 2017 is it 17 right? yes we are going to more than 10 countries this year currently in our system already the schools from the 67 countries are using our system already but we are going to go very systematic way to work for government more than 10 countries this year and we are planning to publish the first DQ Global Index report in collaboration with the World Economic Forum next year our goal is to set a global standard for digital protection and digital citizenship skills, digital intelligence skills for children so that when we set the global standard all the countries can benefit it through this system and also our aspiration is to really go to more than 150 countries within 3 years so we are happy to work with anyone who have the same mission and same goal with us so I will want to invite everyone for the collaboration fantastic well Janiel hearing the collaboration that is happening here no doubt Singapore will score highly on the DQ perhaps you could give us some final closing thoughts on developing these skills well I think at return to where I started these are going to be essential for the kids to be able to navigate the space and the reality is that many kids will pick this up on their own this will become very much part of their social life but we have to look out for those who are most vulnerable either because they have the means or the opportunity to learn these skills to get online or where they are growing up in an environment where they are very exposed to being groomed or to being manipulated by what they see online so I think yes the generation is going to grow up and many of them will pick up these things on their own and eventually find their way but along the way will they leave people behind or will they have a rough ride getting there and this is the kind of thing that we have to do to intervene to make sure that children get the same opportunity to develop these what are going to be fundamental skills as they grow up into becoming adults and if you could just give us the website address so that people watching can go there and check out the online tools sure so if you have children of your own or if you are teachers visit us at www.cheworld.net so you will find a very cartoonish animation for children look forward to it thank you very much, thanks everybody for coming along and thanks to those who are watching thank you thank you