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DORON AVNI: [SPEAKING HEBREW]
TRANSLATOR: Distinguished guests, my name is Doron Avni.
I am from Google.
Welcome to the Big Tent.
The Big Tent was born a year ago in London in a real tent,
and its purpose is to bring together important people,
from the public service, the civil service, the business
sector, in order to discuss hot topics, such as the
interface between internet and society.
We left the tent back in London, but the name and the
essence have remained the same, and Big Tent has already
been in Spain, the Netherlands, the US, Germany,
and now, it is in Israel.
In this past summer, we have experienced social protests
all over the world, the Arab Spring, and the social protest
in Israel and in other Western countries.
The internet was a platform in these protests for organizing
the masses, empowering them, exchanging opinions, and later
on, for the establishment of new democracies.
I think that everybody agrees that the internet has a
significant contribution for the empowerment of citizens,
and its contribution to the freedom of expression.
But today, we wish to examine whether the internet does
contribute to the shaping of the social agenda, educational
and public agenda in Israel, and we have invited here
senior officials from the third sector, the business
sector, as well as the public sector, and we would like to
thank the Minister of Education, Gideon Sa'ar, for
honoring us with his presence today.
The educational system under his leadership is advancing
quickly in the digital era, both from the perspective of
infrastructure and teachers' training.
The minister will share with us his vision for the
educational system in the 21st century.
And then afterwards, Dr. Ilana Dayan will moderate a panel
that seeks to examine whether the internet establishes a new
public agenda.
And we'll do that from people from the government, people
from the media, from the fields of strategy and
advertisement.
I'd like to thank all of the panelists, and especially
member of Knesset, Ronit Tirosh, Chairperson of Science
and Technology Committee in the Knesset, which has a lot
of legislative initiatives regarding this interface
between society and technology, and she will be
participating in this panel.
We will finish with an interview held by Dr. Ilana
Dayan, who will be interviewing Google executive
chairman, Dr. Eric Schmidt.
We are very delighted with his visit in Israel.
He's a man of vision and practice who has been leading
Google for many years, first of all as the CEO,
and now as the chair.
The Big Tent is a place for dialogue, so we will open the
floor to take in your questions, whether through the
panel or after the interview given by Dr. Ilana Dayan with
Mr. Schmidt.
And we truly hope that this day will open for all of us
new horizons and will raise us for some thought and action.
So I'm delighted to invite our keynote speaker, Mr. Gideon
Sa'ar, who will share his vision with us, his vision for
the educational system in the digital era.
And he apologizes in advance that because of prior
commitments, he won't be able to stay here too long.
Mr. Minister, please.